Despite the obvious, maybe all time offensive firepower they’ve assembled, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that there is no chance in hell we see them making noise past the first or second round. Curious to hear the counter arguments, if that’s how you really feel.
Contenders, yes. Good chance to win the West. But I’m not exactly taking them over the defending champs either, and I’m not sure how they’ll look like vs Milwaukee and Boston who look like the favorites to win the East.
They are one of the top 4 teams alongside celtics, bucks, and nuggets. After that, there is a next tier of teams.
The top tier is the nuggets, bucks, and Celtics. Subs are a level below that.
Their roster reminds me a lot of the Heatles rosters. Eric Gordon at this stage of his career is not going to be much better than Chalmers… Old and constantly injured Nurk is a good passer and rebounder but might be bad overall in the playoffs . They have 3 players and possibly nobody else who will be consistently solid
Really funny to act like Gordon and Nurk are our only rotation options when Yuta Watanabe and Nassir Little just dropped 23 combined on you guys. Drew Eubanks also posterized Rui Hachimura. On top of that we have Grayson Allen coming off the bench who’s a proven playoff contributor.
Yeah but none of that matters when the Jazz sweep you after THT wins his 3rd straight MVP…
Oh wait, that’s right, preseason doesn’t mean shit …
lol who the fuck is saying that any of our bench guys are gonna be perennial talents. the point is that “no depth” is a myth at this point, we have plenty of solid rotation options come the regular season/play offs. Stay butthurt your biggest signing this season was Christian Wood.
Cmon , we know preseason performances really don’t mean anything for how players will play in the regular season. I’ve seen a lot of players who never became solid have great preseason games.
There’s preseason-good, then there’s regular season good, then playoff-good. I don’t trust any of your role players to have 4 good games in a playoff series.
But we also know that Allen, Gordon, and Yuta are legit very good NBA players and excellent shooters.
Good thing Allen won’t be holding up the majority of the offensive load. And we don’t need guys to be on fire, we just need reliable spot up shooters and defense.
Defense win championship is a little bit outdated now
Its more about buckets as long you are not dogshit on D (lets say not bottom 8)
Outdated because of one title team ?
4/5 last champs were better defensively than offensively.
2022 Warriors, 2021 Bucks, 2020 Lakers and 2019 Raps were all defense first teams.
Even the Nuggets, who are a bit of a historical outlier, still had some elite or fringe elite defenders like Gordon and KCP, and got stops when it mattered.
Great teams wins championships, shocker.
Do you guys just intentonally miss the point or what ?
Nope, maybe starts with dynasty warriors
Thing is just because there’s ranking on paper for defense (for ex : DRTG), doesnt mean the defense is that good. There’s ofc nuance on it. If your team is well-oiled machine on offense like can get easy buckets, it means your players has more energy on D for example, or lets say the opp. will be pressured more to score buckets so prone to mistakes
22 celtics is playing dumb offense, which is expected with no real PG while warriors with their continuity motion offense can get buckets easier. On paper the defensive guys on celtics better or at least same with warriors, but on offense jeez night and day
21 bucks : when giannis can 1-2 steps dunk easily and showing the world he’s the best player on the planet that year while Book shoot 27℅ from 3,that’s a wrap
I forgot bubble
19 raps win also by talent on paper, just old steph + 1 leg Klay cant carry that offense while the next players with big minutes are Iggy, Dray, cousins, loon whom are abysmal shooting 3s
TLDR : dont say D is not important, but i think NBA nowadays are more 70/30 lean on offense. Rules that limiting defensive player, heavy 3s and spacing, scoring easy buckets more and more important if you want to go far. Like i take #5 on O + #15 on D than the reverse
That’s what kings did last year, bulls before that, and now suns knew it too. It’s offense league now
Those teams were still defensively focused.
Your point about offense helping defense doesn’t mean much because the opposite is also true. Good defense will lead to stops and liveball turnovers which lead to fastbreak offense. It also forces the opponent to expend more energy to score which leaves them vulnerable on the other end, or forces their coach to switch to more offensive slanted lineups to get some points up and the expense of their D.
The 2022 Warriors being a better offensive team than their Finals opponent isn’t relevant. They were the two best defensive teams in the league that year and surprise surprise, they ended up in the Finals.
2021 Bucks were notoriously sluggish on offense in the playoffs at times but got through because they were the best defensive team in the playoffs.
2020 Lakers’ had virtually no offense outside of Bron/AD and the resurrected corpse of Rondo come playoff time, but they were stacked defensively with Bron/AD/Green/Caruso/Dwight/KCP/McGee.
2019 Raptors had offensive series where nobody but Kawhi got get anything going and even he was going 15/39 and shit, but got by because they were stacked with defensive talent. Even if they weren’t in the primes, you had Kawhi/Ibaka/Gasol as former DPOY level defenders, Lowry and Green as All-D guards, pre-prime Siakam and FVV, and even a young OG even if he didn’t play in the playoffs.
Even the dynasty world ending Warriors teams, for all their offensive firepower, were roughly as good defensively as they were offensively.
Just because the league as a whole has gotten much more slanted towards offense doesn’t mean that you can afford to be a mediocre defense, relative to these standards, and expect to win a title.
I don’t see it. The defense just isn’t there. Who is their best defender ? Okogie ?
Name the last championship team who didn’t have at least one player who was significantly better defensive than Okogie. You can’t.
If you’re betting on the Suns to win the title you’re betting on a historical outlier.
Yes. Give the season 3 weeks and you will too
Top 4 teams in the NBA in no order are Nuggets, Celtics, Bucks and Suns. So yes they are serious contenders. But not the favorites.
Nuggets are favorites until proven otherwise, that being said the Suns aremore well equipped to challenge or beat the Nuggets than they were last year
Yes - and a lot of NBA fans are going to be shocked about it.
The biggest threat to them isn’t offense or defense…it’s health. If Booker, Beal, and Durant are healthy come playoffs - they are the favorites.
People just didn’t pay attention to their off season. This team is legitimately 11 deep - and all 11 are worthy of playoff minutes.
Their Achilles heel is center position defense; and yeah…I fully expect Jokic and AD to dominate in the middle, but I also expect Booker, Beal, and KD to dominate their matchups…and then we have a barrage of 3 point shooters.
We also have Frank Vogel. And as awful as Nurk looked on PnR defense, everyone in the world knows it…so I expect one of the best defensive coaches in the league to figure out a scheme to deal with it. Phoenix’s perimeter defense already looks great.