How the Phoenix Suns Defense Is Improving, Slowly But Surely

How the Phoenix Suns Defense Is Improving, Slowly But Surely

On today’s episode of Locked on suns we knew from the beginning when Frank vogle said the Phoenix Suns had a talent disadvantage on the defensive end that that was going to be the defining development of the Sun Season well good news they’ve improved is it going to be

Enough when it really matters break it down you are locked on suns your daily Phoenix Sons podcast part of the locked on podcast Network your team every Day we are back this is locked on Phoenix Suns we are part of the locked on podcast Network I’m your host Brendan clean a writer at Dime magazine the host of the just B basketball show and the author over at the locked on suns Insider subex Community where you can

Follow my work thank you for finding us wherever you find your podcasts we are free and available everywhere including you YouTube so just hit that button get a new episode in your feet every single Monday through Friday become an every dayer get locked on to the Phoenix Suns

All season long right here on this show mixing up the intro a little bit bear with me thank you guys if it feels a little awkward it felt a little awkward for me but I appreciate you being here it is a Wednesday thank you for making us your first

Listen and we’re going to do a little bit of a grab bag show as we tend to on off days starting with the Suns defense because as I said in the intro the Suns this was always going to be the case right they built an offense first

Team I’ve said it since they got Bradley Beal basically that their pathway was put as much offense and size on the court as you can as much as you can do both of those things with the same lineups do that and the reason you hire Frank vogle

Is to scheme and game plan your way into punching above your weight on the defensive end so I have some numbers some observations Today’s Show brought to you by prize picks the easiest most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports go to prize.com lockon NBA use the code lockon NBA for a

First deposit match up to $100 all right we made it through that intro let’s dive in here I appreciate the patience maybe you didn’t even notice either way the Phoenix Suns defensive rating by month and this is going to be an episode where I am uh largely indebted to Mr

John VOA over at Bright Side of the Sun so shout out John two of his articles are going to inspire topics today starting with this defense defensive rating by month which John compiled in an article published this week well I’m not even going to read the defensive rating because that doesn’t

Really matter 23rd in November 18th in December 13th in January 9th in February 8th in March kind of crazy how direct that trend is and honestly I think back to the um speech that Frank Vogal gave in the locker room after that win over the Nuggets last week because I was

Genuinely surprised obviously it’s a coach’s job to um hype it is a coach’s job to celebrate get the most out of his players and a lot of the time that’s through positivity I I’m not I’m not ignoring that I get it but at the same time vogle surprised me with how emphatic he

Was saying we can be really damn good or whatever it was right because I was sitting there kind of like okay but we know we all know the defense is is lagging right but you look at the numbers and yeah it isn’t Elite it never

Was going to be as I have said now multiple times but nevertheless the Suns they now sit over the course of the full season at 14th they have a 115 defensive rating so that includes the ugly early start and that includes the improvements lately I would

Also just add in terms of that Trend that the fact that the defense has been able to improve as I would say less and less defense first Personnel is being put onto the court is pretty prising too right because just think about you know ai’s been hurt lately no minutes Jordan

Goodwin’s gone no minutes for nir little or kab Bates deop or you know any of that it’s been a lot of Grayson Allen a lot more Bradley Beal bu bow coming in and out obviously Rey has helped but that’s something to bear in mind as well I’ve made this comp many times I

Will make it again as we kind of use a benchmark here the Denver Nuggets won the NBA championship last season with the 17th ranked defense in the NBA that defense had a 11 14.6 defensive rating a touch better than where the suns are now in terms of how many points

Allowed per 100 possessions a little worse than the suns are right now in terms of rank within the NBA I buy this all right I buy that the suns are on a path to achieve comparably to what Denver did last year where they improve their chemistry their effort their

Identity over the course of the full regular season they look mediocre but they are able to get the job done in the playoffs I do buy that the suns are trending in that direction I have done a couple of watch backs now on the locked on suns

Insiders which you can sign up for by visiting join subtext docomo on Sons you put your phone number in you get analysis on game days with my pregame halftime and postgame thoughts on every game you get any news or updates on injuries or rumors or anything sent directly to your phone and these

Watchback where I am going to be going through full quarters chunks of games crunch time whatever the case may be and only insiders get access it is exclusive to people who support the show and become part of The Insider community that is growing I’ve promised you a Q&A

Mailbag episode special episode of this show for you when we get to a certain round number that we are three three away from so if three of you sign up you’ll get a bonus episode there too and I have noted to you guys in those moments in those watch backs I did

The I think I did the second quarter against the Nuggets no I did the fourth quarter and overtime of the Nuggets game and I did the third quarter of the Cleveland game and in both instances I highlighted a lot of situations where simple effort and execution and and

IQ went a long way for the Suns yes it’s nice to have Royce O’Neal yes it’s helpful that Kevin Durant is playing incredibly most Knights on the defensive end and that the Suns have some stability in their rotation so guys are able to readed off of one another a

Little better than they were early in the season but whether it is fighting through a screen denying a player’s ability to run through that screen in the first place pressing a ball handler to take time off the clock communicating switching executing extra help or not helping thought the example against

Darius Garland what they did against him in the third quarter mixing coverages up they’ve thrown in more Zone it hasn’t always worked but they’ve thrown more Zone in they’ve been able to take away the paint and force more turnovers over the course of the Season these are all

Things we’ve talked about that Denver game I thought that well I let me check point out one other Trend that Bridges across both of these games the way that they’ve used nurkic and been able to I think learn some lessons about what he can and can’t do

And that’s not just about playing or not playing which we’ll get to in a moment but it’s also about like in both of those games you saw different guys guarding the center and nurkic guarding somebody else so in the Cleveland game it was nurkic guarding um aoro in the Denver game the

Centers both nurkic and Eubanks guarding Aaron Gordon and then allowing Durant to guard the center so that Durant can switch out onto a guard who runs pick and roll with that Center Durant can fight in the post or deny an entry pass to that Center whatever so some of those

Things are coming along where you can see the coaching staff learning what strings to pull and in that Denver game specifically I just think it was a great example of transition defense taking away I know the fast break points I’ve said it before I’ll

Say it again and that was a lie I think the Nuggets were counted for 26 fast break points and some solid transition efficiency they’re going to get a lot of that no matter what so maybe a good game against them is just a good different than a good game against a worse team

But I thought that was strong and again I thought that just the physicality and intensity against Murray and yic and scoring opportunities was strong the Suns do not have the talent or the Personnel or anything to they’re small everything else else to be a top five defense they’re not going to win many

Games on the back of their defense but they cannot lose them they can improve they can execute they can be ready for their opponent and I think that’s been the key as those Trends have improved over the course of the season that’s been the key and I have no

Reason to doubt that it will continue as long as they can stay healthy let’s break down one element of that defense and the decision on Frank vogel’s hands about how to close the game at Center this was the first game I can remember in a long time against

Cleveland on Monday night where Eubanks closed the game over nerkish when both guys were healthy and neither guy was in foul trouble but obviously Durant factors in as well so what can we expect down the stretch of the season with that Dynamic we’ll look into that next first Today’s Show brought to you

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Customers keeping it rolling I want to read you verbatim What Frank vogle said about closing Monday night’s game with nurkic with Eubanks over nurkic okay so for the details Eubanks ends up playing 18 minutes nurkic ends up playing 29 but a lot of the fourth quarter goes to

Eubanks anyone who’s watched this team has seen a lot of puzzling moments from this guy the stats will tell you that the Suns defense is worse with Eubanks on the court would tell you that everything’s worse with EU banks on the court I think some of that is from early in the season

That is lingered I tweeted out a stat that bull bull some of his onoff numbers and some of his production and efficiency has been glaringly different glaringly better with nurkic and worse with Eubank so at face value it’s weird to look at a game and and watch the head coach pick

Somebody that all of that stuff I just said is true about here is what he said vogle was asked by Dwayne Rankin at the Arizona Republic and he said quote we were ready to go back to nerk late but Drew was giving us great activity the Garland coverages were really tough because he’s

So Shifty we liked what Drew was doing with his Mobility that last word is I think EX actly what you’re looking for if you want an answer for why this happened why it may happen in the future if we’re being honest if you want a player for instance right to focus in on

Garin in this game in that third quarter in the second half period the Suns went to a coverage of trying to show to to the ball when Garland came off of a screen and get the ball out of his hands same thing we’ve seen teams do countless times with Deon Booker right

Nurkic can accomplish that coverage he can execute that coverage but his feet are slow so if if the guard is worth his you know his role right if if the person having the ball is good enough to actually deserve to have the ball in their hands they’re probably going to be able to

Make that play quick dump off to the short roll not every team has a center who can make that short roll play off that’s okay you know it’s not perfect but it’s unlikely that nkuch is going to recover back into the play he has a couple of those moments from game to

Game from night to night where he will recover and make a block or get a steal or get back into position to contest but rare a lot of the times when we see the Suns go to Zone I believe it’s because they’re trying to help nurkic out

Sometimes it’s to help bull bow out but I think you would have to say that Eubanks does provide more versatility in how you’re going to guard the pick and roll than nurkic does despite his weaknesses despite his inconsistencies we’ll get to those in a second but

That’s true I think you have to say because nurkic is probably best in a drop coverage and it is just rare as Garland reminded us Garland is not even an All-Star this year he’s probably the 40th best player in the NBA I don’t know 50th something 30th even who cares even he

Was able to punish nurkic’s drop defense especially when you remind when we are reminded of the fact that the Suns again do not have a great point of attack Defender particularly right now with Josh aogi out of the lineup that makes drop coverage harder to play because not only are you giving

Up that pull-up jumper with the big man not contesting you’re also giving up up some of that leeway because Grayson Allen’s getting smacked in the face with the screen because it’s not his strength to run through those screens so you can start to piece it together whereas

Eubanks he might not be perfect at any one thing but if you want him to hedge and show like with Twan going toward the ball in the pick and roll him and the ball handlers Defender he’s a little more springy with that he’s a little more agile he can do

That and get back to his man a little bit more easily he also can get into drop he is going to hold up better in a switch frankly so I get it I think big picture it is useful for the Suns to experiment with things like

This and it’s obviously easier to say to try that and to feel good about it when you’re winning and the Suns still won this game they had to play with Eubanks down the stretch against Denver and that was a different approach and it worked then too he was guarding Aaron Gordon a lot

Of the time which is another moment where his athleticism and maybe the fact that he honestly isn’t so big actually played to his Advantage so you can see where he does have value I’m not denying that it’s going to be frustrating though one other point here

Here to look at so in in the past so 2122 nurkic doesn’t make it to March he doesn’t make it to Ramadan in the season so we can’t really look at that this is something people have speculated as part of maybe why he did not close this game last

Season I can’t find I don’t know nurkic’s history with this so pardon me if if I’m just being boneheaded and dumb he’s also I think it’s fair post injury nurkic is a different Beast so I’m just going to look at last year his minutes did go down he had an injury around the

Middle of the season but he did come back played seven games in March he was at 29 28 minutes a game for the first half of the Year through the calendar year and then when he when we get to March around this time of year last season he’s playing less than 24

Minutes a night now some of that is because the Blazers were trying to tank and lean over to their big to their young guys and everything else but I did just want to throw that in there vogle did not say that that was the reason he

Has not said that they are going to limit nurkic’s run or anything else we have seen guys like Kyrie Irving and plenty of other athletes over time navigate this successfully that is not to undersell that it is a difficult thing to do nurkic posted a picture that reminded us that literally you cannot

Even drink water during the day NBA players are getting prepared to play games right as the sun is going down it is probably hard to fit in hydration and nutrition if at all pregame and that is tough to prepare yourself to play an NBA game without the basic things that a lot of

People take for granted I get that so it might just be a short-term Factor here as well but again to say as much as I can explain lot of this as much as I can tell you what the value of Eubanks is in theory the numbers are what they are it

Has not been a pretty season there may be a point where the experimentation just has to be cut loose at a certain point even if you can see the value in it and the sense in it right now and in the meantime if there are some ugly

Knights trust me when I say that I’m going to be struggling with it just as much as you Eubanks is a very inconsistent player he often does not look like he necessarily knows the coverage even if he has the versatility to execute a lot of different ones he looks like he is

Not prepared to do what the coaching staff has asked are we switching right now are we all the different prick and roll stuff I walked through a minute ago what’s the deal what are we doing and he has a lot of just lapses in in attention lapses in

Judgment and you cannot have that on a team trying to win a championship so this is just as much for him to prove that he is deserving of these opportunities as much as it is for vogle to prove that to see if it’s even going to work from a talent

Standpoint closing out the show with one more piece of this Sun’s bench Eric Gordon what is going on with this guy this season the player we all thought was going to just top off this sun super team has been in consistent to say the least we’ll dive into his year coming up

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Over at Bri side of the sun I recommend his solid article that went up on Sunday about EG put yourself back in the position you were in on July 1st or so when the suns were able to get Eric Gordon I know you guys were excited because all the

Minimum signings that show was like the most watched one I’ve ever done it was like k deop analysis and you guys ate it up but obviously I’m kidding it was Eric Gordon analysis and we thought this guy could before the Grayson Allen trade when Aon was still on this team everything

Else no Royce O’Neal obviously we thought this guy would be closing games for the Suns we thought this was the the missing piece when he has played with those main guys I guess you could say he has been whether that’s as a starter or at times closing games maybe over Gordon over

Allen early in the season here in there but especially as a starter and and John’s article breaks this down in 3 in 24 games as a starter Gordon has played 33 minutes per game shot 51% from the field and 45% from three which has driven him to 15.4 points per game as a

Reserve plays almost as many minutes 27 or so per game still but only 9 and half points per game 38% shooting and 31% from three in the past Gordon according to John’s article has actually shot better as a reserve from Deep you know he’s been a reserve

For a long time this is a former sixthman of the Year winner he’s obviously been good enough to fluctuate in and out of the starting lineup here and there but for most of the time he was in Houston he was a bench player and that’s how he made

His really his best moments in the league that’s how he earned multiple big contracts and everything else I guess he had you know when the Suns tried to bring him in the first time that was a pretty big contract too but you get my

Point so what is going on here um and is he is he reliable enough you know we we talked about this with bub I just talked about Drew Eubanks we’ve had the Gordon I always want to call Gordon and Allen the same player I always just want to

Call both of them Gordon because Grayson’s first name sounds similar so pardon me for doing that all the time we’ve had the Grayson versus Roy starting conversation so as we head into the playoffs I think we have to have this conversation about Eric Gordon as

Well is he reliable enough to trust as a guaranteed lock for the playoff rotation he’s hurt right now I don’t expect it to continue he’s been on kind of a maintenance plan right now the rotation is the starters the big three nkit and Allen Roy for sure I think you would have to

Say Eubanks for sure and that’s it now it would be crazy to say Eubanks is more of a lock than Gordon so maybe we really should kind of say the suns are back to six guys that are trustworthy and I’m a little bit depressed saying that but maybe they only had five before

And Royce makes six so maybe I should be a little bit more optimistic but I guess the way to put what I’m saying is I would treat Gordon as just as big of a question mark As Eubanks bow aogi and I guess maybe you say Thad

Young in that it’s going to be matchup base it’s going to be Rhythm based do these guys have it going are they executing on defense do they physically are they healthy enough to be providing the energy that you want from a bench player is there shot going

In I think all of those guys are going to kind of be facing those questions even though we would not have put Gordon on that list I mean let’s just I mean I’ll just open his shot chart it’s might not be any more complicated than that right

Since let’s just say since the All-Star break okay 16 points Five Points misses three games 15 points Four Points Five Points zero points against Boston in almost 30 minutes obviously we all wondered what the heck was going on there and then missed a game against Cleveland he hasn’t strung together two

Games in a row with double digit points since before the All-Star break prior to that he had 23 uh 23 and then 13 heading into the break and it was like two three weeks before that that he had back toback like he just he since the first kind of injury

Flub that he had when he started coming off the bench finally and started to miss games around December 1st or so he has really just struggled to put consistent games back to back to back together as a scorer I have maintained that his defense is a little bit underrated I

Still think that I feel like his physicality is pretty solid as long as he’s not having to fight through screens I think he can rotate contain drives defend bigger players in mismatches if need be and kind of generally execute so that’s kind of what I expected but offensively it feels like

His his aggressiveness comes and goes and I think it’s physical you know I think it’s just there’s nights where maybe it is you know early in the year there was a mentality problem he obviously had that thing with Chris Haynes where he kind of asked for a

Bigger role but he responded to that the team ran through him more they kind of propped him up as a leader in the clubhous in the locker room and then they he produced it and it went well but I do think since then a lot of these inconsistencies would have to say are

Probably physical he just can’t be aggressive and productive on a night toight basis so maybe the answer is fewer minutes when he is active maybe the answer is just expecting that the maintenance is going to have to come and just benching him for games at a time if

Need be even if that happens in the postseason but the reality is you just can’t trust him to be a guy even getting you double digits on a nightly basis and that’s that’s tough cuz I think that’s the bare minimum of what you would have expected when they signed him that’ll

Wrap us up Aaron Edwards returning to the show tomorrow lots to look forward to there don’t forget to sign up for the lockon Suns insiders where you get game watch backs game day analysis and my thoughts on every single suns news peace of Suns news and rumor that there ever

Is I will talk to you guys tomorrow

Kevin Durant and the Phoenix Suns have steadily improved into a league-average defense over the course of the NBA season. Will it be enough?

Brendon Kleen of @justbasketballfans breaks down the trend and the Suns’ recent play on D. Then, a look at why Drew Eubanks closed over Jusuf Nurkic in Cleveland and what’s going on with Eric Gordon.

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