Game 45: The Battle of the Bridges: Phoenix Suns (30-14) @ Charlotte Hornets (23-21) l Sunday l 10:00am l FSNAZ

[TouchPassDario]

I’m not worried about it. Booker and Paul have long track records of clutch performance. Fans succumb to recency bias as per usual.

[Revived]

We are 3rd in SRS. Pipe down, children.

That's all nice and dandy but this team is far from perfect despite being 3rd in SRS. The last two games showed how fragile Book & CP3 were down the stretch. I expect that from a young Booker whose been on losing squads his whole nba career but not from our floor general in CP3. Both were missing shots and committing stupid to's. But I believe this last few games are on Monty and he better change things up if another close game comes within the horizon.

I don’t think SRS takes into account how lucky a team is with health either.

CP3 has been huge for us this season obviously but he’s been showing his age a bit in the games after the All Star break.

Teams have watched Suns tape from the 1st half and adjusted in terms of how to defend us especially in 4th QTRs. Now Monty has to step up and make counter adjustments. These close wins and awful losses after the all star break to bad teams has to be concerning.

[TouchPassDario]

We are 3rd in SRS. Pipe down, children.

That's all nice and dandy but this team is far from perfect despite being 3rd in SRS. The last two games showed how fragile Book & CP3 were down the stretch. I expect that from a young Booker whose been on losing squads his whole nba career but not from our floor general in CP3. Both were missing shots and committing stupid to's. But I believe this last few games are on Monty and he better change things up if another close game comes within the horizon.

I don’t think SRS takes into account how lucky a team is with health either.

CP3 has been huge for us this season obviously but he’s been showing his age a bit in the games after the All Star break.

Teams have watched Suns tape from the 1st half and adjusted in terms of how to defend us especially in 4th QTRs. Now Monty has to step up and make counter adjustments. These close wins and awful losses after the all star break to bad teams has to be concerning.

Lol SSS and recency bias

2nd half our ORTG is > 1st half ORTG.

[TouchPassDario]

Most significant trend post all star break is the team figuring out how to get the ball to Ayton where he can actually do damage.

The only significant TREND (read more than three games, kiddies) is a good one the last few weeks.

[JohnWall2]

Most significant trend post all star break is the team figuring out how to get the ball to Ayton where he can actually do damage.

The only significant TREND (read more than three games, kiddies) is a good one the last few weeks.

Kiddies lol. Condescending much?

[WeekapaugGroove]

Contender? I guess it depends how you use the word. IMO they definitely aren't in the top tier but I'd but them in the 'unlikely but not completely shocking' tier of championship contenders. Like this team is as good as last years Heat team.

I certainly wouldn't make judgements off a couple game sample size, even the good teams suck once a week. Hell I'd actually say today was a 'contender' type win because getting a road W against a decent opponent even when you shoot like **** and not hanging your head when you get taken to OT is the type of W good teams grind out.

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[darealjuice]

Being a "Contender" is definitely relative to the competition, and the Suns are not messing with the Lakers or Nets at full strength regardless of our recent play. The Lakers arguably got better after steamrolling their way through the playoffs, and the Nets are probably up there with the old Warriors in terms of stacked rosters, especially after they eat up all of the ring chasers in the buyout market.

The Suns are a good team. They can compete with anyone in the league, but it'd take injuries or otherworldly shooting to get past the Lakers and Nets in a 7 game series. They haven't played their best ball lately, but they're a 3-point shooting heavy team that has shot under 30% over the last 5 games, and still came out 4-1 during that stretch.

[TouchPassDario]

Nobody had Miami as a contender at this time last year, and they probably take LA to a coin flip Game7 without awful injury luck in the Finals.

[sunsbg]

I think we should get a top 5 seed. I think the Lakers are 6th. Might be best for us if we get 4/5 since we don't have the size for the Lakers. If we can get Denver or Portland in a 4/5 matchup that might be ideal...then if we can somehow advance meet the Jazz. I think these will be the best barometers for us since our teams are all around the same age....though in a few years we may drop off unless we've addressed PG.

538 has the Clippers as the best chance of winning the finals 22%, with the Nets at 19%. It has us at 5%.

I wish the playoffs started today with us getting the Spurs in first round. This should be a win and this team needs all the experience they can get, so making it to the second is important. Playing the Clippers/Blazers in 2nd round is fine for me as well. George can really suck in playoff games and from all the stars I probably like Mikal defending Kawhi 1-on-1 the most as he's not giving him that much trouble with speed or using screens all the time like Doncic for example. From 2nd round on every win is a bonus to me .

[Mr Puddles]

I didn't get to watch the game due to the time difference, but (despite an apparent 4th quarter collapse) it's actually pretty encouraging to see that the Suns were able to beat a +.500 team despite shooting 35% from the floor and 20% from the three point line.

One question, with the team shooting this badly, why didn't Ayton have more shot attempts? Was he not assertive enough, or where the Suns just ignoring him.

The one things that jumps out on the stat sheet is that despite shooting 20% from three point land - almost half the field goal attempts came from there. The fact that Crowder has almost as many misses from three point land as Ayton had total field goal attempts is pretty worrisome.

[sunsbg]

I didn't get to watch the game due to the time difference, but (despite an apparent 4th quarter collapse) it's actually pretty encouraging to see that the Suns were able to beat a +.500 team despite shooting 35% from the floor and 20% from the three point line.

One question, with the team shooting this badly, why didn't Ayton have more shot attempts? Was he not assertive enough, or where the Suns just ignoring him.

The one things that jumps out on the stat sheet is that despite shooting 20% from three point land - almost half the field goal attempts came from there. The fact that Crowder has almost as many misses from three point land as Ayton had total field goal attempts is pretty worrisome.

Both. Lately it appears they are trying to involve him more at the start, so it's not impossible if they want it. In this game he started very well just to not get a single shot in 2nd qtr. Most of the time, but especially late in the game the strategy seems to be - let Book and CP3 do their thing while Ayton crashes the board on misses and he's pretty good with O rebounds. Not a bad strategy as long as DB and CP3 don't miss everything like in this game.

It's not only DA though. Mikal had 11 shots as well. I would prefer him or DA took some of Booker's 26 shots, mainly the highly contested ones.

[Saberestar]

We are 3rd in SRS. Pipe down, children.

That's all nice and dandy but this team is far from perfect despite being 3rd in SRS. The last two games showed how fragile Book & CP3 were down the stretch. I expect that from a young Booker whose been on losing squads his whole nba career but not from our floor general in CP3. Both were missing shots and committing stupid to's. But I believe this last few games are on Monty and he better change things up if another close game comes within the horizon.

I don’t think SRS takes into account how lucky a team is with health either.

CP3 has been huge for us this season obviously but he’s been showing his age a bit in the games after the All Star break.

Teams have watched Suns tape from the 1st half and adjusted in terms of how to defend us especially in 4th QTRs. Now Monty has to step up and make counter adjustments. These close wins and awful losses after the all star break to bad teams has to be concerning.

We won. We have won four out of our last five games, all of them on a road trip.

What fans want? They play against solid teams on the road and they win...but it is too bad that they do not win by 20 every single game. Ok.

The Hornets are a good team. The Raptors are fighting like dogs to try to be in the playoffs. And we won both games.

It is OK to try to improve, obviously we can be even better, but that does not negate that we are already a great team that has been successful so far this season.

CP3 is not showing his age. He did a monster performance against the Raptors and he was clutch because of his expirience against the Hornets.

31W-14L and we are not losing our #2 seed. Lets go!

[Revived]

That's all nice and dandy but this team is far from perfect despite being 3rd in SRS. The last two games showed how fragile Book & CP3 were down the stretch. I expect that from a young Booker whose been on losing squads his whole nba career but not from our floor general in CP3. Both were missing shots and committing stupid to's. But I believe this last few games are on Monty and he better change things up if another close game comes within the horizon.

I don’t think SRS takes into account how lucky a team is with health either.

CP3 has been huge for us this season obviously but he’s been showing his age a bit in the games after the All Star break.

Teams have watched Suns tape from the 1st half and adjusted in terms of how to defend us especially in 4th QTRs. Now Monty has to step up and make counter adjustments. These close wins and awful losses after the all star break to bad teams has to be concerning.

We won. We have won four out of our last five games, all of them on a road trip.

What fans want? They play against solid teams on the road and they win...but it is too bad that they do not win by 20 every single game. Ok.

The Hornets are a good team. The Raptors are fighting like dogs to try to be in the playoffs. And we won both games.

It is OK to try to improve, obviously we can be even better, but that does not negate that we are already a great team that has been successful so far this season.

CP3 is not showing his age. He did a monster performance against the Raptors and he was clutch because of his expirience against the Hornets.

31W-14L and we are not losing our #2 seed. Lets go!

Hornets without Lamelo and Monk (that’s about 30 ppg their missing) are not a good team. Raptors are not really fighting for playoffs, they were just about ready to trade their best or second player away and did trade away their 3rd best. They are tanking. As for what more fans want, better performance in 4th qtrs.

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

And not sure where anyone “negated” anything. In the previous post, I did say that it feels good to likely make the playoffs at least. But going further after that will require cleaning up these crunch time stuff. There was a stat that showed both CP3 and Booker have been very poor in the clutch and these 4th QTRs do reflect that. They are both great offensive players that I believe can figure it out. And I think “great team” is obviously subjective. Utah has the best record in the league. Perhaps you’d call them a great team, I wouldn’t.

Booker after the game said this game showed the Suns have areas they need to improve to maintain their success. Thankfully we have a really easy schedule (only 2 games iirc against teams with winning records) till like the second half of April so they can figure out those things that Booker talked about by then.

[sunsbg]

2-3 threes by Crowder and CJ, who felt asleep in this game, and everybody will be talking how the team did just enough to win. Trying to preserve energy is not that bad, may have also contributed to this extreme injury luck being brought up. I wouldn't make big conclusions from the games against weaker teams. The Suns have shown they can raise the level against the better teams.

[Saberestar]

I don’t think SRS takes into account how lucky a team is with health either.

CP3 has been huge for us this season obviously but he’s been showing his age a bit in the games after the All Star break.

Teams have watched Suns tape from the 1st half and adjusted in terms of how to defend us especially in 4th QTRs. Now Monty has to step up and make counter adjustments. These close wins and awful losses after the all star break to bad teams has to be concerning.

We won. We have won four out of our last five games, all of them on a road trip.

What fans want? They play against solid teams on the road and they win...but it is too bad that they do not win by 20 every single game. Ok.

The Hornets are a good team. The Raptors are fighting like dogs to try to be in the playoffs. And we won both games.

It is OK to try to improve, obviously we can be even better, but that does not negate that we are already a great team that has been successful so far this season.

CP3 is not showing his age. He did a monster performance against the Raptors and he was clutch because of his expirience against the Hornets.

31W-14L and we are not losing our #2 seed. Lets go!

Hornets without Lamelo and Monk are not a good team. They play the whole season without those two then they would rival Minnesota and Houston for worst team in the league. Raptors are not really fighting for playoffs, they were just about ready to trade their best or second player away and did trade away their 3rd best. They are tanking. As for what more fans want, better performance in 4th qtrs.

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

And not sure where anyone “negated” anything. In the previous post, I did say that it feels good to likely make the playoffs at least. But going further after that will require cleaning up these crunch time stuff. There was a stat that showed both CP3 and Booker have been very poor in the clutch and these 4th QTRs do reflect that. They are both great offensive players that I believe can figure it out. And I think “great team” is obviously subjective. Utah has the best record in the league. Perhaps you’d call them a great team, I wouldn’t.

Booker after the game said this game showed the Suns have areas they need to improve to maintain their success. Thankfully we have a really easy schedule (only 2 games iirc against teams with winning records) till like the second half of April so they can figure out those things that Booker talked about by then.

The Raptors gave their all the other day against us. They played superhard and all their veterans played a ton of minutes...that is tanking? These are news to me.

LaMelo/Monk did not play too many minutes at the start of the season, and they won a good amount of games. Now they are a terrible team without them?

Obviously there are things that we need to keep improving. We need to move the ball faster and things like that, but players are not bots and they were clearly tired at the end of both games. They are on a long road trip.

At the end of the day they won. That is always hard to do on the road against teams fighting for the playoffs. I value these wins a lot.

[Revived]

We won. We have won four out of our last five games, all of them on a road trip.

What fans want? They play against solid teams on the road and they win...but it is too bad that they do not win by 20 every single game. Ok.

The Hornets are a good team. The Raptors are fighting like dogs to try to be in the playoffs. And we won both games.

It is OK to try to improve, obviously we can be even better, but that does not negate that we are already a great team that has been successful so far this season.

CP3 is not showing his age. He did a monster performance against the Raptors and he was clutch because of his expirience against the Hornets.

31W-14L and we are not losing our #2 seed. Lets go!

Hornets without Lamelo and Monk are not a good team. They play the whole season without those two then they would rival Minnesota and Houston for worst team in the league. Raptors are not really fighting for playoffs, they were just about ready to trade their best or second player away and did trade away their 3rd best. They are tanking. As for what more fans want, better performance in 4th qtrs.

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

And not sure where anyone “negated” anything. In the previous post, I did say that it feels good to likely make the playoffs at least. But going further after that will require cleaning up these crunch time stuff. There was a stat that showed both CP3 and Booker have been very poor in the clutch and these 4th QTRs do reflect that. They are both great offensive players that I believe can figure it out. And I think “great team” is obviously subjective. Utah has the best record in the league. Perhaps you’d call them a great team, I wouldn’t.

Booker after the game said this game showed the Suns have areas they need to improve to maintain their success. Thankfully we have a really easy schedule (only 2 games iirc against teams with winning records) till like the second half of April so they can figure out those things that Booker talked about by then.

The Raptors gave their all the other day against us. They played superhard and all their veterans played a ton of minutes...that is tanking? These are news to me.

LaMelo/Monk did not play too many minutes at the start of the season, and they won a good amount of games. Now they are a terrible team without them?

Obviously there are things that we need to keep improving. We need to move the ball faster and things like that, but players are not bots and they were clearly tired at the end of both games. They are on a long road trip.

At the end of the day they won. That is always hard to do on the road against teams fighting for the playoffs. I value these wins a lot.

Without LaMelo and Monk, that’s 30 pts combined their missing. It’d be like us missing Ayton and CP3. I was wrong in saying they’d be awful but they certainly are not a good team without both those guys imo. And I think most teams play hard, these guys get paid millions of dollars to play basketball for living so it’d be hard for them not to. Houston, a team that had lost like 20 straight, plays hard as well. I’ve watched a few of their games lately for fantasy basketball purposes.

And of course, winning is always better than losing. Everyone values the wins. Doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to improve especially the horrific 4th QTRs.

Nobody here is saying anything drastic like trade Booker or fire Monty because of a close game with the Hornets. There’s some discussion on ways to improve even further on a trend of poor play in crunch time. I don’t think that’s unhealthy.

[Keith_myath]

Booker ... have long track records of clutch performance.

Subtle troll is subtle.

Flog off, muppet.

[RunDogGun]

I think its fair to bring up the absence of Monk and Ball, since they accounted for 49 points and 11 assists the last time we played them. That is between 71-82 out of their 124 points.

[sunsbg]

I think its fair to bring up the absence of Monk and Ball, since they accounted for 49 points and 11 assists the last time we played them. That is between 71-82 out of their 124 points.

The Suns were missing Jae, CJ and Saric, Paul and Booker combined for 4 assists and 7 turnovers, which is not typical as well. Graham replicated what Monk did in the previous game and basketball is not about summing numbers this way in general.

[TouchPassDario]

I can barely stand to read this inane thread, but skimming it I see someone compares Hornets missing LaMelo and Monk to us missing CP3 and DA.

Lmaooooooooooooooooo