Thoughts about this? I’m realizing now Richard Jefferson might be right when he said all championship teams need to have legit PG. I have seen TJ played for quite some time now and from what i’ve seen he’s reliable and productive given his limited minutes, has very high basketball iq, a traditional pass-first point guard who’s confident setting up plays for his teammates, an efficient scorer (career 51%fg) and a guy accustomed to Arizona sports culture as he has played for Arizona during College.
Rick Carlisle has been vocal that Tj has fallen off rotation as the Pacers choose to develop Nembhard as the Pacers back-up PG for Haliburton. Although Tj responded that it doesn’t matter and he’ll always be ready whenever called upon to play, no player who knows he is capable of contributing to winning would want to sit on the bench.
Suns really need a legit PG as we’ve seen the collapse on 4th quarter games and also as a team Suns are averaging 17.5 turnovers through 4 games. I know most of you would say this happened because Book and Beal have not been playing. Well that’s the point, Beal has always been injured most times and without Book we don’t have someone who can set up plays on a legit PG level. And the reality is there would be more games where either one or both of them could miss after coming back from these injuries given their histories, so what then?
How about we pull a trade with the Pacers? I’m thinking they wouldn’t mind letting go Tj as they are loaded with PG depth having Haliburton, Nembhard and also Jarace Walker who has really impressed during the pre-season
And we’d still have Book as our starting pg even if we manage to get a legit pg such as Tj. My only concern is we need to have someone else running the floor when Book is out. You can argue Beal, Gordon, Goodwin, Allen and Kd are ball handlers but they’re not next level playmakers.