Game 57: Phoenix Suns (33-23) @ Houston Rockets (24-31) | Friday | 6:00PM

[Bogyo]

All aboard Bol Bol hype train. Who needs Wemby?!

Funny how that works. I had more faith in all of our bench guys in the begining of the season than him - and I think that was logical on my part, as KDB, Yuta, Okogie, Eubanks, etc...had all better track record. Now most of those are not on the team, and Bol is looking like a legit bench player for us at certain times.

[sunsbg]

I want to get excited, but just a reminder Bol Bol had better stretches in the past. Metu had almost 20/20 game, looked decent, and was waived.

RO has looked like a chucker on the Suns and has not done anything special on D either. Small sample size though. Based on this game Young is a worse finisher around the rim than Nurk. Guy has no lift. EG from the bench is a lot worse than EG as a starter. A dependable 6th man is really missing. Moving Grayson to the bench as a 6th man for scoring and putting RO to defend opposing best wing with the starters makes a lot of sense to me.

[Stix]

Perusing BBRef's 5-man lineup combos, we've only had 5 positive lineups with 3/5 starters, and of those only 1 with 2/5 starters:
Goodwin/Okogie/Allen/KD/Nurk
Gordon/Okogie/Allen/KD/Nurk
Booker/Okogie/Gordon/KBD/Nurk
Booker/Allen/Gordon/KBD/Nurk
KD/Allen/Gordon/KBD/Nurk

Huh? Where Beal?

[garrick]

Watch on YouTube

Just because

That's actually a really good analysis but halfway thru I couldn't keep listening to his voice anymore

Lol this guy.

He is right to point out how awful we are on defense but Vogel isn't able to make these guys play defense the right way.

I think we just have to admit that most of our team is just really bad defensively. A lot of this is effort and just letting Houston waltz in uncontested for offensive rebounds was just sad to watch.

[RaisingArizona]

What'd I miss?

[RaisingArizona]

Another pathetic loss. These are becoming all too normal.

And further down the playoff ladder we go.

Sent from my [Samsung Z4 Fold] using RealGM mobile app

Playoffs???

[RaisingArizona]

I don't bolieve it

[Frank Lee]

I want to get excited, but just a reminder Bol Bol had better stretches in the past. Metu had almost 20/20 game, looked decent, and was waived.

RO has looked like a chucker on the Suns and has not done anything special on D either. Small sample size though. Based on this game Young is a worse finisher around the rim than Nurk. Guy has no lift. EG from the bench is a lot worse than EG as a starter. A dependable 6th man is really missing. Moving Grayson to the bench as a 6th man for scoring and putting RO to defend opposing best wing with the starters makes a lot of sense to me.

Royce is a chucker in the same role as Chowder, as is green light Gordon. But the Line up solution is simple. Bring Beal off the bench.* Having 3 formidable ISO players leads to a lot of watching and turn taking, especially down the stretch. Everybody has to get theirs. You can see it especially in Book when he hasn’t shot 3-4 times down… it’s in his DNA to take the ball and score. No reason why we don’t have two of the three ISO bros on the court at all times. It makes them more effective. Fortunate or not, it is the strength of this team. We won’t go far unless one of the them goes off. And they can alternate. We can hang with anyone when Book or KD is cooking. Ride the hot hand, if there is one. But last night shows what happens when there isn’t. It’s clear we can’t rely on defense

*could start ONeal or even Bol for that matter.

[SunsRback4Good]

Another pathetic loss. These are becoming all too normal.

And further down the playoff ladder we go.

Sent from my [Samsung Z4 Fold] using RealGM mobile app

Playoffs???

https://youtu.be/_UMIcM66S1M?si=gnFB_50vuy7z_7dh

[SunsRback4Good]

Perusing BBRef's 5-man lineup combos, we've only had 5 positive lineups with 3/5 starters, and of those only 1 with 2/5 starters:
Goodwin/Okogie/Allen/KD/Nurk
Gordon/Okogie/Allen/KD/Nurk
Booker/Okogie/Gordon/KBD/Nurk
Booker/Allen/Gordon/KBD/Nurk
KD/Allen/Gordon/KBD/Nurk

Huh? Where Beal?

On the bench waiting to be cleared to play silly.

[handsome salary]

KD is too aged and inconsistent in effort to carry a team.
Booker while a great scorer can't carry a team since its not that hard for the other team to slow/stop him. He's not a "no matter what we do he's still gonna be unstoppable" player.
Without Beal this team has zero shot get out of the first round.

Jones assembled a mediocre supporting cast of mostly other teams cast offs, g-leaguers and one foot into retirement guys. Promising youth and up n comers have no place here.

Vogel...whatever.

Glad I turned off watching the past two games after seeing they were down. Not giving hour after hour like before to this organization.

[bwgood77]

Perusing BBRef's 5-man lineup combos, we've only had 5 positive lineups with 3/5 starters, and of those only 1 with 2/5 starters:
Goodwin/Okogie/Allen/KD/Nurk
Gordon/Okogie/Allen/KD/Nurk
Booker/Okogie/Gordon/KBD/Nurk
Booker/Allen/Gordon/KBD/Nurk
KD/Allen/Gordon/KBD/Nurk

Huh? Where Beal?

Not hard to read. When we play 3 starters or less, we rarely have a net positive. 4 of those lineups have 3 starters and one has 2.

[bwgood77]

This team is built for iso ball. It is what it is. However, I do like how many assists the big 3 typically get. But I do wish more of them would do catch and shoots and we would move the ball around and make more overall passes. Typically the assists are off a lot of dribbles and then a nice pass to Nurkic or something for the finish....so it's kind of like watching iso with a lot of dribbling.

As for the game, Houston is a very tough place to play, and their record suffered over the last month or month and a half, but they were missing FVV for most of that, and he is important to that team and playing very well.

And then Bol Bol had a great game, so I take a lot of positives from the game. If Bol Bol can even play 75% that good, we will be tough...especially when we also have Nurkic..and Beal.

[kennydorglas]

pls ishbia fire this trash coach

[kennydorglas]

Watch on YouTube

Just because

this guy is literally my spirit animal trying to watch this damn team.
once u see all the wrong stuff we do, its tough to imagine anything good in the near future.
and the worst for me is vogel literally with his arms crossed and doing nothing on the bench
(supposedly a master defensive mind that cant coach their players on the fly)

[lilfishi22]

I've followed Awful Coaching close to a year now and have gone back to watch his older videos too. The guy goes at literally every single coach. He's gone at coaches some here would sacrifice their firstborn for. Every coach in the league is the worst coach in the league if you go by each video you watch

[sunsbg]

There was this game against Jazz when Book didn't play and the team had great ball movement, 37 assists IIRC. With him they seem to fall into the trap of thinking ISO ball is good enough. A lot of great players didn't win anything before a great coach made them fit into a proper system. This could be very well the case here too.

[lilfishi22]

There was this game against Jazz when Book didn't play and the team had great ball movement, 37 assists IIRC. With him they seem to fall into the trap of thinking ISO ball is good enough. A lot of great players didn't win anything before a great coach made them fit into a proper system. This could be very well the case here too.

We also had games against Jazz this season where we had 35 and 36 assists, both with Book playing.

[Ghost of Kleine]

Guyssss you're all haters. Big guys take more time to devel....I mean, we'll be fine when everybody is healthy.

LOL!


When everybody is healthy!!................................

[dremill24]

There was this game against Jazz when Book didn't play and the team had great ball movement, 37 assists IIRC. With him they seem to fall into the trap of thinking ISO ball is good enough. A lot of great players didn't win anything before a great coach made them fit into a proper system. This could be very well the case here too.

And they had another game this season of 36 assists where Booker did play (and two other games of 35).

The offensive creativity and ball/player movement is a joke, and Booker deserves a lot of the blame (lets also not let KD and Vogel off the hook) but any one game sample isnt going to be a great indicator of a point.