PHOENIX — You might not know it by his results, but Channing Frye does not believe in the hot hand theory.

Whether he’s shooting 1-for-7 and 2-for-11 as he has in the past few weeks or 12-for-16 as he did in Tuesday’s 102-101 win over the Utah Jazz, Frye always tries to shoot the same shots with the same balance and the same focus on the rim.

But after Suns assistant Igor Kokoskov challenged Frye about his shooting before Tuesday’s game, the UA product could not miss during a 7-for-7 first quarter that included five threes and resulted in 19 points, a total he had not surpassed in a game since going off for 25 on Jan. 21 in Washington.

“He was like, ‘We pay you to make some shots, so you better go out there and make some,’” Frye said of Kokoskov. “So, I was like, ‘All right.’ I just went out there and shot and just had confidence in shooting them. My teammates kept putting me in situations to succeed.”

Frye went on to score a career-high 31 points to go along with 11 rebounds for his first career 30-10 game and his fourth career 30-point game overall as well as his first as a Sun. The Suns are now 6-0 when Frye scores 20 this year and 5-0 when he puts up a double-double.

You could see Frye was locked in from the tip as his monster first helped the Suns overcome an eight-turnover opening period, and his hot shooting continued into the second half. He even scored on consecutive post-ups early in the second half when Utah switched a smaller defender onto him.

But tonight was all about the long ball for Channing, who finished with six on the game and most certainly reached “He’s on fire” status.

“He was in a great zone,” said Mickael Pietrus. “I’ve been through that before, and it’s pretty fun.”

What I liked most about his performance is he didn’t start forcing heat check jumpers. Gentry even chided his team for not getting Channing the ball more as he attempted one less shot than he did during back-to-back 6-for-17 and 5-for-17 appearances to start the month.

To me it’s a very good thing that Frye scored his 31 points on 75 percent shooting in the flow of the offense, choosing not to force anything. As Frye said afterward, he was happy to shoot when he was open, but if it’s not it’s nothing personal, he will make the right read and move the ball.

When players think they’re hot they often tend to start jacking up bad shots that ultimately cost their team, but Frye stayed within his means tonight and that led to a narrow victory.

Channing’s monster night was a welcome sign for a player whose shooting touch has left him all too often this season. He’s shooting 41.5 percent from the field (108th among qualified players and worst on the Suns) and 38.0 percent from three (55th after ranking sixth at 43.9 percent last season).

His PER is down to 11.81 from 15.09 last season, his Wins Produced numbers show him as a below average player and his adjusted plus/minus numbers have dropped from last year as well.

I recently surveyed some advanced stats writers from the Wages of Wins Network on Channing, and they basically told me those numbers don’t lie despite Gentry playing Frye 36 minutes a game since Jan. 9. Gentry likes how his ability to space the floor opens up the game for the rest of the Suns, so I’m still hesitant to accept that Frye’s playing as bad as the advanced analytics say he is.

But there’s no debating one thing about Frye, and it’s that when he gets rolling he can carry a team to victory as he did tonight.

The Suns still needed to rip off an 11-0 run after trailing by eight with seven minutes left, and once again it was Frye providing a dagger from long range to tie things up before Pietrus gave the Suns the lead for good with a triple to put them up three with 3:35 remaining.

The Suns nearly coughed up that advantage after suffering a shot-clock violation for their 19th turnover with 16.5 remaining during a possession that involved lots of standing around and not much else while the Suns nursed a one-point lead.

But Grant Hill forced a Deron Williams miss, Frye made one of two free throws, and then Marcin Gortat rotated over to defend Paul Millsap cutting to the basket for a potential game-tying layup before Millsap fumbled the ball away for a game-clinching turnover.

With the win the Suns swept the season series with the Jazz for the first time since 1982-83. That, of course, means they own the tiebreaker against Utah, who leads Phoenix by 2 1/2 games for the No. 8 seed in the West but is ahead by just one game in the loss column. The Suns are also one game out in the loss column behind Denver and two back of New Orleans and Portland.

After dropping Sunday’s heartbreaker to the lowly Kings, the Suns continued their stellar run of late, winning their seventh game in nine tries and their sixth out of seven against winning teams.

Despite how well this team is playing, the Suns have also learned during this stretch about the size of their margin for error these days, according to their captain.

“We’re the type of team that the minute we think we’ve arrived we’re going to get socked in the mouth, so we’ve got to come out every day with everything to prove and try to be the underdog,” Steve Nash said. “We’re a team that’s got to go out there and feel like we have to prove ourselves every night and earn it. If you take one little bit off the gas we get pretty mediocre pretty fast.”

With Frye drilling shots every time he touched the ball, the Suns looked far better than mediocre against Utah.

Rotational ramblings

Vince Carter did not log a second in the fourth quarter for the fourth straight game, scoring 10 points in 25 minutes of the first three.

Pietrus played the entire fourth in his place and did a fantastic job in that period, scoring eight points, grabbing four rebounds and blocking a whopping three shots while playing aggressive defense.

“Pietrus made some huge plays — rebounds, blocked shots, things like that,” Gentry said. “He was really good there.”

Added Nash, “It’s great when he makes shots, but what I love is him blocking shots, grabbing big rebounds. Tonight he was so active, you see this athleticism you don’t see every night that’s pretty impressive. He really was huge for us tonight.”

Since they both play better defense and can provide similar outside shooting to Carter, I wouldn’t mind seeing Pietrus or Jared Dudley continue to close out games.

After playing Goran Dragic for five minutes in the second quarter in his first action since missing seven games with a toe injury, Gentry went with Zabian Dowdell for five minutes in the second half.

The Suns lost eight points under Dragic’s watch and nine with Dowdell, making Nash’s plus/minus look real nice at plus 18.

Dragic scored two points and got a rebound and an assist but he turned it over twice and failed to control the game.

“It’s Goran’s first game back and I thought he was a little rusty,” Gentry said. “That’s why we have Zabian on the team, to be able to stick him in there. He’s played the last couple of games and been pretty good, so we just thought in that situation Zabian would probably be a little more stable.”

Dragic agreed with the rusty assessment and added his legs were “a little heavy,” but he had no problem with Gentry making him earn his backup point guard role back.

And 1

Nash passed Gary Payton for seventh on the NBA’s all-time assist list, just missing another 20-15 game with 20 points and 14 assists. “He was always good to me,” Nash said of Payton. “I remember my junior year in college him inviting me to work out in his backyard in Oakland, pretty cool. It was amazing to know where I was then and to pass him was like beyond my wildest dreams, and I love the guy.” … The Suns held their fifth straight opponent under 46 percent shooting, their longest such streak since Jan. 5-15, 2010. Eight of their last nine opponents have shot under 46 percent. … Frye’s 19 points in the first tied Hakim Warrick (second quarter Nov. 24 vs. Chicago) for the Suns’ individual high quarter. … The Suns grabbed just three offensive rebounds, none of which came from a big.

Jazz

Suns

PHOENIX — A .500 basketball team by definition is inconsistent enough to both win and lose half its games.

That has been the Phoenix Suns’ season in a nutshell, as a squad that has been good enough to beat the Lakers, Hawks, Jazz (twice) and Knicks on the road and Celtics, Hornets, Nuggets and Blazers at home is also the only NBA team to be felled twice by the Sacramento Kings.

This team is so unpredictable that right when they appear to be dead they come from behind to defeat New Jersey to kickstart a five-game winning streak or dominate the Celtics to start a 6-1 stretch and right when they appear to have figured things out they drop a heartbreaker in Detroit or lose to the Kings.

With 30 games left, the Suns may yet be consistent in something other than inconsistency, and to that end Tuesday night’s contest against the Utah Jazz is a huge one.

The Suns trail the Jazz — tied with Portland for the No. 6 seed — by 3 1/2 games, but  they are just two games out in the loss column. A win in this one cuts that deficit to one, and the Suns already own the tiebreaker by virtue of their two wins in Utah.

The Suns are lucky in that many other Western Conference teams have struggled with consistency throughout the year as Denver has slid to the No. 8 slot just one up in the loss column and the triumvirate of Portland, Utah and Denver can all be caught with a good stretch of basketball although the Suns must jump over Memphis first before looking at those teams.

“We’re trying to catch teams that all win,” head coach Alvin Gentry said. “We’re trying to catch anybody, any of eight teams we are trying to catch.  But we’ve got to leap frog a couple of other teams to even think about getting in to the eight spot.”

The Suns will benefit from the absence of Andrei Kirilenko, who will sit this one out after spraining his right ankle Friday against Phoenix. Raja Bell (strained calf) and Ronnie Price (sprained toe) are both game-time decisions.

The Jazz often go as Kirilenko goes, and we saw that Friday night as he put up a plus 17 in 13 minutes of work, whereas backup small forward Gordon Hayward lost 23 points in 30 minutes.

The Suns have some positive injury news of their own as backup point guard Goran Dragic is expected to return from his foot injury against Utah after missing the previous seven games. Zabian Dowdell has more or less done a solid job as the backup point guard, but the offense has stalled at times as it did during the beginning of Sunday’s fourth quarter. For that game Dowdell was a minus eight in 11 minutes, so it will be nice to get The Dragon back.

With Jerry Sloan gone and the Tyrone Corbin era upon us, the Suns need to take advantage of a time in which the Jazz are in flux a bit, as we saw during their second-half meltdown on Friday. Sloan’s absence could also portend a fall from a playoff spot for a Utah team that has been stumbling and bumbling since starting a six-game losing streak on Jan. 17.

But the Suns can’t worry about other teams. If they don’t become more consistent themselves, it won’t matter what the rest of the West does.

Robin Lopez and the Suns' defense buckled down on Paul Millsap and the Utah Jazz in the second half. (AP Photo/Jim Urquhart)

The Phoenix Suns played a terrible first half and shot just 40 percent from the field and half as well on threes on the second game of a back-to-back against an emotional Utah team playing without Jerry Sloan as their head coach for the first time since the late ’80s.

That certainly would have been the recipe for a defeat a couple weeks ago, but none of that could derail the Phoenix Suns express Friday night in Salt Lake City as the Suns used a stifling second-half defensive effort to beat the Jazz going away, 95-83.

The Suns trailed 56-44 at the break after a first half in which Utah got off to a quick 13-2 lead, but they kept plugging away until the tide turned in a big way in the second half.

“We just said, ‘Stick with it,’” Steve Nash told ESPN in his walkoff interview. “We played so poorly in the first half we were lucky to be down 12. We came out feeling like we had a second life. We went on a little run to start, and that was kind of it.”

That was all thanks to a scintillating second-half defensive effort that would impress the Boston Celtics. The Suns held the Jazz to 27 points on 32.4 percent shooting from the field and 2-for-10 shooting from deep, and that was only after C.J. Miles and Deron Williams hit garbage threes in the final 33 seconds.

That means in the first 23:27 of the half before the game had been decided the Jazz scored just 21 points on less than 30 percent shooting without drilling a three. They rebounded just three of those missed buckets as the Suns outboarded them 29-15 in the half with four players with five boards and a fifth with four. According to Elias, no team in the shot clock era has scored fewer second-half points in a head coach’s debut.

The Suns, meanwhile, played a typical Phoenix offensive half by scoring 51 on 48.8 percent shooting, although they still struggled behind the arc, hitting 3-of-14 in the half. Their defense allowed them to overcome a 3:37 drought near the beginning of the fourth with the bench unit in as both teams traded misses before Nash and Hill returned to restore order.

“We just got off to a horrendous start,” head coach Alvin Gentry told reporters. “Couldn’t make a shot, gave up too many transition baskets to them early in the game. We knew that there would be a reaction, an emotional reaction to the whole Jerry (Sloan) thing. And we told our guys we were just going to have to weather that and then lock in, and the last 36 minutes of the game is going to be played like the game is going to be played.”

Added Jazz head coach Tryone Corbin (sounds weird, right?), “We ran out of gas. I mean, I don’t know if it was emotions in the first half, when we showed up for the game, but the second half, we just got away from everything we were doing.”

It really says something about the changing identity of the Suns that they could win a game in a (formerly?) hostile environment on the second game of a back-to-back on a night their shots weren’t falling against such an emotional team.

Sure, it helped quite a bit that Andrei Kirilenko missed the second half with a twisted ankle, Raja Bell was out with a strained left calf and Ronnie Price couldn’t go because of a sprained toe. Those injuries certainly depleted Utah’s bench and made some kind of an impact on the anemic second half.

Still, the Suns’ simplified defense has become a weapon during the Suns’ stretch of winning six of seven and 11 of 15 to move a game over .500 for the first time since Dec. 7. Marcin Gortat and Mickael Pietrus in particular played fantastic man defense as the Jazz never could get anything going in the second half.

It was also good to see Gentry stick with his hot players rather than go with a set rotation.

The bench played together until the four-minute mark of the second quarter as a reward for going on a spurt. In the fourth quarter, Pietrus and Hakim Warrick joined Gortat in playing the entirety of the period as only Nash and Hill were brought back halfway through. Pietrus played solid defense on Williams while Warrick put up a real nice 8-4-2 stat line in the fourth quarter alone.

Channing Frye (2-for-11, 1-for-7 on threes) and Jared Dudley (1-for-7, 0-for-3) just didn’t have their shooting eye tonight, so Gentry went with the hot hands instead. He also played Lopez a full 10:16 in the third as he enjoyed perhaps his best stretch of the season in putting up 11 points and grabbing five boards (four offensive).

The Jazz didn’t have an answer for his activity, and if he played like that every night this Suns team would be really dangerous. Lopez was just much more aggressive than normal and seemed to be playing with lots of confidence, and that made a big difference.

The win allows the Suns to keep pace with Portland, who beat the Raptors tonight. Phoenix trails the Blazers by two games but just one in the loss column, and the squad is one back of Memphis but up one in the loss column.

The Suns’ recent winning ways more interestingly bring them closer to the rest of the West pack. They now trail the Jazz, who have lost 11 of 15 and four in a row at home, by just three games and one in the loss column. If the Suns beat the Kings on Sunday and then Utah again on Tuesday in US Airways Center, they would be even in the loss column and 1 1/2 back of the Jazz overall, and with their second win of the season in Utah tonight they clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Jazz.

Looking further up the standings, No. 6 Denver is just two games up on the Suns in the loss column and could be making a franchise-altering deal any second now and even No. 5 New Orleans three up in the loss column isn’t beyond being caught.

For some time now the West playoff picture looked like a top heavy top seven and then Portland, Memphis and the Suns battling for No. 8. But at this point the final three or so spots may be up for grabs for all those teams in the mix.

The Suns have put themselves in that discussion with their 11-4 run, but most importantly they have finally gelled with their Orlando acquisitions and seem like they could be poised to make another second-half run.

The offense will always be there, but if the Suns can continue to play the kind of defense they did in the second half tonight they will be a threat in the Western Conference down the stretch.

And 1

Beckley Mason over at HoopSpeak wrote an interesting feature on the jump pass, and that discussion includes a look at Nash’s propensity to execute this risky maneuver. … The Suns committed just six turnovers in this ballgame. … Warrick and Pietrus were both a team-high plus 15 in 22 minutes of action. … After trailing by 15 in the second quarter, the Suns came all the way back to take a 15-point lead of their own in the waning moments of the contest.

Suns

Jazz

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns will do something Friday night that thay haven’t done in 23 seasons: They’ll take on the Utah Jazz without Jerry Sloan coaching.

Sloan resigned Thursday amid reports that he and Jazz point guard Deron Williams had  clashed at halftime of the team’s Wednesday loss to the Bulls, one of a number of recent disputes.

No player on either team even comes close to having been in the league when Sloan took over in Salt Lake City. In fact, no currently active player was in the league at the time. Accordingly, no NBA player right now knows a league without the longtime Jazz coach.

The Suns will be the Jazz’s first (and second) opponent without Sloan and the coach’s absence could have an effect on the game, but what effect remains uncertain.

“I don’t know what to expect,” Suns coach Alvin Gentry said before Thursday’s game with the Golden State Warriors. “I don’t know if they know what to expect. He’s been through two buildings. Just not having him on the sideline is going to be very weird.”

Since Sloan began in Utath, there have been 245 coaching changes in the NBA. Gentry, when one reporter wondered Thursday what team had the most, quickly (and correctly) deadpanned, “The Clippers.” Seven of those changes can be attributed to Gentry.

The first change following his departure was, logically, his replacement by Jazz assistant and former Sun Tyrone Corbin, who was in the running to take over the Suns before Terry Porter was hired.

Many have speculated that with Sloan out the door, Williams will be motivated Friday, as will his teammates, but no one is sure quite what to expect.

“It’s going to be very different but I’m not really worried about what’s happening with them,” Suns forward Channing Frye said Thursday. “They’re either going to be discombobulated or they’re going to be really hyped up, so for us we’ve just got to go out there and play how we’re playing.”

Gentry and the Suns are plenty familiar with this Jazz team. Earlier this season, the Suns beat the Jazz in Utah behind 18 points apiece from Steve Nash and Hakim Warrick.

Gentry said Thursday that the Suns prepare for Utah pretty much the same every time they meet, though that doesn’t always mean much.

“You could go back and get a scouting report from 1990 and it’s basically the same thing,” Gentry said. “Literally you could go back and get a scouting report from when [Jeff] Hornacek, [John] Stockton and [Karl] Malone were there and it’s pretty much the same stuff.”

The Jazz have struggled of late, losing 10 of their last 14 games and going without consecutive wins for nearly a month.

Williams has been struggling mightily as well. He’s shot just 5-of-36 on three-pointers in his last eight games, leading some to believe his wrist is still troubling him.

The Suns, conversely, have been on the rise. Over their last six games, the Suns have held opponents to an average of 90.2 points and have played some of the league’s best defense.

“The last 10 or 12 games, we’ve had teams [shooting] in the 40s and some in the 30s,” Gentry said following Thursday’s game. “If we keep it right there and keep the turnovers down, then I think we’re pretty good.”

After returning to the .500 mark Thursday for the first time since Dec. 19, the Suns look to keep rolling and finish strong before the All-Star break.

“Certainly it will be nice to go there and get a win,” Grant Hill said. “You know, just feel good about ourselves and hopefully be above .500 going into the All-Star break.”

And 1

Against the Warriors on Thursday night, Nash regained the NBA’s all-time top career free throw shooting percentage for the third time this season. Going 3-for-3 from the stripe, Nash again overtook Mark Price, who was in attendance as an assistant coach for Golden State.

Anybody who has watched the Suns for the past few years might have gotten that same eerily familiar uneasy feeling in their stomachs.

Up 18 midway through the third quarter and seemingly cruising to an easy victory, Phoenix allowed Utah to run off 11 straight points to close the gap to seven.

Steve Nash scored 18 points in 33 minutes Thursday to lead the Suns to a big bounce-back win. (AP Photo/George Frey)

But just as quickly as the lead had disappeared, the Suns built it right back up.

Behind five straight points from Steve Nash, Phoenix absorbed the Jazz’ best punch and went on to win, 110-94.

“It was undoubtedly an important game for us tonight,” Nash told The Associated Press. “We learned our lesson and held our composure for longer stretches, and in particular, we held it together at the end of the game.”

The Suns (1-1) had a lot to be happy about coming off a disappointing opening-night loss against Portland just two nights prior.

Most notably being the performance of Hakim Warrick off the bench, as Michael Schwartz wrote in today’s Daily Dime.

The forward posted 18 points and 11 rebounds in 26 minutes (four more minutes than the starter Hedo Turkoglu played).

Warrick provided one of the many highlights of the night in the third quarter when he cocked back and posterized Jazz defender Paul Millsap.

Most encouraging from the highlight however, was not the dunk itself, but the pick-and-roll play that led to it.

Nash led a diving-to-the-paint Warrick with a picture perfect bounce pass to put the first-year Sun into SportsCenter highlight history.

With Amare Stoudemire gone, a big offseason worry was who would fill the open slot to play with the best pick-and-roll point guard in the league.

Well if Warrick’s play on Thursday is any barometer of how the season will go, the rest of the league might be in for a surprise.

Overall, Phoenix’s bench outscored their Jazz counterparts 50-16.

The complete second-team thrashing was helped by solid outings from both Channing Frye (14 points on 4-of-10 shooting) and Goran Dragic (11 points with a team-high six assists).

Another good sign from the game was the team rebounding the Suns took advantage of.

Even though Robin Lopez was limited to just 20 minutes of playing time because of foul trouble, the Suns still managed to secure 44 boards, just one less than the Jazz (0-2) got.

In the third quarter, Lopez sat down with six and a half minutes to play with five personals. Upon re-entering the game in the fourth quarter, the center fouled out shortly after.

With a small lineup in, the Suns found a way to secure long rebounds and drained the resulting wide-open three-pointers.

For the game, Phoenix shot 46 percent from the field.

The Suns made arguably their biggest statement just before halftime.

After two Andrei Kirilenko free throws cut the Phoenix lead to 11, the Suns went on to score five back-breaking points in the final 29 seconds of the half.

Jason Richardson sunk a 24-foot jumper with the shot clock expiring and then just a few seconds later after an Al Jefferson missed attempt, Nash hit Richardson in stride for a layup as time ran out.

Phoenix finished the half connecting on 7-of-13 three-point attempts. Conversely, the Jazz only made 1-0f-7.

The sequence at the end of the second quarter was a microcosm of how Utah played for the better part of three quarters Thursday: uninspired and lazy.

The team, coming off a 22-point opening-night loss to Denver, showed little fire coming out of the gate and the Suns subsequently jumped on the Jazz early and never trailed.

Leading the way for Utah was Al Jefferson with 20 points and nine rebounds. Millsap added 19 points and 13 boards.

Six Suns scored in double figures and all 10 players who entered the game played at least 15 minutes.

The balanced effort was a welcomed sight after not seeing much continuity throughout the preseason and first regular season game.

Suns

Jazz

The Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz enter tonight’s TNT matchup in a very similar situation.

Both are coming off a loss at the hands of a Western Conference foe, as the Suns ran out of gas against Portland Tuesday night and the Jazz were dominated 110-88 in Denver Wednesday night.

But the parallels don’t stop there.

The Jazz and the Suns are both entering the season without their high-profile power forwards down low, with Carlos Boozer in Chicago and Amare Stoudemire in New York.

It was clear how much the Suns missed Stoudemire Tuesday night, as they were outrebounded 48-30 and yielded 18 offensive boards to the Blazers. The starting Phoenix frontcourt of Robin Lopez and Hedo Turkoglu combined for 11 points and eight rebounds on 4-for-11 shooting. Stoudemire just about doubled that point total every game, and averaged just under one rebound more.

The Jazz also felt the absence of Boozer against the Nuggets, as no player grabbed double-digit boards and the Utah frontcourt of Paul Milsap and Al Jefferson combined for only 21 points. Jefferson was underwhelming in his Jazz debut, as he faced double team after double team on his way to a six-point, seven-rebound effort.

But regardless of his sub-par debut, Jefferson gives the Jazz toughness on the boards and interior scoring — which are two things that the Suns lack. The Jazz are a matchup nightmare for this Phoenix team that split the four-game regular season series last year.

Steve Nash always struggles to defend a bigger Deron Williams — who averaged 20.5 points and 8.0 assists against the Suns last season — and the discipline of a Jerry Sloan-coached team is the polar opposite of the free-flowing Suns, who are trying to find themselves.

Utah’s flex offense is based off moving without the basketball and curl cuts in the paint. The Suns can’t defend the paint, which is where the problem lies for Phoenix. The Jazz are still finding themselves without Boozer however, so the Suns may not be facing as big of an uphill battle as expected.

The Jazz are also on the tail end of a back-to-back, but they are a different team in EnergySolutions Arena in Utah. And if the Suns will have any chance they need to find a rhythm offensively.

Phoenix lacked an identity offensively against Portland as the game plan became sit back and watch Nash go to work to the tune of 92 points and 19 turnovers. Letting Nash operate wasn’t necessarily a bad idea as he scored 26 points on 10-of-19 shooting, despite nine turnovers.

But the two-time MVP needs help from someone not named Jason Richardson, who scored 22 in Portland. Who that third scorer is going to be remains to be seen.

Either Turkoglu, Hill or Lopez needs to ramp up their scoring with the starters, or someone on the bench needs to get hot. Nash and J-Rich can only do so much, meaning someone needs to pick it up or the Suns will start the season 0-2.

But 0-2 could quickly turn into 0-3 or 0-4, as the Suns host the Lakers and Spurs in their next two games. If there’s one game the Suns can win during this brutal four-game stretch to start the season, it’s tonight.

The Suns and the Jazz are still searching for an identity and chemistry, and whoever does so first tonight on TNT will most likely come out on top.

The Suns fired up 21 three-pointers but only connected on six en route to a second consecutive loss to Utah, this time by a score of 108-97.

Hedo Turkoglu led Phoenix in scoring with 13 points. (AP Photo/Jim Urquhart)

Hedo Turkoglu was the most noticeable offender, as he seemingly took a shot from long distance whenever possible.

However, he did play better than he had in previous outings, finishing 3-of-7 beyond the arc for a team-high 13 points.

No Suns starter played more than 19 minutes.

The first half of Thursday’s game was incredulously slow with 34 fouls called, 22 of which were on Utah.

By the end of the game, the Jazz racked up 33 personal fouls.

Last season, Utah was the second most penalized team in the NBA, averaging more than 22 personals per game.

At the foul line, the Suns performed admirably, draining 29-of-39 from the charity stripe.

Leading 70-65 midway through the third quarter, Phoenix allowed Utah to storm off a 16-4 run to end the period.

This, however, was done long after the Suns’ key players were removed from the game. Phoenix never fully recovered and trailed by as much as 16 in the fourth quarter.

Al Jefferson, who was traded in the offseason from Minnesota, led the Jazz in scoring with a game-high 24 points, six rebounds and three assists.

Only adding to concerns for when the regular season begins, the Suns once again lost the rebounding battle 51-34. Also, 15 of Utah’s boards were offensive as the Jazz outscored Phoenix in the paint by 10.

Defensively, the Suns were a mess. At the end of the first half Channing Frye allowed Utah’s Jeremy Evans to slip behind him twice and convert back to back alley-oop layups.

A bright spot for Phoenix, however, was the play of Garret Siler.

The 6-foot-11-inch, 305-pound center came off the bench to score 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting with seven rebounds in 20 minutes.

The Suns have three preseason games remaining and it will be crucial in each one to develop some sort of continuity in the rotations before heading into the regular season opener Oct. 26 against Portland.

Yes, it is just the preseason, but if the Suns get off to a slow start, fans will point to these games as the smoke for the fire.

And 1

In the two-game battle of former Syracuse teammates, Hakim Warrick and Jazz forward Demetris Nichols, the Suns’ Orangeman edged out the statistical win.

Warrick finished the home-and-home series with a combined 19 points and six rebounds, while Nichols tallied 18 points and five boards.

The duo played together at SU for two seasons between 2003-05, winning the school’s first Big East tournament championship since 1992 in the process.

Up next

The Suns travel to Toronto to take on the Raptors Sunday morning at 10 a.m. MST in a game to be televised by NBA TV. On Oct. 6 in Vancouver, the Raptors demolished the Suns 129-78.

Goran Dragic led the Suns with 15 points on 5-for-8 shooting. (AP Photo/Matt York)

PHOENIX — If NBA preseason games are good for anything, it’s gleaning where a team is set and where it still needs to improve.

Tuesday night’s preseason home opener displayed that few things are actually “set” for the Phoenix Suns as they fell 105-100 at the hands of the Utah Jazz.

Now, there is no reason to panic. It is, after all, just the preseason. Hedo Turkoglu’s early exit (he played just nine minutes) with a bruised back could be reason to worry, but Suns coach Alvin Gentry said holding him out was just precautionary.

However, the lack of certainty overall displays just how much this reloaded Suns team still has to figure out.

“It was a typical preseason game,” Gentry said after the game. “We had some good moments and we had some really tough moments. I was happy with a lot of things and, obviously, disappointed with some.”

It started and ended with taking care of the ball in Tuesday’s game. The Suns tallied 12 turnovers in the first half and finished with 20 for 23 points. Four turnovers came at the hands of forward Jared Dudley and three via point guard Steve Nash.

The Jazz coughed the ball up 15 times for 17 points.

“We need to continue to work on our turnovers,” Gentry said. “We’ve got to get that to a working number, which to me that’s got to be in the 12 [or] 13 turnovers range.”

It may not have be as much carelessness with the ball  as it was an ongoing adjustment period for a team that saw three major roster changes in the offseason.

The Suns’ offense has for the past few years been a very smooth, flowing, connected offense with Nash tying it all together. But the team that took the floor against the Jazz looked like a group of players still a bit unfamiliar with each other’s style of play.

“We did some good things, especially on defense, but we had some break[downs] in communication,” point guard Goran Dragic said.

Dragic led the Suns with 15 points and five assists, including eight points in the fourth quarter and 3-of-4 shooting from deep.

Dragic’s three deep balls came in less than five minutes as the Suns tried to claw their way back into the game during the fourth quarter. With 8:56 to go, an Earl Clark jumper from 14 feet out gave the Suns their first lead, 84-83, since the 8:16 mark of the second quarter, but the Jazz quickly went on a 15-4 run to wear out the Suns’ secondary unit.

The deep bench took the final minutes of the game and tried to make it interesting when Matt Janning pulled the Suns within three on a three-pointer in the final moments, but it wasn’t enough.

Dragic also led a number of super-sub lineups through the night, with everyone on the roster seeing time except center Garret Siler. Nash led all starters with nearly 22 minutes of court time.

The Suns’ second unit also displayed that it is still finding its legs, as the subs played most of the second quarter when Phoenix scored just 11 points to the Jazz’s 25.

“Every day it’s better and better,” Dragic said of the second unit. “We are getting to know each other.”

Gentry continues to experiment with rotations, particularly with new Suns Josh Childress and Hakim Warrick, as he figures out how to best utilize one of the league’s deepest benches.

“We’ve got to do a better job in our rotations,” Gentry said.

Warrick was again a bright spot for the Suns, adding 11 points and three rebounds in almost 19 minutes of play. But Warrick seems to be bringing something beyond the stat line — energy.

The super-athletic forward showed on more than one occasion (including a nasty alley-oop dunk from Nash in the third quarter) that he brings a presence that can spark a run and generally raise the level of play around him.

Jason Richardson also continued to shine, posting 13 points on 3-of-6 shooting. Richardson’s shot looked smooth (minus one air ball) and his release quick, which is key as he may end up being the team’s leading scorer after the departure of Amare Stoudemire.

“J-Rich is playing real well with the energy he’s bringing and the way he’s shooting the ball,” Gentry said.

Al Jefferson led the Jazz with 16 points and five rebounds while C.J. Miles added 13 points and five rebounds.

The Suns also won the rebounding battle and showed flashes of being a dominant, fast-paced offense. It shouldn’t take too long for this team to mesh into a legitimate offensive threat, as per usual on Planet Orange.

With four preseason games to go, there is still plenty to learn about this Suns team for fans and the Suns themselves. With the season opener two weeks away, the Suns remain a work in progress.

Up next

The Suns finish off this home and home series with a trip to Utah to play the Jazz on Thursday at 6 p.m. MST.

Jazz: SLC Dunk | Salt City Hoops | SBN Recap

Nuggets: Denver Stiffs | Roundball Mining Company | The Nugg Doctor | SBN Recap

Thunder: Welcome to Loud City | Planet BBall | SBN Recap

Timberwolves: Canis Hoopus | TwolvesBlog

Blazers: Blazersedge.com | SBN Recap

Recaps: All Previews

The Arizona Republic‘s Paul Coro reported, prior to the league’s one-hour NBA TV special (sound familiar?), that the Suns will open the season on the road against the Portland Trail Blazers, whom the Suns knocked out of the first round of the playoffs last season.

No date is specified in Coro’s report, but the Suns’ opener will likely fall on the league’s opening night, Oct. 26. The Suns open their national TV schedule on Oct. 28 against the Jazz in Salt Lake City. The next night, they’ll travel back to Phoenix to play the Lakers in US Airways Center’s first game of the season.

The NBA is set to roll out the full 2010-11 schedule on Aug. 10. Tuesday’s announcement was the first time in history that the league revealed parts of the regular season schedule early.

According to Coro’s report, the Suns will face an old friend on Martin Luther King Day (Jan. 17) as they take on Amare Stoudemire and the New York Knicks. Both the Portland game and the New York game were not revealed by the NBA on Tuesday.

Coro notes in the report that the Suns’ first two games against the Lakers last season were on the second night of back-to-backs. The scheduling gods strike again.

The Suns’ opener against the Trail Blazers is likely to be overshadowed by two opening night duels: Miami Heat at Boston Celtics and Houston Rockets at Los Angeles Lakers. No surprises there.