Your weekly Inside the Suns analysis straight from the BSotS community who live and breathe the team.
Welcome to ‘Inside the Suns’, your weekly deep down analysis of the current Phoenix Suns team.
Each week the Fantable – a round table of Bright Siders – give their takes on the Suns’ latest issues and news.
Fantable Questions of the Week
Q1 – What are your thoughts/feelings about how the regular season ended on Sunday and the Suns moving up to the 6th seed?
GuarGuar: I am very, very pleased with the way our season ended on Sunday. A dominant performance from start to finish and we avoided the play-in. I was super scared of this team having to play in the play-in games. Anything can happen in such a small sample size. It was a rocky road but we seem to be trending in the right direction heading into the most important time of the season.
OldAz: I added the meme from Godfather 3 to a Post Monday morning. You know the one. “Just when I thought I was out… They pull me back in.” Considering the way the Suns played all year long, followed by the 2nd Pelicans game and both Clippers games, it was easy to lose faith and get frustrated. They just seemed to play without passion and energy way too often and then were doing so at the worst possible moment. This made it easy to forget the context of how tough their last 10 games were, and what their record ended up being in those games. The game against the Wolves reminded us of the good games over that stretch against Cleveland, the first Pelicans game, and the first Minnesota game.
The Suns delivered a complete game against a team that also had a lot to play for, showed a consistent effort for 48 minutes, and involved everyone with Beal as a primary ball handler. Like Michael Corleone, the last game of the season had me drawn back in and invested into what should be an interesting post-season.
Brrrberry: The end of the season was a DREAM scenario, both in how the team beat Minny down and also how the seeding played out. Crazy as this sounds, if you told me I could pick ANY seed for the Suns at this point for the Suns to swap with, literally the only team I’d swap them with would be putting us into the 3 seed so we had home court advantage against the Wolves. I wouldn’t even choose the 1 seed because the side of the bracket we ended up on is ideal. After an entire season of misgivings, it feels like things are coming together beyond well.
If we’d have limped into the play in, I had a bad feeling about it. Glad to see Draymond, Steph and Klay get bounced in the play in, AGAIN. Lillard and Curry have no business making all NBA this year, sure hope guys like Book, Hali, Fox, even Ant get their due above the semi fading old guard, guys who don’t play a lick of defense and just hoist up a dozen threes every game.
Rod: My initial reaction on Twitter was simply, “Un freaking real” and I can’t come up with any better way to describe how I felt when for once everything just seemed to work out the way it needed to for the Suns escape the play-in stage and secure the 6th seed. Who actually had real confidence in things working out exactly as they needed to for the Suns to get the sixth seed and avoid the play-in stage? I had hope but how many times in the past has ‘lady luck’ just seeming given the Suns the finger when they needed her the most? The list is too long to include here and could be made into an article all it’s own.
Q2 – What do you believe are the keys for the Suns to win their series against Minnesota?
GuarGuar: Even though we manhandled Minnesota in the regular season, the playoffs are a different beast and I am not taking this matchup lightly. They are big and physical and have a great defense. But their weakness when Gobert is playing is that they normally run a drop coverage on pick and rolls. And so what they are most susceptible to are pull up mid range jump shots in pick and roll situations. Hmmmm, I wonder who on our team is good at those… I can think of 3 guys. Also KAT having to guard either KD or Grayson when he’s on the floor with Gobert is a tough cover. Defensively we should be loading up on Edwards as much as possible. Trap him in pick and rolls and force the others to consistently beat us over a 7 game series.
OldAz: Move the ball on offense, keep up the aggressive defense with active hands. I was reading an article and the comments on the Timberwolves site and their fans sound a lot like us. Turnovers scare the Wolves fans as much as they do most of us. The aggressive defense will lead to Wolves turnovers which will lead to faster play and better ball movement before the Wolves can set up their excellent halfcourt defense. Beyond that, it will be about how quickly each coach makes adjustments and how effective those adjustments are. Personally, I don’t think either coach has shown much aptitude in this area, so whomever sucks less at it might just win the series.
Brrrberry: Hands down the biggest things are Nurk staying out of foul trouble, taking care of the ball and limiting turnovers (ideally less than 12 per game) and staying healthy. EJ says it all the time, “If this team gets more shots than the opponent, they’re going to win”. I’m not worried about the defensive intensity, we’ve got a bunch of competitors on our team that want to win bad so they’ll be on one. We can really make a statement and further the mental edge we’ve got on these guys with a game 1 win so I’m really hoping they take care of business.
Offensively we’re just so more more lethal than they are so Vogel needs to earn his keep and his defensive wiz reputation and come up with a game plan to take Ant out of rhythm because if we can limit him under his season averages, they’re going to have a hard time keeping up. I could make a case that Naz Reid and SloMo are actually the 3rd and 4th best creators on offense. Limit Ant, make the other guys beat you and Gobert won’t be able to do a ton of damage inside if Nurk stays out of foul trouble.
Rod: The Suns need to steal the home court advantage early by winning at least one of the first two games in Minnesota. They’re also going to have to continue to keep Anthony Edwards in check which so far they’ve proven able to do in the regular season (RS avg = 25.9 ppg & 41.6% FG, vs Suns = 14.3 ppg & 31.0% FG). Whatever the Suns have been doing to frustrate the Wolves at the three-point line they also need to continue. For the season Minnesota was hitting 38.7% of their threes (on 32.7 attempts per game, 3rd in the NBA) but have only made 29.3% of them (on 26.3 attempts per game) vs the Suns.
Offensively, team play rather than ISO/hero ball will be the key… that and NOT turning the ball over multiple times through lazy, ill-advised passes.
Q3 – What is your prediction for the Suns/Timberwolves playoff series?
GuarGuar: I think the Suns are getting hot at the right time and we will win this series. I have the Suns winning in 6 games. I think we steal at least one in Minnesota to start and then take care of home court. I don’t think they have enough ammo to end up beating Booker/Beal/Durant over a 7 game series. If they choose to leave Grayson Allen open because they want to load up on our stars… I’m confident in our chances then too. Just because we dominated them this season doesn’t mean a ton. We dominated Dallas in 2022 and we dominated Milwaukee in 2021 during the regular seasons. Playoffs is different. We are going to have to win in different ways.
OldAz: Based on the regular season results where the Wolves never got within 10 points in the 2nd half of any of those games, I am tempted to predict a short series of 4 or 5 games. If the Suns win game 1, AND that points trend happens again, that short becomes a reality because I think it will get into the Wolves heads. However, I believe the games will mostly be close and the Suns will win in 6 by taking one of the first 2 and then winning at home where the boisterous home court advantage of the past will reemerge (see, I told you they pulled me back in).
Brrrberry: 4-1 Suns. I think we win both games in Minnesota, they take game 3 or 4, and we end it in 5. I’m interested to see if we’ll get the better whistle. I’m sure neither Suns or Wolves fans are used to seeing any sort of preferential treatment from the refs but the conspiracy theorist in me tends to think the NBA wants to see Nugs v Suns in round 2 so I’ll take anything we can get to help move onto the next round.
In our 3 meetings we won this year Wolves were +13 in free throws 2 of the games and we were +15 in one. All 3 resulted in wins but I’d prefer not to have to work with that type of discrepancy especially if it means that Nurk minutes can’t be matched to Gobert. Nurk is the type of guy that Gobert hates to go against, especially a healthy and motivated Nurk like what he’s going to encounter come Saturday. Here’s to kicking the Wolves ass and then sending Denver packing in round 2!!!
Rod: If the Suns can steal home court advantage by winning either game one or two in Minnesota, then I think Phoenix could win this series in 5 or 6 games. If they can’t do that, then I wouldn’t be surprised to see it either go all the way to seven games before it’s decided and I really hate to say this but without stealing an early game on the Wolves home court I think they will win the series and send the Suns on an early summer vacation.
The less confidence Minnesota has, the better the Suns’ chances so the Suns have to get the Wolves on their heels early and get them worrying about losing more than concentrating on winning.
As always, many thanks to our Fantable members for all their extra effort this week!
Last Week’s poll results
Last week’s question was, “Which team do you think would be the worst matchup for the Suns in a play-in game?”
04% – Sacramento Kings.
84% – Los Angeles Lakers.
12% – Golden State Warriors.
A total of 211 votes were cast.
Suns Trivia
Kevin Durant finished the regular season with 2,032 points, the 5th highest regular season point total in Suns history. Tom Chambers holds the #1 and #2 spots on this list with 2,201 (1990) and 2,085 (1989) points respectively. Third belongs to Amar’e Stoudemire with 2,080 (2005) and Charlie Scott is 4th with 2,048 (1973). The only other Sun to score 2,000+ points in a single season is Paul Westphal (2,014 in 1978) who fell to 6th.
This week’s poll is…