Newly-minted 2014 marks Basketball Banter's fifth anniversary; somehow I've managed to keep people interested in my esoteric, convoluted NBA monologues for half a decade.
Along the way Banter's seen many changes; from its infancy as my disorganized rants, to regular segments like the Water Cooler, Top 9s and POWER RANKINGS!!, to its placement on the back-burner after I signed on to write for BallOverAll.com. Through it all, the one thing that's kept it going has been the people supporting it; you guys are awesome and here's to much more Banter.
A lot of zany shit is going on in the NBA this season, but perhaps nothing has been as dramatically quizzical as the completely illogical emergence of the Phoenix Suns as a legitimate West Playoff team. So to kick off 2014, here's some thoughts on the most Banter-worthy squad so far this season:
Jeff Hornacek has been famous for strokes over the years; both the subtle brush “hello” to his kids before every foul shot, and the smooth follow-through of his jumper.
As familiar as we became with those, it’s Hornacek’s stroke of brilliance with the Phoenix Suns this season that’s standing out the most, taking what many pegged among the Western Conference’s very worst teams to the thick of the Playoff hunt in his first season.
Monday night, the Suns rolled into L.A. to face their Division-leading Clippers – one of those “statement games” – and ran them out of Staples Center with a vicious lesson in defensive rotation, and ball movement.
They’re now a half-game behind the Artists Formerly Known as Lob City, and forcing everyone to not only take them very seriously, but ask just how the hell this is happening. Nothing about this team makes sense really, they’re not supposed to be good: It starts in the backcourt where they play two point guards, one of whom had no experience with a starting unit prior to November. Their forward rotation is comprised of journeymen, identical twins, and a guy who missed all of last season. They salary-dumped their only established center for an injury liability who hasn’t dressed yet.
And somehow they’re threatening for homecourt when the West has never been tougher; the result of things going right in too many places for Hornacek not to be credited with an elite NBA coaching debut.
It’s almost unprecedented; virtually every player in Phoenix’s rotation is enjoying a career year; Dragic and Bledsoe look like All-Stars, while the latter is probably the MIP at this point. PJ Tucker has broken out as a lockdown perimeter guy. Miles Plumlee warmed the cold Indiana bench last year, and is now channelling Shawn Kemp. The Morris’ are sporadically dangerous. Gerald Green is suddenly much more than the NBA’s best Uncontested Fast Break Finisher. It’s contagious.
Not only has Hornacek motivated a team that had absolutely no reason to believe in itself to play with balanced poise, but used a system of creative lineups to emphasize his team’s strengths. They space the floor incredibly well on offense and collapse with suffocation on the other end. Heavy on athleticism and short on size, Phoenix is often playing a Miami-style game of pressure-and-rotate. This forces lots of turnovers and lets their young legs exploit the open court.
Most of their halfcourt sets feature a four-out perimeter with both Frye and Morris-Squared serving as stretch threats, Bledsoe slashing from one wing and Dragic doing both from the other. This not only gives the Suns plenty of room to swing for open looks, but doesn’t hurt them on D; Morris-Squared can guard bigger wings, Bledsoe can lock up virtually any guard, and the entire team rotates well enough to go zone whenever it suits them.
The Suns are a breath of fresh air in this NBA era of “Big 3s” and Big Markets; they look like a finely-tuned college team, consistently executing with that token “want it more” effort, and the synergy only purely bred from a team without stars that knows they need to work together. They’ve been encouraging enough that not a single eyelash has been bat about the Lottery pick they’re apparently playing themselves out of.
While the season’s gotten off to a hotter start for the Suns than anyone could’ve fathomed, a small part of the success has to come from the surprise factor they’ll no longer be able to take advantage of. Phoenix has a rather large target on them after leaving a trail of Western corpses in their wake; teams will be circling the calendar, reviewing tape, resting up and certainly not underestimating the Rising Suns.
Hornacek’s debut season will only thicken as more experienced coaches unload their arsenal of tricks on his unconventionally awesome team, but the honeymoon is over, the Suns are for real, and every indication is that this team is in good hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment