Game 39: Miami Heat (24-15) @ Phoenix Suns (30-8) l Saturday l 7:00pm l BSAZ

[pj0tr]

This is looking like our worst loss in the past two years. I dont recall another team coming into our arena and dominating us from start to finish.

Feel like “worst loss” is subjective unless being referred to by margin of defeat.

As bad as a loss tonight was, it was just a non national TV game on a random Saturday. It’s not as bad for me as the Christmas game (first one in over 10 yrs) with terrible effort.

Without looking at record, I think our team has really struggled on Fridays and Saturdays the past two seasons. I attribute it in large part to the team being young and guys focused on hitting the club or having the Scottsdale sugar baby girls over at the crib later and partying or whatever.

I just think guys are getting bored of the regular season now. And they shouldn’t because they get paid millions to play with effort and do their job but yeah.

We’ll probably blowout win vs the next team we play and then having another one of these blowout losses couple games after. Gonna try to time it again, I’ve made decent money twice this season (2 for 2) guessing Suns losses in games they were heavily favored so I think I can keep it going.

Well yeah, but honestly - the regular season right now is a joke for a number of reasons. The Suns have the best record in the NBA going back to the Bubble.

Lets not act like tonight is some sort of regular occurrence for this group - it isn't. There have been 4 blowout losses this year out of 39 games - Portland, Golden State, Boston, and tonight - all 3 have significant reasons behind them - heck the Suns opened this year with a 3/4 stretch with Portland on a B2B after they destroyed the Lakers (LIKE WTF NBA???).

I get that everyone is pissed, but nights like tonight happen in the NBA for ALL teams. Golden State was down 23 points at home last week to the Nuggets G-league squad for crying out loud - sound familiar?

[sunsbg]

Only Mikal played well from the starters. The others were rusty, DA and Crowder's first game in a while, CP3 and Book for whatever reason. My theory is Book has the all star game on his mind and doesn't play a team ball right now. Whatever it is, 3ast and 5to is not good.
Heat are well-coached. If healthy they can beat anyone in the East. As a positive we can only learn from this game.

[Bogyo]

Only Mikal played well from the starters. The others were rusty, DA and Crowder's first game in a while, CP3 and Book for whatever reason. My theory is Book has the all star game on his mind and doesn't play a team ball right now. Whatever it is, 3ast and 5to is not good.
Heat are well-coached. If healthy they can beat anyone in the East. As a positive we can only learn from this game.

It's Lowry as well... He is like a less-appreciated CP3. I read somewhere a while back that the collective +/- of the injured Heat with Lowry is about -0,7 pts in a bunch of minutes (OK sample size). That pretty much meant at that time that a lineup of Lowry / Strus / Martin / Morris / Dedmon was on par with the competition of actual NBA starters. Granted, other teams have had their injury and covid issues too, but that is just nuts if you think about it.

[NapoleonII]

If Lowry was 3-4 years younger, he'd be a viable stand-in for our Chris Paul-less future.

No one else puts up 13/8 and seems to dominate the game with his head.

[NapoleonII]

Crowder's gotta step it up, or give up some minutes for Cam.

I didn't watch the game, but I often wonder why we don't small ball the hell out of some bench units with staggered play from our stars.

Payne
Bridges
Book
CamJo
Jalen Smith


can all shoot the three

[Mulhollanddrive]

Johnson played 32 minutes and Crowder played 26 minutes I think that's a fair mix.

[pj0tr]

Only Mikal played well from the starters. The others were rusty, DA and Crowder's first game in a while, CP3 and Book for whatever reason. My theory is Book has the all star game on his mind and doesn't play a team ball right now. Whatever it is, 3ast and 5to is not good.
Heat are well-coached. If healthy they can beat anyone in the East. As a positive we can only learn from this game.

Okay stop... This is getting ridiculous now.

[Ghost of Kleine]

If Lowry was 3-4 years younger, he'd be a viable stand-in for our Chris Paul-less future.

No one else puts up 13/8 and seems to dominate the game with his head.

He was actually one of the few stop gap considerations that I really had hoped for us to consider with his poise and championship pedigree. Plus he's so stable in terms of production/ defense. But 35 yrs old is admittedly somewhat concerning for his salary too. Do you think there might he any chance perhaps to flip Paul's contract after next season with another good asset and some picks for Murray? Since Pop ( IF still there) seems to adore him, and they may want to look at one more run before pop retires and they more fully embrace a rebuild?

[Frank Lee]

Y’all know how Book is. If someone is torching it/him on O, he’s head down tunneled to score back. You can see it when he goes into ‘I just got showed up now I’m going to show up’ mode. Angry Book is dangerous both when he’s ISO-ing good, and when he’s brickin. Sometimes that killer mentality kills us.

[Ghost of Kleine]

Didn't get to see the game! But from the sound of things, it seems like I picked the right time for the stream I was using to not work

There's mention of lack of energy and sense of urgency too. And apparently we did a poor job rebounding and were horrible defending the three again? And of course the Heat were unconscious from three and the perimeter.
Also read that the reffing was pretty bad. Is that pretty much the jist of it??

[pj0tr]

Didn't get to see the game! But from the sound of things, it seems like I picked the right time for the stream I was using to not work

There's mention of lack of energy and sense of urgency too. And apparently we did a poor job rebounding and were horrible defending the three again? And of course the Heat were unconscious from three and the perimeter.
Also read that the reffing was pretty bad. Is that pretty much the jist of it??

Remember the Spurs Devin Eubanks game from last year? So yeah... flush it down the toilet and move on to the next one.

[SkyBill40]

Didn't get to see the game! But from the sound of things, it seems like I picked the right time for the stream I was using to not work

There's mention of lack of energy and sense of urgency too. And apparently we did a poor job rebounding and were horrible defending the three again? And of course the Heat were unconscious from three and the perimeter.
Also read that the reffing was pretty bad. Is that pretty much the jist of it??

In essence, we got wrecked.

Sent from my VS996 using Tapatalk

[Ghost of Kleine]

Didn't get to see the game! But from the sound of things, it seems like I picked the right time for the stream I was using to not work

There's mention of lack of energy and sense of urgency too. And apparently we did a poor job rebounding and were horrible defending the three again? And of course the Heat were unconscious from three and the perimeter.
Also read that the reffing was pretty bad. Is that pretty much the jist of it??

In essence, we got wrecked.

Sent from my VS996 using Tapatalk

Hills and Valleys I suppose. Hopefully this motivates us to step things up to another level if we've become somewhat complacent?

[pj0tr]

Didn't get to see the game! But from the sound of things, it seems like I picked the right time for the stream I was using to not work

There's mention of lack of energy and sense of urgency too. And apparently we did a poor job rebounding and were horrible defending the three again? And of course the Heat were unconscious from three and the perimeter.
Also read that the reffing was pretty bad. Is that pretty much the jist of it??

In essence, we got wrecked.

Sent from my VS996 using Tapatalk

Hills and Valleys I suppose. Hopefully this motivates us to step things up to another level if we've become somewhat complacent?

We are 30-9, the best record in the NBA almost halfway through the season. We're really asking if this team is complacent after they just literally made the Finals?

Comon guys...

[Ghost of Kleine]

In essence, we got wrecked.

Sent from my VS996 using Tapatalk

Hills and Valleys I suppose. Hopefully this motivates us to step things up to another level if we've become somewhat complacent?

We are 30-9, the best record in the NBA almost halfway through the season. We're really asking if this team is complacent after they just literally made the Finals?

Comon guys...

Sorry! Complacent in the sense that when teams get really good and drastically exceed expectations. Also run off the type of win streaks we have this season. They can sometimes just write it off as a guarantee that they'll be back in the finals and so they take their foot off the gas, tend to overlook games during the season as being inconsequential or a formality to being back in the finals. They then lose that killer instinct and just go through the motions in games figuring it's just not important, And they're conserving their energy anyways for the playoffs. Basically figuring that they can just coast their way back to the finals. All really good teams do this from time to time.

It takes games like the one they just had to snap them back to reality. And then they realize that they still have to work to get back there. Nothing is a foregone conclusion.

[Saberestar]

It was amazing how good Duncan Robinson and Herro played for them coming from the bench.

Herro is the 6th man of the year and he is gonna be soon an All Star. He reminds me of Booker, he plays with no fear and is a terrific scorer.

The Heat are great. They are probably better than the Nets, neck to neck with them for the second best team in the East.

No doubt in my mind that Spo is the best coach in the world. He always makes the most out of his players.

They were infinitely better than us in this game but this things happens in the RS. Not a big deal.

Short memory and to the next one.

[bwgood77]

what worries me next is that we'll be dealing with FVV next. He's a younger version of Lowry and has been super hot. And also, will some of the stars be skipping the trip to Canada like the Warriors and Jazz seemed to do recently?

I don't think this will be an easy game in the least. They have strong wing defenders. Should be an interesting one. I like their team.

[bwgood77]

This was easily our worst loss, playing a team missing their two best players and getting crushed. The only excuse is 3 rusty players coming off a couple weeks off. Ayton played solid defense, shot 80% and had 8 boards and a block..not bad, but McGee and Crowder were not good. Then Booker was terrible, Paul subpar and not great shooting from Cam until he hit a couple 3s late.

[lilfishi22]

It's a bad loss but I'm also not that worried. We know how we play when we play our best and that's what matters, not a random game in January. Everyone was playing kinda poor with a bunch of guys coming back after a week and half off, throwing off the rotations and we just weren't playing well.

Full credit to Miami for playing super disciplined basketball and also hitting a ridiculous amount of threes to beat us throughout. But again, I'm not worrying about this game.

[bwgood77]

It's a bad loss but I'm also not that worried. We know how we play when we play our best and that's what matters, not a random game in January. Everyone was playing kinda poor with a bunch of guys coming back after a week and half off, throwing off the rotations and we just weren't playing well.

Full credit to Miami for playing super disciplined basketball and also hitting a ridiculous amount of threes to beat us throughout. But again, I'm not worrying about this game.

Yeah, me neither. All teams have bad losses and off games. With the change in rotation people had to get back in their grooves. McGee probably winded early as he usually only plays about 16 minutes but with a couple weeks off probably was out of game shape to some extent.

But Book needs to get back on track and we need better 3 pt defense.

I don't think we definitely need to make some sort of trade because we lose a game though.