Game 5: Phoenix Suns (3-1) @ Utah Jazz (2-1) l Thur l 7:00pm l NBATV l FSNAZ

[Frank Lee]

The dude just doesn’t know how to play basketball. He looks lost and is apprehensive about where to be.

I think my new name for him will be Meandre Ayton

He gets away with it on D as others are switching and helping. His size alone makes him effective and imposing. But on O, he just clogs things up. It starts with his weak ass pick. Coupled with his vaginal demeanor rolling, it just isn’t working smooth. Honest to gawd it looked like he was going to cry a couple time last night. Let’s hope for some improvement, but this is a case of BBIQ

[Bogyo]

Some defensive metric rankings:

2P% Defense - 19th
Opposition FT Rate - 19th
Opposition Turnovers - 12th
Defensive Rebounds - 6th
3P % Defense - 2nd

Some offensive metric rankings:

FT Rate - 29th
Offensive Rebounds - 22nd
2P% - 13th
3P% - 8th
Turnovers - 6th

I was also checking some of our team stats, wondering how we'll do later on. Nothing fancy, just a cpl basic things that popped out for me.

108,4 PPG, 24th in the league - this will go up, league avg is around 113.
97.8 PPG for opponents 1st in the league, eye popping - this will go down for sure, especially in todays pace and space ball.
-8,2 FTA differential. 29th in the league. Well, at least we know why we complain about the refs. This is about a 5-6 point advantage to the opposition every game. That is simply too much, when the avg game is decided by a couple of points at best. Should get better, but we are the Suns.
27,7 opponent 3PT % - 2nd in the league flukey, will get worse during the season, returning around the average 35ish%.
+7,6 assist differential - 1st in the league. Yay for 0,5 ball that we have been playing for 3 years now. In the last 2 we have NBA players who can execute it.

So all in all, I think we are this team, even if (when) the stats return to the mean we'll have similar results. That makes this team about 4th seed in the west. But this year with the compressed schedule things will be decided by 1-2 games. We'll end up anything between 3rd and 6th. I think we'll go to the second round in the playoffs, and see who is there, who is injured by then, etc... WCF is not fully out of the question, but neither a first round exit. Good stuff overall, pretty much what I was expecting from us.