PHOENIX — It’s only been five games with them both out, but I think we’ve got our answer for how much of the Phoenix Suns’ signature energy and toughness comes from Dillon Brooks (left hand fracture) and Jordan Goodwin (right calf strain).
Thursday was a shocking and pitiful 105-103 loss against the Chicago Bulls. On a night where Mark Williams’ diagnosis of at least two to three weeks out due to a stress reaction in his left foot could potentially help the Suns find some clarity in the center rotation, it instead was quickly apparent how Phoenix cannot afford any more injuries.
Beyond that, there is zero room for error from a focus and effort standpoint.
We knew about the lack of talent on the roster coming into the year, and Phoenix (35-27) simply looked like a team that now thinks it’s better than it actually is, a trap we thought this group was borderline immune to falling into. The Suns built a defense-first identity with a handful of average-to-poor defenders. Without full exertion, that will get exposed by anyone in the league, as this Bulls (26-37) team showed.
After a fairly blah first half in Sacramento on Tuesday against a depleted Kings squad, this was a baffling performance against an even more shorthanded unit.
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The Bulls, who had previously lost 15 of their last 17 games, did not have Matas Buzelis (right ankle sprain), Josh Giddey (right ankle sprain), Anfernee Simons (left hand fracture), Jaden Ivey (left knee pain), Patrick Williams (right quad strain), Jalen Smith (right calf strain), Zach Collins (toe surgery) or Noa Essengue (shoulder surgery).
Even though Phoenix was down Williams, Brooks and Goodwin, this was the most winnable game the Suns have played in all year.
Chicago resembled a pickup squad. Out of Chicago’s 10 active players, only three of them were on the Bulls roster at the start of this season.
Beyond that trio of Isaac Okoro, Tre Jones and Lachlan Olbrich, the highest total of games played as a Bull for any of the other seven was 11. And outside of Collin Sexton, none of the other nine have proven themselves as moderately reliable rotation players in the NBA over multiple seasons.
Phoenix played like it knew that and thought it could get away with not fully focusing. You’d think some key injuries and overall regression since the new year would prevent that from happening. But alas.
“We started the game pretty much in cruise control, thinking we can turn it on at any point,” Suns guard Devin Booker said. “It’s not that point in the season.”
Phoenix head coach Jordan Ott tried everything and anything to find some energy. When he had his defensive strategy turn to all-out traps with blitzes, it was because that meant by default the energy had to ramp up.
“We’re trying to blitz to try to create some energy. We shouldn’t be asking for energy,” Ott said. “We want to get to March and play meaningful games (then) we shouldn’t be asking for energy. That’s why we’re blitzing. We’re blitzing because we can’t contain the basketball and we’re looking for energy.
“We, all season, have fed off of our defense creating offense. Zero steals in the first quarter, I think two at halftime. We’re trying to find any way possible to create some offense from our defense.”
The Suns never led and the Bulls were up five through the first half, the latter living in the paint without much resistance and putting forth far more consistent effort.
Phoenix upped the energy in the third quarter with that aforementioned trapping on defense and running more on offense. That still didn’t do the trick.
Bulls ball-handlers continued to score at the rim with relative ease. You would have guessed Jones was Dylan Harper with his undersized mastery inside. You also would have guessed the Suns were down 30 without seeing the scoreboard but it was still somehow just a six-point deficit entering the fourth quarter.
On-ball defense has been a major problem for Phoenix all year and the rock bottom of that Thursday was incredibly revealing.
Even guys like Ryan Dunn out there for defense first had no chance. Royce O’Neale continued to be a huge liability there, and the likes of Grayson Allen and Jalen Green didn’t fare much better.
Chicago was 21 for 29 at the rim compared to the Suns’ 12 for 16 effort, per Cleaning the Glass. It was eight shooting fouls drawn for the Bulls to Phoenix’s five. That gap has always been there.
Again, this type of lapse from Phoenix speaks to a sense of comfort it has not earned, a failure to realize the team is making up for severe deficiencies through nonnegotiable effort.
“Never good enough,” Ott said of the Suns’ rim pressure. “Them getting to the rim (a lot), we never get there quite good enough.”
The most glaring area of the game where Phoenix was not itself was in transition defensively, putting up woeful resistance. It has never been anywhere close to that bad.
“Too many transition 1-on-1 opportunities where they just drove the ball right to the basket (and) got layups,” Booker said.
Chicago used that to take its largest lead of 11 a few minutes into the final frame and nearly kept it rolling.
The expected last-ditch effort for Phoenix arrived, swatted swiftly away by the basketball gods in a deserved act of justice.
Phoenix got the game to within a possession at 1:41 to go, with reserve wing Amir Coffey providing most of the spark energy-wise.
Phoenix traded 3-pointers with Chicago for the next two possessions before the Bulls split free throws and Booker drilled a pull-up 3 to make it 104-103 Bulls with 23 seconds remaining.
The Bulls then hilariously turned it over on the sideline out-of-bounds play following two separate timeouts.
Phoenix got a pretty clean possession at least getting the ball moving around the perimeter, but the big choice was from Green, who drove into three guys and nearly finished through them. The Bulls still had to make free throws and missed the second, only resulting in deflections for a loose ball that ran out the rest of the clock.
While Booker missed some of those aforementioned five games, we’ve now seen the Suns have two recent showings against tanking teams that were incredibly inconsistent and two more games in which it scored 77 and 81 points. That is the short term, and the long-term numbers over the last two months have shown a team losing steam remarkably quick on offense and a foundation on defense that has become real rickety.
It’s now an appropriate time to doubt the legitimacy of how good the Suns actually are and any real chances of winning in the postseason, after they looked like one of the best teams in the Western Conference and like a fiery group that would at least give some contenders fits. At least until we see the effort and focus get back to where it was for the first two months of the season.
The starters beyond Booker (27 points, 9-of-21 shooting) did not have a good day, and even a two-assist night for Booker with four turnovers stands out.
Green is still really going through it. He shot 5 for 20 for a dozen points with three assists and one turnover.
The drives are not good possessions, and when he does get to the rim, bad decisions are being made. His defense is a problem as well.
We’re at the point where if his jumper is not going down, he’s a big negative on the floor. The in-season adjustment of ingratiating himself we knew would be tough for anyone who is proving to break the difficulty scales Olympic judges use to determine how challenging a routine can be.
O’Neale playing only 18 minutes with two key wings out confirmed the coaching staff agreed with how his defense looked on the night.
Collin Gillespie could not impact the game beyond his 3-point shooting, where he was 1 for 5.
It was a good line of 10 points, nine rebounds and four assists for Oso Ighodaro as a starter but his connective play on both ends did not prove to be the glue that usually helps Phoenix on nights like this. He had to play 36 minutes, which is not sustainable.
Ott was not messing around with the rookies.
Both Khaman Maluach and Rasheer Fleming were each rapidly subbed out at different points of the first half after key mistakes. The gap from where Maluach needs to get to from a floor-sense standpoint and where he is at now was rather evident during all of his playing time.
Both of them made some solid plays, but when the team is not connecting, Ott does not want to further complicate that with the expected issues that come with first-year players. Maluach turned it over four times in 12 minutes with two points and four rebounds while Fleming had five points and three rebounds in 12 minutes.
Dunn was just about the only guy to make energy plays for most of the game outside of Coffey, and even he had the aforementioned poor possessions guarding the ball. Dunn ended up with six points, 11 rebounds and two steals in 24 minutes while it was 12 points in 17 minutes for Coffey. Allen tried to ignite the offense with 3s but shot 5 for 16 from there.
Jones produced 21 points for Chicago, and Sexton had a whole lot of fun with this type of defense, scoring a game-high 30 on 11-of-19 shooting.
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