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

[Saberestar]

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.

Yeah, KD had too many TOs and most of them were his fault but a couple of those were created because his teammates weren't in the right spot or gave him the ball in the wrong spot.

Reggie Miller actually said in one of those TOs that it was clearly Little's fault because KD got the double team and he passed to the opposing corner where Little should stay, but wrongly he wasn't there.

Just KD's presence creates so much better opportunities to any other teammate to score the ball. That's why he was +18 in this game.

[SlovenianDragon]

Besides the need for another PG (or an actual pg)...

Eubanks looks small out there against good players... IDK how many minutes he might have played against AD but that wont work... Eubanks is fine against the opposing bench if we have to pull Nurk and some1 like AD is still in the game we have to go with some1 tougher that plays "bigger"... Need to find a solid 3 player center rotation and sub them based on matchups...

Also that small ball lineup was dumb....How many minutes did they play and who was it? if any1 has a better memory than me....

[Sunlight]

KD, Harden and Kyrie only played 16 games together. Just saying.

[Frank Lee]

KD just didnt show up in the 4th, nobody did.
We are a star heavy team. Our stars dont perform we will struggle. Especially when nobody else was able to execute.

11 pts in the 4th

9 by KD on 4/11 shooting
Meaningless dunk at the end, a couple costly turnovers

2 by the ragtags on 1/8 unmarkmanship with the lone hoop, a meaningless lay up with 8 ticks left.
5 turnovers, 5 1 shot clock violation

PeeYew. Bury that one in the books.

I dont know how Vogel sat there and let that collapse happen. We needed a bucket. May be run a play? Where was sniper Yuta when the rest were brick layers led by chief mason Goodwin.

KD is not the bucket machine of 5 yrs ago. He is guardable now. Every shot was contested.

This unfortunately was a collective loss that could have been an awesome win.

Frank to Frank, dont put it all on KD again. Try a little coaching. Lets chalk it as a learning curve loss. But beware, the Puff and more are watching.

[Fifii]

What a game. Kevin Durant was incredible, in alone he almost won this match.

Grayson played better than previous match, definitely.

Jordan has good entry from the bench. He give us positive energy and some extra. He was good in D especially in double Lakers players. Little thing which he could be do better is make open shoots.

Okogie another great game.

I excepted more form Nurkic. I know Davis is in top centers in this league and he drop a lot of points in games but Nurkic could be better in post D.

I'm dissapointed how Drew play. He cost us 2rd and he noticed turnovers and weak defense in the paint.

Yuta play that was I wrote few days ago. He seize the opportunity to take a shoot and is very helpful in D.

Little is weak. I know he is young but this isn’t team for him. We need players ready now not those who will be ready meanwhile. Jones should trade him.

I’m think last bad possessions go on Vogel file. Everyone knew that Phoenix will be play in KD. Yeah I Know that he was the best player on the floor in our team but Lakers smart double him, maybe we could risk and give shoot form the corner to Okogie / Grayson / Gordon ?

[ImNotMcDiSwear]

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.

It's funny reading all the negativity, as I was very encouraged by the game. This team is so much tougher than previous iterations. Everyone's hustling out there, playing with energy. How anyone can be surprised that this team without Beal and Booker is struggling offensively is beyond me. I'm stoked.

Goodwin impressed me, and Okogie continues to show out. Gordon's been the disappointment I expected from the get - I haven't understood the hype for years. Allen's been much worse than I expected, though. Goodwin and Okogie threatening to soak up all the Gordon/Allen minutes.

Love Nurk. His backup has been a huge disappointment. I'm waiting for Metu to get the nod - he was really stroking the long ball in preseason and I expected he'd crack the rotation. Only problem is he's a bit undersized for the 5, and giving him minutes at the 4 doesn't really solve anything. Still hoping we find a way to get him in there.

What's the deal with KBD? I figured he'd be ahead of Nas in the rotation for sure. Nas has been awful in limited time thus far.

Little + Allen = $15 million. Do we have any more 2nd rounders to trade?

[King4Day]

What a game. Kevin Durant was incredible, in alone he almost won this match.

Grayson played better than previous match, definitely.

Jordan has good entry from the bench. He give us positive energy and some extra. He was good in D especially in double Lakers players. Little thing which he could be do better is make open shoots.

Okogie another great game.

I excepted more form Nurkic. I know Davis is in top centers in this league and he drop a lot of points in games but Nurkic could be better in post D.

I'm dissapointed how Drew play. He cost us 2rd and he noticed turnovers and weak defense in the paint.

Yuta play that was I wrote few days ago. He seize the opportunity to take a shoot and is very helpful in D.

Little is weak. I know he is young but this isn’t team for him. We need players ready now not those who will be ready meanwhile. Jones should trade him.

I’m think last bad possessions go on Vogel file. Everyone knew that Phoenix will be play in KD. Yeah I Know that he was the best player on the floor in our team but Lakers smart double him, maybe we could risk and give shoot form the corner to Okogie / Grayson / Gordon ?

Good post.
I think Vogel is figuring things out. On one of the podcasts, they brought up a good point that he's sticking to his guns and see what certain players can do.
Had he threw in Bol, Metu, KBD, then he wouldn't get enough tape to determine what player combos work with others AND what mistakes these players make, and why.

[Jdiddy701]

KD, Harden and Kyrie only played 16 games together. Just saying.

Harden and Kyrie don’t play on the Suns. That’s easy to point out right now with Book and Beal out but those two players have nothing to do with the Suns. Because you have a big 3, they’re supposed to miss games? That’s what you’re referencing?


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[Book1Nation]

Booker supposed to get his MRI today. Please god come back clean or else I'm going to punt some puppies.

[darealjuice]

Sucks KD cooled off on the bench in the 4th and ran out of gas for us, he was having a great game before the 4th quarter. Too many sloppy turnovers and too much standing around once our offense turned into the KD show though, and it killed us when shots stopped falling. That'll pretty much solve itself when Booker and/or Beal are out on the floor, whenever that happens.

I'm more concerned about this team getting healthy than the construction of the roster. I think we have the playmakers to make things work without a traditional point guard, but our offense definitely breaks down too much when they're not playing.

[SlovenianDragon]

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.

It's funny reading all the negativity, as I was very encouraged by the game.

Its not negativity its just discussing the game... There were good things to talk about and bad things to talk about...

[enigmatics]

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.

I voiced my displeasure with Vogel's coaching all game long. When momentum was shifting he sat on his timeouts too long and he didn't go deep enough into the bench. That small ball crap at that end had me completely incensed.

[enigmatics]

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.

Yeah, KD had too many TOs and most of them were his fault but a couple of those were created because his teammates weren't in the right spot or gave him the ball in the wrong spot.

Reggie Miller actually said in one of those TOs that it was clearly Little's fault because KD got the double team and he passed to the opposing corner where Little should stay, but wrongly he wasn't there.

Just KD's presence creates so much better opportunities to any other teammate to score the ball. That's why he was +18 in this game.

KD's turnovers were what I've spoken about before i.e. dribbling in to the void. His game needs to be off rubs/screens a couple dribbles and getting a shot off quick. The longer he holds onto the ball the worse it gets because he doesn't have a step on defenders like he used to.

I can't go too hard on him though because the rest of the team turtled in the 2nd half.

[bwgood77]

Overall I thought it was a good game. I was surprised we held the lead for so long with 2 of our top 3 players out and not a lot of depth scoring wise.

I knew the Lakers wouldn't continue their putrid 3 pt shooting all game. They were hovering the the teens the whole night.

KD had an awesome game outside of the turnovers, much like Book in game 1.

I haven't said much about needing a PG, because I want to see how we look with Beal AND Booker, but given how injury prone we are, it would be good to have a guy who can take care of the ball. I wish we would have kept Payne...he was always good with starters. We could go small and probably look good...though Okogie is playing great.

I wasn't expecting a win in this one, so leading most of the way and losing it at the end, I can't be too disappointed.

Of course when you ARE leading it most of the way, and kind of feel like you blew it, it makes people mad and they want to throw around blame.

I can't really evaluate coaching after 2 games, especially when we were badly outmanned, playing against two of the best guys in the NBA.

I always felt Vogel was a great coach in Indy...then in Orlando he didn't do well, but they didn't have talent, then he goes to LA and wins it all.

He did a good job with the challenges, something Monty was bad at.

Generally I like the .5 offense, even though we didn't stick to it well.

I am just having a hard time enjoying watching this team as the ones of the past few years (at least prior to last year's injury marred team.

However, I think they will be exciting when Beal, Book, KD, Okogie and Nurkic are all starting...hopefully we can play a lot of the season that way. That will be fun to watch.

[bwoolf2]

Overall I thought it was a good game. I was surprised we held the lead for so long with 2 of our top 3 players out and not a lot of depth scoring wise.

I knew the Lakers wouldn't continue their putrid 3 pt shooting all game. They were hovering the the teens the whole night.

KD had an awesome game outside of the turnovers, much like Book in game 1.

I haven't said much about needing a PG, because I want to see how we look with Beal AND Booker, but given how injury prone we are, it would be good to have a guy who can take care of the ball. I wish we would have kept Payne...he was always good with starters. We could go small and probably look good...though Okogie is playing great.

I wasn't expecting a win in this one, so leading most of the way and losing it at the end, I can't be too disappointed.

Of course when you ARE leading it most of the way, and kind of feel like you blew it, it makes people mad and they want to throw around blame.

I can't really evaluate coaching after 2 games, especially when we were badly outmanned, playing against two of the best guys in the NBA.

I always felt Vogel was a great coach in Indy...then in Orlando he didn't do well, but they didn't have talent, then he goes to LA and wins it all.

He did a good job with the challenges, something Monty was bad at.

Generally I like the .5 offense, even though we didn't stick to it well.

I am just having a hard time enjoying watching this team as the ones of the past few years (at least prior to last year's injury marred team.

However, I think they will be exciting when Beal, Book, KD, Okogie and Nurkic are all starting...hopefully we can play a lot of the season that way. That will be fun to watch.

Honestly I would be a lot more worried if I was a Lakers fan, that team is bad, like play in bad they have no shooting all and Lebron has to carry that team everynight for them to even be competitive. Going to be a long season in Laker land enjoy this one.

[enigmatics]

Honestly I would be a lot more worried if I was a Lakers fan, that team is bad, like play in bad they have no shooting all and Lebron has to carry that team everynight for them to even be competitive. Going to be a long season in Laker land enjoy this one.

They have other shooters - Reeves, Vincent, and Prince. Russell is streaky. So it's not like they have nobody.

It's early yet so it's hard to judge these teams.

[bwoolf2]

Honestly I would be a lot more worried if I was a Lakers fan, that team is bad, like play in bad they have no shooting all and Lebron has to carry that team everynight for them to even be competitive. Going to be a long season in Laker land enjoy this one.

They have other shooters - Reeves, Vincent, and Prince. Russell is streaky. So it's not like they have nobody.

It's early yet so it's hard to judge these teams.

If Reeves Vincent and Prince are your best shooters you are in trouble. not one of those guys has been a high volume 3 pt shooter at a high percentage at any point of their careers.

[enigmatics]

If Reeves Vincent and Prince are your best shooters you are in trouble. not one of those guys has been a high volume 3 pt shooter at a high percentage at any point of their careers.

You're looking at it myopically. Vincent and Prince are now getting a chance to up their volume with more opportunities on the Lakers. Reaves is an ascending player.

I'm not calling them world beaters - but to say they have NOTHING is stupid. Sorry man. Based on the Suns performance these last two games they have NOTHING either ............. it's early though.

[bwoolf2]

If Reeves Vincent and Prince are your best shooters you are in trouble. not one of those guys has been a high volume 3 pt shooter at a high percentage at any point of their careers.

You're looking at it myopically. Vincent and Prince are now getting a chance to up their volume with more opportunities on the Lakers. Reaves is an ascending player.

I'm not calling them world beaters - but to say they have NOTHING is stupid. Sorry man. Based on the Suns performance these last two games they have NOTHING either ............. it's early though.

Im taking bets if you are down? Lakers finish outside of top 6 in the West and bottom half of the league in 3 point shoot percentage.

[Slim Charless]

Kind of hard to root for a team with 95% of new players on our team. There was something special watching Mikal, Ayton, Booker, Crowder, CamJ, CamP, CP3 but now our offense has regressed while our defense look good.

Eh if you remember, our offense didn't look good before CP3 and Rubio either. Having a table setter really makes your offense look a million times more coherent. Just like having Book and Beal out there and dropping 46 in a quarter looked pretty good too.

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.

What you guys need to feel bad about is Nurk and how he was attacked by Lebron play after play. He's a liability. Just like I've been saying. Hopefully they can fix or cover up for the bum.

Other than that, nothing about that game worries me. Whiney posters like Puff are no surprise with the lack of basketball knowledge. Lakers should've killed us with only KD out there.

Repeat: the Lakers should've killed us. That they didn't makes me very optimistic.