PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns announced Mark Williams will be re-evaluated in two to three weeks due to a stress reaction in his left foot, and with that, the team gets a timely period of experimentation at center.
Both the eye test and the team-wide numbers when Williams has been on the floor the last two and a half months, a period of 35 games, have been glaring. His ineffectiveness partnered with the breakout of second-year big Oso Ighodaro has led to a collision course of sorts.
It began with Ighodaro closing some games before he started to leech more and more of Williams’ playing time.
The extremes really started to kick off when Ighodaro played the last 20 minutes of the Feb. 26 matchup versus the Los Angeles Lakers. And in Tuesday’s win, Ighodaro played a dozen straight in the first half and then was reinserted just 1:18 into Williams’ sub back in after just a few possessions were enough for head coach Jordan Ott to see.
Beyond that, there is also the inclusion of No. 10 overall pick Khaman Maluach, who has only had one appearance firmly in a rotation role, being otherwise relegated to garbage time and G League minutes.
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There are a ton of more wrinkles to this.
To not breeze past Williams, it is a major concern heading into restricted free agency this summer that injuries have once again impacted his season. While he has reached career highs in games (12 more) and minutes (151 more), his drop-off since mid-December suggests Williams’ body wasn’t ready to support him through a whole year.
This is also the same left foot that Williams had a significant injury with last year in Charlotte.
Ott said pregame Thursday this stress reaction was a surprising injury considering it looked like Williams did not get injured in Tuesday’s victory. That does not inspire confidence, either.
Ighodaro starting over the course of at least nine games and potentially more than a dozen produces a fascinating case study with how legitimate the idea of him in that role is given his rise this season.
While Ighodaro has bulked up since his rookie year, he is still an undersized big that will get pushed around by a traditional center. That will be a large secondary battle to watch.
What is Ighodaro being attentive to, knowing those larger post-up bigs will hunt him sometimes?
“(Having them) catch it where I want it instead of where they want it,” Ighodaro told Arizona Sports. “So it’s just readiness, being in the stance and not letting them get deep post catches.”
Ighodaro will make up for that with tremendous, versatile impact as a defender, along with great screen-setting, passing and speed as a unique offensive option.
“He’s our best defender, or one of our best defenders,” Ott said. “But it’s going to put him in a lot of different situations.”
How opposing defenses scheme Ighodaro on offense now that he’s officially got the big boy pants on is a huge point of interest.
He’s an explosive finisher at the rim and is shooting a superb 80% there, according to Cleaning the Glass, thanks mainly to how often Ighodaro is attacking an open rim. But he doesn’t have any other scoring elements of his game.
Ighodaro is at a fine 45% on midrange shots, with a floater he relies on often, and shoots a woeful 48.6% at the foul line, where he amounts to a measly 2.1 free-throw attempts per 36 minutes. There is no jump shot to speak of.
With that said, he’s got fantastic chemistry with his teammates, particularly the starters.
Over that run of the last 35 games when Ighodaro has been out there with Devin Booker, Phoenix is outscoring teams by a scintillating 18.9 points per 100 possessions across 247 minutes, per NBA Stats. In the 411 minutes Booker shared with Williams in that time, the net rating was 0.0.
So now who is coming off the bench at the 5?
It should be Maluach to some extent, although how long Ott plays him for will be interesting.
Ighodaro showed signs of fatigue in Tuesday’s victory with all these long runs of consecutive play, and it’s safe to guess that Ighodaro will sit somewhere around 28-30 minutes.
That potentially leaves 20-plus minutes to fill.
Is Maluach ready for that? It would not appear so.
In the brief time we’ve seen him on an NBA floor, all of the “being in the right spot” and “feel” stuff we constantly focus on with young centers is pretty far behind. In some ways, that was to be expected for the 19-year-old. But he is also a top-10 pick, so the expectation is for him to contribute in some sense as a rookie.
His attitude is great about it.
“It’s just really bringing the energy, stepping in the flow and being confident,” Maluach said. “I know I’m a rookie, so I’ll make the mistakes, but it’s just being able to move onto the next play and not making the same mistake twice and just learn from every mistake I make and bring the energy all the time. Because I’m going to make mistakes (and) the only thing I can control is my energy and how much effort I bring on the floor.”
Ott said he’s fine with the goofs.
“We’ll live with the mistakes and then we’ll speed you up as fast as possible. That’s our job,” Ott said.
If it’s more pinches of Maluach or Ott goes a completely different route, he does have small-ball options.
“Definitely on the table,” Ott said. “I haven’t used it a ton but I do think our wing size has gotten better recently. … At the same time, there’s a second-year player getting minutes and a rookie. … We do have to have an option just in case we have something else happen. So, it’s going to be part of the plan, we’ll see if we get there tonight or in the near future.”
To once again speak on the intrigue heightening with the timing of this injury, 6-foot-9 rookie wing Rasheer Fleming is coming off great back-to-back performances where he looked like a kid cementing a spot in the rotation for the rest of the season.
Fleming spent a fair amount of time in college playing as a center, where his 7-foot-5 wingspan (with a 240-pound frame) was put to use. He was a screen-setter and short roller for Saint Joseph’s, as well as a pick-and-pop option. Like Ighodaro, he is a very switchable defender.
But something Ott said pregame is the Suns know they can’t switch the whole game. That’s not how it works in the league. So will Ighodaro spend spurts in drop coverage?
Ighodaro is much more confident as a drop defender than he was as a first-year player, when he had little to no experience playing it collegiately.
“A lot,” Ighodaro said of his improvement there. “I feel like I’ve been a lot more active with my hands. Just learning positioning, and positioning that works for my skill set. Like being up in the drop has helped a lot. I feel comfortable with both coverages and feel like I’ve gotten a lot better.”
Can Fleming or someone else do that? Ryan Dunn is also a possibility, with the newly added Amir Coffey and Haywood Highsmith both having previous experience as a small-ball big, too.
Something else to not lose sight of is how excellent the Suns’ bench has been, largely behind Ighodaro and the injured Jordan Goodwin. How can that group maintain a strong impact, especially if two rookies are now in that unit?
It’s clear the Suns have not been the same team since the turn of the year.
They have been a middling defense and bad offense the last two months. In a time where we can all be prone to some alarmist thoughts with longer trends, Ott himself has revealed some small levels of this thinking, too, with some of the more drastic rotation choices he’s made lately.
It looked like more could be on the way, and this naturally created them. With all due respect to how much this sucks for Williams and all the extra work he put in to stay healthy this year, what happens if this is exactly what the Suns needed?
Should be a compelling few weeks!
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