Preseason Game #1 : Phoenix Suns @ Portland Trail Blazers

[Revived]

This groups interestingly got a good thing going

It also helps that Portland has their "D" squad in.

Yup.

[Mulhollanddrive]

Troy Daniels is going to be the anti-tank commander, only has to shoot 35% and he'll score 12 points efficiently.

[Kerrsed]

I honestly think the player that turned this game around was Len. We were getting slaughtered on the inside. He came in and put a halt to that. At one point he was our leading rebounder with 6 in only 8 minutes of play. Ended the game 14/14 and a block. That was the difference maker right there.

[kennydorglas]

Troy Dani3ls playing in the second unit w/ Ulis is going to be a blast.
He moves really well off the ball, Ulis will find him a lot.

[Book1Nation]

I honestly think the player that turned this game around was Len. We were getting slaughtered on the inside. He came in and put a halt to that. At one point he was our leading rebounder with 6 in only 8 minutes of play. Ended the game 14/14 and a block. That was the difference maker right there.

The best part about his game was I didn't see a single 16 footer. All layups, dunks and stuff around the rim offensively. And he was active defensively and on the glass.

If this is the Alex Len we get, he's worth keeping. Enough with trying to make him Brook Lopez.

[Kerrsed]

I honestly think the player that turned this game around was Len. We were getting slaughtered on the inside. He came in and put a halt to that. At one point he was our leading rebounder with 6 in only 8 minutes of play. Ended the game 14/14 and a block. That was the difference maker right there.

The best part about his game was I didn't see a single 16 footer. All layups, dunks and stuff around the rim offensively. And he was active defensively and on the glass.

If this is the Alex Len we get, he's worth keeping. Enough with trying to make him Brook Lopez.

Exactly. Once we started turning him into a shooter was when things went downhill. We need him in the paint, grabbing rebounds and putting up shots less than 10 feet away, not at the top of the key. Him down low is gold. It also helps pull defenders away from other teammates around the perimeter.

[Sunsfan12]

Len has a serious chance to earn some minutes with Chandler aging and Bender/Chriss still going through growing pains. Liked his activity today. Still has his boneheaded fouls but he stayed within himself and fought for rebounds.

[nashrambler13]

Yo, just want to record my thoughts on everything here (with the obvious disclaimer for every player that I know preseason doesn't really matter that much at all, but whatever, sue me):

Starters
Bledsoe: Looked great. The offense will stabilize when he is on the court for his regular amount of minutes. Love his poise and effort.

Booker: I thought his defense was improved! Maybe it was just effort, but it appears he realizes he must step up that part of his game. Obviously, he is still incredible on offense-- I think his propensity for chucking will subside now that he is playing with more competent offensive players again.

Warren: Man, TJ was incredible today. I am buying into the hype! I think he can thrive anywhere and I didn't see many weaknesses today.

Chriss: Seemed invisible out there, but also wasn't very bad? No real complaints. Still unsure why he has been starting all this time, but whatever.

Tyson: I actually really like Tyson a lot, but I will be pleased when he no longer gets PT. Love him being on the team though! If he's chill just mentoring, I'm fine with him getting minutes every so often I guess.

Bench
JJ: Yoooo JJ looked pretty damn good. Out of control at times, but still impressive. Love the stroke, love the activity, wish he would pass to wide open players a little more. I have no doubt he'll figure it out, though.

Bender: I saw a lot of Bender hate throughout-- honestly I was a little confused by it? Seemed to me that, while he did commit some TOs while handling the ball up court, he also made some GREAT lead passes and the team seems to trust him to run it up after a rebound which seems like a really valuable skill to me? I'm not super worried about his stroke either; I imagine always having to adjust between NBA and Euro three point lines while simultaneously having to constantly work on bulking up to handle the C workload is a hell of a task. I've seen him stroke it, I think he'll be fine. I also thought he held his own on defense against everyone but Nurkic (who is a rarity in the league today) and his rebounding was really good today! I still see center in his future-- hopefully sooner rather than later.

Ulis: Didn't look great, couldn't be less worried about it.

Daniels: Didn't realize he was that good at shooting? Not just today, but in general? Psyched to have him as our back-up 2!

Len: COMPLETELY unsure whether or not his great showing today was due to playing against scrubs or not, but damn--I'd love if he was our backup center!

DJJ: Idk man, someone tell me if he played well, I barely noticed.

Mike James: Hated him in summer league, thought he was pretty great today though. Probably won't matter.

Anyways though, I think we're going to be really fun this year! I do have one belief that I think this game only provided more evidence for: TJ has to come off the bench. It's not even so that we can start JJ for his "better defense" (I do think JJ is/will prove to be a better defender, but TJ was no slouch today)-- I think it makes both players better and the whole team better as a result. JJ's main mistakes today were when he tried to do too much; putting him into the starting lineup fixes that. TJ deserves a primary role on offense, but he's not going to get it with Devin/Bled out there and I think that seems fair. ALSO, I think the bench unit without TJ will be forcing almost all of its offense, while the starting lineup will have 3 primary level players.

Bled - Book - JJ - Chriss - Tyson

Great, well-rounded lineup. JJ is great at reacting to plays around him to make shots easy for him, and this way he doesn't have to iso nearly as much. Also, if his shooting ends up being for real, the spacing will be more than good enough.

Ulis - Daniels - DJJ - Warren - Bender (Or Ulis - Daniels - Warren - Bender - Len)

Also a very well-rounded lineup. Ulis should be told to essentially feed Warren the ball in good spots, and TJ will feast. This is the lineup (more or less) that had Warren going HAM at the end (even if it was against semi-scrubs).

[Kerrsed]

I was kinda surprised we didnt see any Bennett tonight seeming how our FO really kinda talked him up to the media as of late.

[RunDogGun]

I honestly think the player that turned this game around was Len. We were getting slaughtered on the inside. He came in and put a halt to that. At one point he was our leading rebounder with 6 in only 8 minutes of play. Ended the game 14/14 and a block. That was the difference maker right there.

Yep, Chriss was horrible, and Len came in and changed the game for us. Almost lost it for us too, but his effort and hustle was solid.

[RunDogGun]

Len has a serious chance to earn some minutes with Chandler aging and Bender/Chriss still going through growing pains. Liked his activity today. Still has his boneheaded fouls but he stayed within himself and fought for rebounds.

I liked him with Bender. They were solid on defense, although everyone gave their bigs wide open shots most of the night. I really hope this is the Len we will see all year.

[Beetlejuice]

Vs Portland Len might be our most imortant player this season. That is interesting to me. To everything else : too soon.

[RunDogGun]

Does any site have a box score for the game?

[Stark]

Most of the players that we wanted to see some flashes showed nothing and the players that we don't care about won the game. Ugh ugly win for sure. They were looking twice as good when teams are playing with their core players but it was still a pre-season game at the end.

Some quick notes;

* Ulis will be fine, he is coming from injury. I believe that he will be at least a good back up pg in the league. His court vision is good, he can knock down the midrange shot and he is a pesky defender. I still like him.

* I'm impressed with Josh Jackson. He showed that he can shoot wide open 3s which is huge. I love his defence and unselfishness. He can definetely become a player like Iguodala if he reaches his potential. 7 TOs sucks but he needs to accustomed to fast gamestyle of NBA. He is perfect fit next to Booker.

* WHY THE F**K NOBODY IN OUR TEAM SETS A GOOD HARD SCREEN THINGS WOULD BE SO MUCH EASIER.

* Warren is still doing what Warren does. His contract was a huge steal.His midrange game is amazing. When Len comes in, he set some good screens and he scored easily. Let's continue to do that in the regular season because last season we weren't using him like that. Give him a little freedom like how we gave Booker. Warren earned that in his career. Our guards should feed him more also.

* I still don't like Chriss as a prospect. He might be an explosive leaper but he is not fast and what bothers me the most is he just looks like he doesn't give a s**t when he is playing and he looks so lost on defence. Bender is also disappointing, he can also be a bust but he is at least trying and showing some ambition for expanding his game.

* Last season when Nuggets made Nurkic available in trade talks. I really wanted us to go after him...so

* Len is still the same player, i believe. Best case scenario he will be a player like Robin Lopez and we can use him against player like Nurkic and when we need to grab rebounds. I hate to say this but he might be our best big :/ We can still try Chriss-Warren / Bender-Jackson at 4-5 against the smaller teams, btw i don't like Bender/Chriss combo at least for now. Ofc. maybe they can be good in the future at the frontcourt but not now they are clueless on both defence and offence.

[Book1Nation]

Does any site have a box score for the game?

Dammit, i just want a boxscore, how hard is that!! ESPN took theirs down as soon as the game ended and NBA.com's is still saying its the 3rd quarter. #Sad.

There you go man,

http://scores.nbcsports.com/nba/boxscore.asp?gamecode=2017100322&home=22&vis=21&meta=true

[Jarlaxle0204]

Preseason champions. Time to plan the parade.

[Revived]

Suns starting lineup against teams that don't have a huge threat at C (thin Utah, Miami, New Orleans, Denver etc) should be

Bledsoe
Booker
Warren
Jackson
Chriss

Tyson Chandler is just not a starting caliber player anymore. He really shouldn't even be playing. How many years does he have left on his deal? 1 or 2? Any chance there's a team option in there....

[bwgood77]

Preseason champions. Time to plan the parade.

Is it me or does it seem like we play the Blazers in the first game of the year every year for like the last five years? I am not even sure about pre-season or regular season...at least one of the two.

[bwgood77]

Suns starting lineup against teams that don't have a huge threat at C (thin Utah, Miami, New Orleans, Denver etc) should be

Bledsoe
Booker
Warren
Jackson
Chriss

Tyson Chandler is just not a starting caliber player anymore. He really shouldn't even be playing. How many years does he have left on his deal? 1 or 2? Any chance there's a team option in there....

1 after this year, so basically 2. The guy with the longest security of a Suns contract prior to the Warren extension was our good ol boy Brandon Knight though....he's got 2 after this year.....basically 3 but of course he won't play this year. Not sure what's going to happen with that contract. I mean just thinking about that contract alone is all kinds of awful but then thinking we gave up a likely high pick in this draft FOR it...I mean, there is ZERO denying the fact that it is the worst Suns trade of all time....you can think of anything else....Majerle for Hot Rod, even DJ for Rick Robey which was god awful, or all we traded for one year of McDyess. It's funny people sometimes make fun of the IT trade when that doesn't even register on the scale of the Knight trade.

[darealjuice]

We pulled out a win, but that was a pretty shaky game for us as far as players from last year's draft go. I wouldn't be too discouraged though, this is a very good Blazers team that should surprise people with how much better they'll be having Nurkic all year.

Bender is literally a non-factor in our offense right now. No one passes him the ball, and I can't blame them. All he does is set soft screens and fade out to the perimeter to shoot a 3. I could count on one hand the amount of times he rolled to the basket after setting a ball screen, and when he does roll it's ineffective because he has to remind himself to do it after starting to float. If he shot well it would be fine, but he isn't shooting well even when he's w i d e open. He doesn't even try attacking the paint when he gets the ball to put pressure on the defense, get some easier buckets, and build confidence. He had a couple decent passes while bringing the ball down the court in transition, but he doesn't look very comfortable changing directions while dribbling and he doesn't even look like he's trying to score when he runs the break. His defense was alright when he wasn't getting bullied by Nurkic (as one would expect at this point), and he rebounded much better than he usually does, so that was nice.

Chriss was a bit of good and bad tonight. I liked that he stayed out of foul trouble all night while getting plenty of blocks, and I was impressed with the number of times that he jumped straight up to contest shots in the paint instead of fouling like he would last year. With that said he's still very bad with defensive positioning, and he wasn't much of an impact in pick and roll defense tonight because he gets caught out of a defensive stance a lot and that gets you worked by guards like Dame and CJ. He also gave up a couple offensive rebounds early in the game, but that's all tied in with his positioning issues. He didn't get anything going on offense, and he shot poorly when he got to the line, but he didn't get a lot of the ball tonight either. Hopefully he bounces back next game.

They both gave up a ton of open mid-range jumpers 3s off pick and pops because our team's scheme for defending pick and roll/pop is to have the screener's man sink under the screen to stop the drive and effectively leave their man open. Probably not the best scheme when the NBA is all about putting shooters on the floor, although I don't know if it's our players sinking too far or the coaches telling them to sink that far. They could both put a bit more effort into closing out harder and better though, especially Chriss.

Ulis was probably the most disappointing part of the night. I expected him to run the show for the second unit and pick up where he left off last year, instead he got lit up on defense, turned the ball over too much, and couldn't put the ball in the basket while shooting a few questionable shots. I'm sure he'll be just fine, but it was a little disappointing (and surprising) to see Mike James be the guy leading that last unit to win the game instead of Ulis.

I loved what I saw from TJ outside of his ugly 3-pointer, Booker looked decent with a bit more effort on defense and he will make a lot of those missed floaters more often than note, and JJ had a solid first game despite getting visibly sped up at times and turning the ball over too much. Len played a good game, it'd be nice if he could consistently keep it simple like tonight. Literally all he needs to do is set hard screens, roll to the basket and finish, and protect the rim. Troy Daniels came out the gates shooting every time he touched the ball, but it definitely paid off once he caught fire.