Ok what's the deal with this guy in Oubre's absence?
I feel like he's pretty solid at finding Ayton in the post and also is fairly good at keeping the ball moving. Would like for him to knock down 2 threes per game but honestly his play has been very welcome these last two games. At least according to the box score these observations stand up to the test, with 5 assists and 3 assists the last two games.
Anyone agree or disagree? Does Oubre's absence encourage more usage or involvement of Saric in the offense in terms of passing and shooting?
I know we're excited about Bridges but he's more or less doing what we want him to do, which is shoot and play spectacular D. Saric's game is a little more technical with the passing and pump fake dribble drives, and his defense, whilst not showing up on the stat sheet, is at least not horrible according to 538
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-nba-predictions/suns/ which has him as a slight negative.
Since bridges is a low usage guy, Ayton doesn't create his own offense, and Booker and Rubio already have a million touches per game, it appears that Saric has to be the remaining guy to soak up some of that offensive responsibility, which is why I think it is odd when people skip over him when talking about Oubre to the bench.
Anyway, just want to have more of a discussion about what he's doing now that is better than what he was doing before. I mean, just reading the quotes in the post above me from Monty about Saric, it would seem to stand that if he's as good a "connector" or "ball mover" as Monty says he is, then he'd do reasonably well getting more of those touches that Oubre was getting.