Game 14: Phoenix Suns (9-4) @ Minnesota Timberwolves (7-6) | Nov 17 | 1:30PM

[Saberestar]

Injures:

Suns
Nurkic (ankle) PROBABLE.
Grayson (hamstring) PROBABLE.
Beal (calf) OUT.
KD (calf) OUT.

Everyone is healthy for the Wolves.

[sunsbg]

More of the same against good teams until at least 2 of the fragile big 3 play. Is 20.11 - 26.11 gap in schedule because of cup tourney ? Wish it was right now.

[Bogyo]

Pretty much only intrested in how Dunn does against Ant, other than that if we don't catch a very good shooting night PLUS the wolves don't catch a really bad shooting night it will be pretty nasty again, especially if Nurk is still out, not only KD and Beal...

[bwgood77]

Big revenge game for playoff sweep. How much will we win by?

[Qwigglez]

Big revenge game for playoff sweep. How much will we win by?

-18

The Bealless, KDless Suns are one-dimensional. Nurkic is worse than I could have ever imagined. I knew trading Ayton for him was a horrible idea, but I didn't think Nurkic would actually be this bad.

[sunsbg]

Big revenge game for playoff sweep. How much will we win by?

A loss by less than 15 (avg for the sweep) I'll consider a win.

[bwgood77]

Big revenge game for playoff sweep. How much will we win by?

-18

The Bealless, KDless Suns are one-dimensional. Nurkic is worse than I could have ever imagined. I knew trading Ayton for him was a horrible idea, but I didn't think Nurkic would actually be this bad.

Yeah, I was joking. Nurkic has been playing awful. Ayton was not the answer either but we needed to trade him for something better. Perhaps there was nothing better but so many complaints about Ayton not dunking it. Nurkic never does. Nurkic can't finish in there. Ayton was generally a good finisher.

But Ayton is really frustrating. Watching him at Portland, the screens, the getting down low and spinning out for a hook, etc.

It's just so weird that if feels like we have so much talent and are so deep...and I was thinking about this, but we were so much better with Paul/Book/Bridges/Crowder/Ayton, and Cam off the bench along with Payne, Okogie, Lee, etc.

I know Paul was awesome but it feels like we have so much more talent. I mean I know we are banged up now, but it barely feels like we are really good when healthy unless one player gets really hot shooting 3s, like happens, or KD goes in crazy good mode.

But as people know, I knew once we traded that haul for KD, our window was short, our future was bleak, Paul was washed and we had no cap space. Luckily we were able to trade a washed Paul and Shamet for Beal before they expired and we were left with zero moves to make without cap space, and Beal has been great this season when he's actually healthy, but we need to hope people get healthy and stay healthy.

But the thing is, few fans will be happy if we don't win a championship and there is no chance we will be able to beat a team like OKC unless they are missing like Shai, Chet and Jalen Williams.

[sunsbg]

Big revenge game for playoff sweep. How much will we win by?

-18

The Bealless, KDless Suns are one-dimensional. Nurkic is worse than I could have ever imagined. I knew trading Ayton for him was a horrible idea, but I didn't think Nurkic would actually be this bad.

Nurk looked so much better 1st half of last season and was hyped for him to replicate it after the offseason videos of working on his 3pt shot and body. He doesn't appear to be in better shape at all or a good fit in Bud's system. While not giving a **** Ayton is still a better player. Funny enough DA also has a higher 3PFG% than Grayson so far this season.

[bwgood77]

Big revenge game for playoff sweep. How much will we win by?

-18

The Bealless, KDless Suns are one-dimensional. Nurkic is worse than I could have ever imagined. I knew trading Ayton for him was a horrible idea, but I didn't think Nurkic would actually be this bad.

Nurk looked so much better 1st half of last season and was hyped for him to replicate it after the offseason videos of working on his 3pt shot and body. He doesn't appear to be in better shape at all or a good fit in Bud's system. While not giving a **** Ayton is still a better player. Funny enough DA also has a higher 3PFG% than Grayson so far this season.

Looks like his overall %s are horrible though. His TS% is 53.4%. It was over 65% in years 3 and 4 in Phx. Not Nurkic bad though, who has a TS% of 49.7%.

Though Ayton probably has it a lot tougher given Portland is a horrible 3pt shooting team, 28th in the NBA at 32%. If he was playing in this spread offense I imagine he'd be well over 60%.

I don't know what Bud would have gotten out of him, but with KD, Beal and Book plus our other 3pt shooters, he would have had a ton of space inside. Bud used Lopez though to stretch the floor and contest shots. Lopez was by far the leader in contested shots the last few years. Ayton was like 6th his 2nd/3rd years in Phx. He probably would have wanted him shooting more 3s though too.

[SkyBill40]

Wife's birthday party so I won't be able to partake as usual. They don't look terrible but turnovers are still a problem.

Nice dunk by Oso.

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[sunsbg]

The game is interesting, high intensity with both teams playing hard. Book shuts up the critics in Q1.

[bwgood77]

Book lookin good. Must have laid off the weed last night and this morning.

Obviously I'm joking.

[Qwigglez]

Looks like we caught some sleeping pups for now.

[bwgood77]

Obviously it's early, but this would be a very nice win if we can pull it off.

I do wonder if they kept Beal out another day mainly to avoid playing a b2b. Who knows...both KD and Beal have calf strains I guess so I have no idea the severity of Beal's (or KD's for that matter...did they say he'd be out 2 weeks or reevaluated in 2 weeks?)

[NapoleonII]

Book cooking.

[bwgood77]

Looks like we caught some sleeping pups for now.

Seems like they should be able to punish us inside with Rudy, Julius and Naz...though the latter two are also shooting quite a few 3s this season as well.

[Qwigglez]

Big revenge game for playoff sweep. How much will we win by?

-18

The Bealless, KDless Suns are one-dimensional. Nurkic is worse than I could have ever imagined. I knew trading Ayton for him was a horrible idea, but I didn't think Nurkic would actually be this bad.

Yeah, I was joking. Nurkic has been playing awful. Ayton was not the answer either but we needed to trade him for something better. Perhaps there was nothing better but so many complaints about Ayton not dunking it. Nurkic never does. Nurkic can't finish in there. Ayton was generally a good finisher.

But Ayton is really frustrating. Watching him at Portland, the screens, the getting down low and spinning out for a hook, etc.

It's just so weird that if feels like we have so much talent and are so deep...and I was thinking about this, but we were so much better with Paul/Book/Bridges/Crowder/Ayton, and Cam off the bench along with Payne, Okogie, Lee, etc.

I know Paul was awesome but it feels like we have so much more talent. I mean I know we are banged up now, but it barely feels like we are really good when healthy unless one player gets really hot shooting 3s, like happens, or KD goes in crazy good mode.

But as people know, I knew once we traded that haul for KD, our window was short, our future was bleak, Paul was washed and we had no cap space. Luckily we were able to trade a washed Paul and Shamet for Beal before they expired and we were left with zero moves to make without cap space, and Beal has been great this season when he's actually healthy, but we need to hope people get healthy and stay healthy.

But the thing is, few fans will be happy if we don't win a championship and there is no chance we will be able to beat a team like OKC unless they are missing like Shai, Chet and Jalen Williams.

I'm not entirely mad at the KD trade. Bridges is what he is. A good No 4 option, great glue guy. Ayton in Portland has been beyond frustrating as well, and I know he wanted out of Phoenix so to not get so much criticism or whatever it is that he simply just wanted to avoid. Maybe he just wanted to take days off and he was being held accountable in Phoenix. I just would have preferred holding onto Ayton to see what else was available. And if it was nothing, then so be it. I just think looking back now if we wanted to make a trade, Suns would have a lot more options in trading Ayton, not necessarily to teams that want Ayton, but simply want to get out of long-term salaries. Suns are just much more limited in what they can get for Nurkic and or Grayson Allen.

[bwgood77]

-18

The Bealless, KDless Suns are one-dimensional. Nurkic is worse than I could have ever imagined. I knew trading Ayton for him was a horrible idea, but I didn't think Nurkic would actually be this bad.

Yeah, I was joking. Nurkic has been playing awful. Ayton was not the answer either but we needed to trade him for something better. Perhaps there was nothing better but so many complaints about Ayton not dunking it. Nurkic never does. Nurkic can't finish in there. Ayton was generally a good finisher.

But Ayton is really frustrating. Watching him at Portland, the screens, the getting down low and spinning out for a hook, etc.

It's just so weird that if feels like we have so much talent and are so deep...and I was thinking about this, but we were so much better with Paul/Book/Bridges/Crowder/Ayton, and Cam off the bench along with Payne, Okogie, Lee, etc.

I know Paul was awesome but it feels like we have so much more talent. I mean I know we are banged up now, but it barely feels like we are really good when healthy unless one player gets really hot shooting 3s, like happens, or KD goes in crazy good mode.

But as people know, I knew once we traded that haul for KD, our window was short, our future was bleak, Paul was washed and we had no cap space. Luckily we were able to trade a washed Paul and Shamet for Beal before they expired and we were left with zero moves to make without cap space, and Beal has been great this season when he's actually healthy, but we need to hope people get healthy and stay healthy.

But the thing is, few fans will be happy if we don't win a championship and there is no chance we will be able to beat a team like OKC unless they are missing like Shai, Chet and Jalen Williams.

I'm not entirely mad at the KD trade. Bridges is what he is. A good No 4 option, great glue guy. Ayton in Portland has been beyond frustrating as well, and I know he wanted out of Phoenix so to not get so much criticism or whatever it is that he simply just wanted to avoid. Maybe he just wanted to take days off and he was being held accountable in Phoenix. I just would have preferred holding onto Ayton to see what else was available. And if it was nothing, then so be it. I just think looking back now if we wanted to make a trade, Suns would have a lot more options in trading Ayton, not necessarily to teams that want Ayton, but simply want to get out of long-term salaries. Suns are just much more limited in what they can get for Nurkic and or Grayson Allen.

I like Bridges a lot. I just liked that team, but we were not a team that was built to compete for a championship long term and we were young, so cashing in all our picks for a 35 year old, along with 2 young players and a good role player, was obviously not what I wanted to do, but I've mentioned a lot. I like to build with picks, as long as you can make good ones, and it seems we have better scouts now.

Even if we kept Bridges, Cam and all the picks and still traded Paul/Shamet for Beal and had Bud, the team would have been set up pretty nice to play his style, but we would also have our picks. I have a feeling after the next few years, we will be among the bottom of the standings for awhile and some years may not have any picks.

But hopefully given that it is what it is, we can somehow figure out a way to step up and get to the finals and win a chip since we went for broke.

[Maze]

The Suns get weird once they get a lead.They start over dribbling, going one on one, and away from what was working

[SkyBill40]

The Suns get weird once they get a lead.They start over dribbling, going one on one, and away from what was working

Have a tendency to over pass, too. And like clockwork, Nurkic looks for a pass instead of shooting and causes a turnover.

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