Game 6: Phoenix Suns (4-1) @ Denver Nuggets (1-3) l Saturday l 7:00pm

[WeekapaugGroove]

That is nice, but Kevin O'Connor has always really liked us. I want to hear it from some of the others...like Zach Lowe...I'd love to hear Bill Simmons talk about the Suns...even though I haven't listened to him in years...though I never really listened to him even though I read him religiously through like 2002-2014 or whenever he stopped writing.

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Wasn't Russillo the one who said it was an open secret that Book wanted out?

He was although it was kind of a throw away line and he walked back a little on a later pod. I like Russillo hes certainly committed to his craft.

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[Saberestar]

CP3

[AtheJ415]

Our bench deserves a ton of credit. The box score looks funny with all our starters minus and all our bench positive. Carter was 0-1 in 15 minutes and +12. Galloway -- I had no idea what we were getting in him. Wow.

Yeah. Our starters have always been great. The difference is that Payne and Saric's bubble performances now seem legit. Add in Galloway being able to get us out of dry spells, and Cam being there, and we have one of the best benches in basketball.

For the starters, obviously Paul helps but it's really just been the improvement from Bridges. Crowder imo is worse than Johnson though still solid. Bridges has been our best player imo.

[Puff]

I know we all have been frustrated with Booker's turnovers and missed free throws however I think it is a part of the process. Hopefully the plan as I see it is to have 2 options at the end of games with both of them more than willing to give it to an open teammate. I think we are seeing this team in it's infancy and we are going to be even more excited going forward.

I expected us to be very good right after the Chris Paul trade. The main reason was when Paul was on the practice court with Booker maybe the day of or for sure the day after the trade. While I have never been a fan of Cp3, I now love him and I think we will love him even more as the year goes on.

This is no longer Booker's team. It is Cp3's team. He seems to have a very good rapport with everyone on this team and is actually more like a player coach, still able to play, that will someday be in the Hall of Fame. I also have confidence in his ability to get Booker's head out of his axx. I think Monty will also help that along. No need for alarm at this point.

Go Suns

[Mulhollanddrive]

We've held on against top 10 teams when they challenged - Dallas, Utah, Denver.

Paul and Booker shotmaking in the last 2 minutes.

While it would have been nice to win by 15 these clutch wins give us even more belief.

Ayton had a great all-round game as well.

[Bogyo]

I couldn't watch, but will catch the game on nbafullhd for sure. Seems like it was a great game - really quality win. Suns coming out party in the national media as well. Really good to see Ayton with a great game too, and CP doing CP things. Book will have to cut down on the TOs, but he gets the benefit of the doubt due to his history of getting better, and working out the quirks in his game.
It's just a bad strech for him - I'm sure even Mikal and Payne will have those during the season... The fact that we are winning through this is huge. Really happy for us, although my overall prediction for us hasn't really changed since the begining of the season - 3rd to 6th seed in the west, 2nd round of the playoffs. Then we'll see who we face, who is banged up, etc... Go Suns

[Mulhollanddrive]

Mikal Bridges defensive effort to contest the open layup was extraordinary, he's sneaky clutch with big plays.

[bwgood77]

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Wasn't Russillo the one who said it was an open secret that Book wanted out?

He was although it was kind of a throw away line and he walked back a little on a later pod. I like Russillo hes certainly committed to his craft.

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He is also the one that said Sarver was enamored with Doncic but McD was locked in on Ayton.

[Revived]

Just finished re-watching the game. I can't believe we went 2-0 on the hardest b2b in the entire NBA (Utah and Denver in high altitude). Even at the end there with Denver gaining the lead briefly, seemed like the Suns ran out of legs but we still pulled it out.

Ayton looked elite defensively. The Suns have changed their pick and roll defense now and Ayton actually doesn't drop super low anymore and steps up in a way that allows the screened defender to get back to the ball handler giving Ayton time to recover to the rolling big man. I don't understand why we only started implementing this change against Utah because our pick and roll coverage before that was not good and we got lucky with open shooters simply missing shots. Offensively Ayton was confident in his shots and looked a bit more aggressive. Apparently the team he averages the most pts against in the league is Denver. He should just pretend every team he plays against is Denver and keep this same mentality.

Booker looked like he was genuinely trying to give the game away. He looked like how he did his rookie season where he dribble drove and jumped to pass before looking to find a player to pass to. Funny, I said we should rest CP3 and Book for this game (which looks dumb now of course lol) but I think we probably win by a higher margin without Booker playing in this game. He was that bad. Defensively, I was watching him off ball and he stands in "no man's land" so much. When another player drives, he pretends to step down but isn't actually in position to even contest the drive and he's far from the guy he's guarding so the player driving simply kicks it to that guy and he shoots a wide open 3. Offensively, I don't mind his misses at all. But anytime he tries to do anything more, it's chaotic.

Many of his turnovers come from him pushing off his defender to create seperation. I wonder if Book is injured or out of shape? Because every shot he takes is a contested one, he seems to have lost his ability to create a good look for himself without shoving his elbow into his defender's mouth. He wasn't a quick player to begin with but he's suffering greatly from having any lateral quickness whatsoever which is hurting him and leads to those frustration offensively fouls. His passing is absolutely garbage. His assists are not worth the dumbass passes he attempts imo. Monty should tell him that he is not allowed to drive and pass anymore, either shoot the ball once catching it or pass it right then before even dribbling the ball. Otherwise take the damn shot without pushing off your defender. The selfish nature in him is really coming out as well, I'm not sure he's all that happy that the team is winning in large part due to Cam, Bridges, Ayton, CP3, bench etc. He wants the team to win because of him and that is leading to a lot of idiotic decisions where he's forcing it too much. If he doesn't fix this then it will speak greatly about his character as a person imo. Murray is close to surpassing him in the SG rankings as well imo and many people would probably already put him above Booker after the amazing performances he had in the playoffs last year. Even Bridges had a tough time with Murray today and lot of it has to do with the back to back but it's also in large part due to how difficult it is to defend him because of all the skills he has in his arsenal.

Chris Paul was brilliant. He did a good job of controlling the tempo and pace when Booker wasn't ball hogging it. Obviously hit the clutch shot and FTs at the end as well. Crowder played well and did his job. Bridges was fantastic defensively. Offensively I love how he isn't passing up shots and is becoming a somewhat high volume player which he should be. Ran out of legs a bit on his shots towards the end which makes sense since they were playing on the 2nd night of a back to back. Bench was great again with Galloway, and. Cam leading the way. Payne had a somewhat off game which is to be expected after he played real well for just about every other game, he's been invaluable this season. Kaminsky is average at best but hopefully we get Saric back soon.

Overall, even with the Booker stuff I mentioned, can't take any negative from this game too seriously because this was on the 2nd night of the hardest back to back against the 2nd best team in the conference from last season. It's pretty surreal that we're managing to win these games. Let's all just hope and pray that the team stays healthy.

[darmani]

Jokic losing his girth is good for him to play more and against most players and teams. I think him losing the mass is helpful for DA. Ayton always struggled taking jokic when he backed that ass up.

Ayton vs Jokic since that first game when Jokic had a perfect triple double:

Ayton 26.3 pts, 14.3 reb, 1.0 ast, 1.5 blk, 1.8 stl, 2.3 tov, .667 FG%
Jokic 21.5 pts, 9.0 reb, 7.5 ast, 1.3 blk, 1.3 stl, 3.3 tov, .552 FG%

2-2 W-L

[NTB]

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[NTB]

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[Saberestar]

What a game, terrific win!

Ayton played a fantastic game, that is the Ayton that all of us want to see game in and game out.

He played great defensively, I enjoyed a lot how he was able to protect the rim and defend the perimeter on switches.

On offense he did a bit of everything. I like those mid-range shots because he was not too far of the basket. I hate long 2p shots, but I can live with that shots close to the line.

CP3...what can I say? He is one of the best PGs in the history of the game and is a joy to watch him work on a Suns uniform.

He has the game in his mind and he plays both ways. He is healthy and hungry, so proud of James Jones for trading for him.

BTW that trade is looking better and better, we are early in the season and our team is already playing like a TEAM. Continuity always is overrated, talent and hard work wins every time.

Booker had a very good game until the last quarter, he had too many turnovers and bad shots in the last few minutes of the game. He needs to reduce those difficult attempts and play more team ball.

Bridges played well and it was interesting to watch him against Jamal Murray. I think that Murray is one of the toughest players to defend in the entire NBA, and Mikal could not stop him yesterday (no one can)...but it is OK because he tried hard and he did a good job on offense.

Solid games basically from everyone. Crowder and Payne did not score a a lot but they were really good on defense. Payne took three charges IIRC.

All in all super happy with the game and with the season so far. We have the best Suns team in a decade and we are not done yet...we keep improving.

[jcsunsfan]

No Dennis Johnson on the list?

[King4Day]

Am I the only one that looks at the General board super infrequently and is generally weirded out that there are Suns fans that have never posted on the Suns board? Like... they only exist on the General board. It's fricking weird.

The worst is when they open threads and talk up the Suns. Making the board look worse than we are

[ATTL]

Jokic losing his girth is good for him to play more and against most players and teams. I think him losing the mass is helpful for DA. Ayton always struggled taking jokic when he backed that ass up.

Ayton vs Jokic since that first game when Jokic had a perfect triple double:

Ayton 26.3 pts, 14.3 reb, 1.0 ast, 1.5 blk, 1.8 stl, 2.3 tov, .667 FG%
Jokic 21.5 pts, 9.0 reb, 7.5 ast, 1.3 blk, 1.3 stl, 3.3 tov, .552 FG%

2-2 W-L

Yeah ayton played really well against him and matches well offensively. I just remember jokic huge load backing ayton down without much resistance.

[WeekapaugGroove]

The suns are going to play good D and that's going to keep them in a lot of games and when you have Booker and Paul you should be pretty good at closing games out late. It's especially true because both booker and Paul are able to hit a midrange and nba D's are basically all trained to give teams that shot these days.

It's quite the winning formula.

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[Frank Lee]

Man… Y’all need to watch this game again. Yeah we won, but we won on the defense end almost alone. Our offense has been stagnantly borderline horrible. I think there was but two successful plays run. This high screen handoff BS poor pick no rub start to every sequence puts us deep in the shot clock. Book or Paul often end up with 6-7 tics left, 35 feet from the hoop...and a lot of people standing around. I don’t know what the % was, but there were a lot of ISOs by necessity. Seriously, watch this again and see how pick and rolls with DA actually worked. Look for how many missed and no screens there were, as well as missed passes into the post or to a cutter. What the F are we doing, walking the ball up, setting super high ineffective picks, only to swing it around to do it again, all the while playing beat the buzzer. Driving Book doesn’t get even a rub nudge when he’s cutting around the corner. Gone are those Brick Baynes walls. Further more, Ayton is just to GD slow when he rolls to the rim. We should rename this play the Pick and Stroll. This crap isn’t working... we were damn lucky. This has to get better. Not a hater, but y’all are giddying up on the D so much, the Stinky O is getting a slide.

[NTB]

Man… Y’all need to watch this game again. Yeah we won, but we won on the defense end almost alone. Our offense has been stagnantly borderline horrible. I think there was but two successful plays run. This high screen handoff BS poor pick no rub start to every sequence puts us deep in the shot clock. Book or Paul often end up with 6-7 tics left, 35 feet from the hoop...and a lot of people standing around. I don’t know what the % was, but there were a lot of ISOs by necessity. Seriously, watch this again and see how pick and rolls with DA actually worked. Look for how many missed and no screens there were, as well as missed passes into the post or to a cutter. What the F are we doing, walking the ball up, setting super high ineffective picks, only to swing it around to do it again, all the while playing beat the buzzer. Driving Book doesn’t get even a rub nudge when he’s cutting around the corner. Gone are those Brick Baynes walls. Further more, Ayton is just to GD slow when he rolls to the rim. We should rename this play the Pick and Stroll. This crap isn’t working... we were damn lucky. This has to get better. Not a hater, but y’all are giddying up on the D so much, the Stinky O is getting a slide.

Saric is crucial for our offense. It showed when he played. Starters will keep playing like that with CP3 I am afraid.

[sundevil1999]

Just saw Paul Westphal passed. RIP to who I think was a great Phoenix Sun.