Game 2: Phoenix Suns (1-0) @ Los Angeles Lakers (0-1) l Thursday l 7:00pm l TNT

[Frank Lee]

Dont get me started garrick.

[Jdiddy701]

I really can’t wait to say what you guys have to say 15-20 games in when the Suns are destroying everyone. Today made me feel really good about the Suns going forward.


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[lilfishi22]

I didn't even feel bad with this loss.

It's just sad to see us gut a team completely losing our identity we built up over the years just because Ishbia is too impatient and wants to win now.

"Over the years"?

Bro the team had virtually NO identity until the Covid Bubble and then CP3 was the final piece to contend. It lasted all of one season before they became 2nd round fodder back-to-back years.

Could say we were a really good clutch team that can lock down defensively and execute offensively but that was like 2 seasons and we certainly weren't that last season when Ishbia began tearing it down.

[SlovenianDragon]

Dang, this board going crazy lol it’s game 2. A lot of positives in tonight’s game without Book and Beal.


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True and there were also negatives.

We can talk about both win or lose.

Tis a basketball forum...

[MrMiyagi]

I'd like to see Metu and Bates-Diop get minutes against teams with size, although we did out-rebound the Lakers tonight.

[enigmatics]

I didn't even feel bad with this loss.

It's just sad to see us gut a team completely losing our identity we built up over the years just because Ishbia is too impatient and wants to win now.

"Over the years"?

Bro the team had virtually NO identity until the Covid Bubble and then CP3 was the final piece to contend. It lasted all of one season before they became 2nd round fodder back-to-back years.

Could say we were a really good clutch team that can lock down defensively and execute offensively but that was like 2 seasons and we certainly weren't that last season when Ishbia began tearing it down.

You're eluding to the 2nd season when they lead the league in regular season wins. For me - couldn't care less because it ended in a historic loss in the 2nd round at home.

Hence why I'm referencing their one year making the run to the finals. It was a lightning in a bottle season that too many too easily prognosticated all these supposed Finals returns.

At any rate can't wait to get Book/Beal back so some fans can chill out and we can get some of these new Suns players back to their regularly scheduled minutes.

[enigmatics]

I'd like to see Metu and Bates-Diop get minutes against teams with size, although we did out-rebound the Lakers tonight.

There was absolutely no excuse tonight - they should've been played because now is the best time to see what they got.

[SunsRback4Good]

Nobody here ever agrees with my opinions so why even post them? I’m just going to take a break from posting and let the professionals do it. See you guys soon it’s been fun.

[Frank Lee]

I really can’t wait to say what you guys have to say 15-20 games in when the Suns are destroying everyone. Today made me feel really good about the Suns going forward.


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We go as Book goes. Hes the engine.

Our achilles is health, plain and simple. May be some silver lining is playing time for the bench, but we need the Bookmobile to be chuggin for this to work. Going to have some growing pains in the mean time… but a juggernaut is coming.

I think Big teams are going to give us problems though

[sunsbum]

I mean, if literally anyone steps up we win this game. I don't blame a coach whose seen his guys play like 6 times total. Its going to take time for everyone. If the lakers want to play LBJ for 38 minutes to get a win 2 games into the year good on them.

[sunsbg]

Eubanks has been especially disappointing in first two games. Outplayed by Saric and he doesn't offer anything against a player like AD. A TO machine on offense so far too.

[Crives]

Annoying. So many pointless turnovers cost us a game we should have won

[Hitachi77]

This is a positive game guys. This team has not played much together as it is, but especially with KD as the only star. It’s expected to have issues offensively. And with KD off the court, of course they look terrible. They were only missing their best 3 players, you know the guys they are supposed to play off of.

[Puff]

I mean, if literally anyone steps up we win this game. I don't blame a coach whose seen his guys play like 6 times total. Its going to take time for everyone. If the lakers want to play LBJ for 38 minutes to get a win 2 games into the year good on them.

Vogel is OVER RATED.

He is called a championship coach. Gimme a break. His offense approach sucks. He won a championship in the bubble with a younger Lebron and more involved AD. No one watched and no one cared. Everyone was worried about Covid.

Even when we were leading we looked terrible. We just happened to make shots out of our AZZ.

There was no flow and we made some of the worst passes I have ever seen an NBA team make. For every good play KD made he seemed to made a bad play with a bad pass, a turnover while never getting his other players in on the action.

They cannot make shots if he does not pass the ball so they can catch them. Nurkic sucked in the 2nd half as well.

The writing is on the wall. At least 90% of the shots will be taken by Book, KD and Beal. The other players will just stand around holding their dicks.

That appears to be NOCLUEVOGEL way to run an offense.

How many times did we have shot clock violations? That cannot happen. The players seemed surprised that they did not get a shot up. WTF

Over reacting, maybe but I don't think so.

This clown calls a time out so KD can rest while drawing up a play for him to go one on one. WTF

[Saberestar]

Well, tough loss because we started the 4th with a 12-point advantage but a run from the Lakers was coming with AD and LeBron ready to play the entire 4th quarter.

We played a nice game but the Lakers (with a healthy roster) is a bit superior player-by-player and they were at home.

KD played an OUTSTANDING game. Prince, Reddish and Wood were all the time touching him and pushing him with or without the ball, he got his calls but the Lakers basically fouled him all the time all game long.

39 points, 11 boards, 50% shooting with 10/13 FTs and most importantly +18 in his 39 minutes on the court. THAT'S CRAZY.

It was a shame that our 3p shots didn't go in the 4th because we got the game right there. Goodwin missed a couple of them, another one from Gordon and Allen...so after that they were even more aggressive with KD who didn't score late in a couple of ISO 3p attempts.

All in all an entertaining game and we showed our depth. Goodwin is for real and is a keeper. He just needs to improve a bit his awareness as a passer/creator but other than that he looks a great backup PG. His rebounding is ridiculous.

Eric Gordon played well in the first quarter but he couldn't score as much as he could after that. 15 points on 16 shots...****, we needed him to play much better without Book and Beal.

Allen is more passive than what I thought about him. IMO he needs to increase his all around activity specially cutting and moving without the ball.

I didn't like what I saw from Eubanks. He has serious problems passing the ball, even some easy passes out of the 3p line. He creates indirectly TOs... you can feel the trouble when he has the ball in his hands. Not sure about him as our perennial backup C this season.

Okogie with another great game, so many intangibles and good decisions on both ends of the court. His energy and hustle are everywhere.

Not much to say about Nurkic. AD is the toughest matchup in the entire league for him, offensively he couldn't even shot against him. I am not worried about it because he is gonna help us much more against any other team and C around the league.

[AtheJ415]

I mean, if literally anyone steps up we win this game. I don't blame a coach whose seen his guys play like 6 times total. Its going to take time for everyone. If the lakers want to play LBJ for 38 minutes to get a win 2 games into the year good on them.

I blame Vogel. He tried never before seen lineups in the 4th which is why we had a whopping 9 points with an NBA roster in a full quarter. That is a level of offensive inefficiency that I am not sure I have ever seen in 30 years of watching NBA basketball. He panicked and went to an all defensive small lineup with non shooters around Durant aside from Allen, which led to Durant getting triple teamed and compounded on that gaff by not running any action off ball to force the defense to do much of anything. We just chucked the ball to KD and had 1 off ball wing player crash the glass. We had turnover after turnover. The advantage of that smaller lineup should have been speed but we slowed the ball down instead of pushing tempo which allowed us to get smothered.

On the other end due to the lack of size we got obliterated and then we "fixed" that by subbing in our worst player of the night in Nurkic who allowed layup after layup after layup while not getting offensive rebounds and running into passes creating more turnovers.

If we had gone small with shooting around a player we KNOW will get doubled that would make sense for an offense struggling to score. Going small with cutters attacking a guy like AD is just way too easy to guard if the offense is going to be to give KD the ball and not run actual offense.

KD should have been out there about 2 minutes into the 4th. We waited way too long which allowed LA to completely eliminate our large advantage and we then went entirely away from the lineup that actually worked for 3 quarters. Also, if we are defaulting to defense and going big, it should have been Eubanks out there.

I don't understand the complete no show for Metu given the matchup. Same for Bates Diop, who offers length and shooting. Despite being bad in the preseason he's one of our best bench options.

It's early but I am very, very concerned with Vogel at this point. He cannot panic into an all defensive lineup that is small against a team whose 2 best offensive players are big. You cannot just remove the most impotant items in the game (shooting and size) in exchange for hustle.

The athleticism of Metu would've been a much better matchup than Nurkic given how bad Nurkic was on offense. Eubanks fouls too much, but at least he moves. If Nurkic is not performing on offense he is completely unplayable. We have to have a quicker trigger on him. We have to have Metu and Eubanks ready to go when he sucks, because this will happen in about half the games this season.

I would have used Allen more in actions and played Metu.

[AtheJ415]

I mean, if literally anyone steps up we win this game. I don't blame a coach whose seen his guys play like 6 times total. Its going to take time for everyone. If the lakers want to play LBJ for 38 minutes to get a win 2 games into the year good on them.

Vogel is OVER RATED.

He is called a championship coach. Gimme a break. His offense approach sucks. He won a championship in the bubble with a younger Lebron and more involved AD. No one watched and no one cared. Everyone was worried about Covid.

Even when we were leading we looked terrible. We just happened to make shots out of our AZZ.

There was no flow and we made some of the worst passes I have ever seen an NBA team make. For every good play KD made he seemed to made a bad play with a bad pass, a turnover while never getting his other players in on the action.

They cannot make shots if he does not pass the ball so they can catch them. Nurkic sucked in the 2nd half as well.

The writing is on the wall. At least 90% of the shots will be taken by Book, KD and Beal. The other players will just stand around holding their dicks.

That appears to be NOCLUEVOGEL way to run an offense.

How many times did we have shot clock violations? That cannot happen. The players seemed surprised that they did not get a shot up. WTF

Over reacting, maybe but I don't think so.

This clown calls a time out so KD can rest while drawing up a play for him to go one on one. WTF

The entire offense needs to be handed over to Kevin Young. He knows the team better anyways. Booker is our best player and he makes our entire team work, but no NBA coach with KD on the team should ever score 9 points in a quarter. I'm not sure if Earl Watson years ever even accomplished that and our 2nd best player in those years was the corpse of Tyson Chandler.

[schnakenpopanz]

First 10 mins of the 4th with 3 points is amazing.
That's bad coaching.
That's a bad roster
Even with 2 of your starters otu. And to add on that. They had the same issue vs GSW. Stretch where the team looked lost and not knowing what they were doing.
aving no PG, even as a back up is atrocious.

[RedIndian]

First 2 games, and you can see the pros and cons of Vogel's coaching.

Defensively, we've looked really good. Hustling hard, and a very good balance of switching, high PnR coverage, and drop coverage. The scheme looks really impressive, and as our chemistry improves, this defense may look even better.

Offensively, it's well known that Vogel's teams don't play great offense. Fact of the matter however is that we have 3 offensive superstars and 3-4 really good shooters. Once Booker and Beal are back, our offense will be top 5 good regardless of how bad Vogel's offensive coaching is. Just too much talent and with the pace we want to play at, we'll put up big numbers.

Now the one major worry is the turnover rate. KD and Booker are both turnover prone. Perhaps Beal will help - his ball handling is the tightest of our 3 stars.

[Puff]

Durrant did not have a good game but he was a +18. The culprit was Gordon at a (=27).

I was concerned when we signed Gordon he has always seemed like a chucker. That is what he was last night.

However, if a player has 8 turnovers, I cannot call it a great game even though he had 39 points on 28 shots.

Hopefully better days are ahead, I have my concerns.