Overview:
The 2014-15 season came with high expectations for the Phoenix Suns, a young team on the rise that had won 48 games the year prior. But with the trade deadline departures of Goran Dragic, Isaiah Thomas and three other players, the Suns lost one-third of their roster and fell apart soon after.
More from Suns News
- Ranking the Phoenix Suns’ 5 holiday games in 2023-24
- Zion Williamson gets compared to Phoenix Suns legend
- Suns player preview: Bol Bol can be the perfect role player
- Former Suns’ guard shows he is officially done with Phoenix
- NBA insider guarantees Suns’ rival won’t make blockbuster trade
Still, the season was not a complete waste. Young players who needed more minutes finally got them, the core is intact moving forward and Phoenix will look to regroup in the offseason. But in order to put the season in context, it’s time to take a look back on 2014-15 and examine how everyone performed and how they fit in for the long-term.
Today, we continue our daily 2014-15 Phoenix Suns Player Grades with T.J. Warren, a 21-year-old rookie who showed a ton of promise in his first NBA season.
What did we learn about T.J. Warren, a rookie who came on strong at the end of the year seemingly out of nowhere? Where did he excel in his first season and where does he need to work on his game? And was he just getting minutes because the Suns were out of the playoff race, or does he have something to offer moving forward?
Here’s a look at T.J. Warren’s promising first season with the Suns.
Next: Weaknesses
Weaknesses:
As a rookie, this isn’t surprising, but one area head coach Jeff Hornacek cited all season long as something Warren needed to improve was his defense within the team concept.
Warren usually held his own as a one-on-one defender, as evidenced by his defensive field goal percentage of 43.5 percent — holding opponents to 0.9 percent worse shooting than they’d normally shoot, per NBA.com. That’s not a fantastic number, but it’s worth noting that on shots greater than 15 feet — where Warren normally defended his man — he held his opponent 37.1 percent shooting.
Warren’s not much of a defender at the rim, and his mediocre athleticism comes into play here. But his biggest area for improvement lies in his help defense, where Warren was usually late before showing signs of improvement late in the season. No surprise, those improvements came in the last few months of the season when Warren started getting more minutes.
Hornacek impressed by "stides" Warren took in rookie season. Thinks he'll be great 1-on-1 defender. Wants him to study film all summer
— Matt Petersen (@TheMattPetersen) April 15, 2015
Rookies commonly make a lot of similar mistakes: being late on help defense, committing turnovers, off-target passes, etc. Warren was not immune to such mistakes, but that’s to be expected of a first-year player. Going through some of those growing pains is a good sign moving forward, even if the rook did finish with more turnovers (27) than assists (25) on the year.
However, Warren’s biggest offensive flaws come as a catch-and-shoot player on the wing. According to NBA.com, he shot a dreadful 28.0 percent in catch-and-shoot scenarios. Luckily those shots only constituted 11.7 percent of his attempts, but on a team like the Suns, having a wing who can spread the floor feels like a necessity moving forward.
Unfortunately for Warren, he’s going to have to work hard to become that kind of player. Warren only attempted 21 three-pointers this season, making five of them (23.8 percent).
Warren’s strengths are at the rim and in the midrange (more on that in a second), but Phoenix was the worst three-point shooting team in the league to close the season, making less than 30 percent of their threes after the All-Star break. At some point, the Suns may need Warren to develop his touch from beyond the arc.
Next: Strengths
Strengths:
As a rookie, Warren displayed a veteran-like efficiency from the floor, particularly around the basket. The Suns drafted him because of his nose for the basket and it’s clear after one season that his knack for putting the ball in the hoop has transferred well to the next level.
According to NBA.com, Warren finished seventh among rookies in field goal percentage (52.8 percent), but of the six players ahead of him, only Mitch McGary (165) and Tarik Black (273) attempted a noteworthy number of field goal attempts compared to Warren (214).
Warren’s efficiency comes from his penchant for sticking to his strengths: namely, moving off the ball for easy looks right under the basket and a beyond-his-years midrange game. Warren’s floater is already at a veteran level and even when he catches the ball under the rim off a cut, he knows how to finish around taller defenders.
Warren shot 63.9 percent at the rim, a full nine percent better than the league average. Even in limited minutes, that’s pretty damn impressive for a rookie, especially since he sticks to it; 62.1 percent of Warren’s field goal attempts this season came from that area of the floor.
In fact, Warren is so adept at finishing at the basket he converted 78 of his 115 attempts (67.8 percent) from less than five feet away from the basket — narrowly beating out Jabari Parker for the highest such mark among rookies who attempted at least 100 shots from that range.
On shots from 5-9 feet, Warren was just as elite among his rookie brethren, converting 45.5 percent of those attempts — good for the second best percentage among rookies who attempted at least 15 shots from that range (Bojan Bogdanovic was first at 46.2 percent).
Warren scored the second-most points per touch (0.341) on the Phoenix Suns, per NBA.com, finishing behind only Gerald Green (0.411) — an enigmatic gunner who shot the ball pretty much every time he touched it. Warren also had the second highest effective field goal percentage (54.0 percent) among players who finished the season on the Suns’ roster, trailing only Brandan Wright‘s 58.0 percent.
From his rookie season, it’s pretty apparent that Warren knows how to score. On such a stagnant offense lacking ball movement, he represented a breath of fresh air for simply moving without the ball and converting easy buckets at the rim — the most basic of ways to score in basketball.
Next: Lowlights
Lowlights:
For a rookie in Warren’s position, on a team fighting for a playoff spot, minutes were understandably scarce early in the season. Before the All-Star break and trade deadline that shook up the entire roster, Warren had played a grand total of 147 minutes in 16 games.
In an expanded role, Warren logged 468 minutes in 24 games after the break, more than tripling the amount of minutes he played, points he scored, rebounds he grabbed, shots he made AND shots he attempted in the prior three and a half months. Once Warren got his chance he showed what he could do, but his opportunities were rare until late February.
There is absolutely no scenario where TJ Warren shouldn't be the starting small forward for the Phoenix Suns on 2015's opening night
— Tony Jones (@Tjonesonthenba) April 3, 2015
Once Warren did get more consistent minutes off the bench, he usually made the most of his limited playing time. But he wasn’t always flashing his potential either. Aside from the common rookie mistakes like turnovers and help defense popping up from time to time, he had a slight stinker against the Atlanta Hawks on Apr. 7, going 1-for-7 from the field in 15 minutes.
To be fair, no one played well in that ugly 96-69 defeat, but that game was a pretty clear indicator that as good as Warren already is, he’s still a work in progress.
The last lowlight of his season has to be the “Rush Hour” nickname he received from the Suns broadcast team (because “he’s so good at navigating through traffic”). We need to work together to put a stop to this before it spreads, Suns fans. Until Warren gets a Chinese sidekick or starts singing falsetto Michael Jackson, can we all please agree that “Scorin’ Warren” is infinitely better and just stick with that?
Next: Highlights
Highlights:
The good news for Warren is that when he was in the game, it usually didn’t take long for him to make a play showcasing his potential.
Our first extended glimpse came on Mar. 9 against the Golden State Warriors, when Warren logged a then-season high 24 minutes and finished with 11 points on 5-of-9 shooting. It was a blowout loss for the Suns, but Warren was one of the few bright spots in the defeat.
Two nights later, Warren had the best game of his NBA career to that point, putting up 17 points and five boards in a home win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. Warren shot an uber-efficient 8-for-10 from the floor and got his points by making simple but smart cuts to the basket for high quality looks:
Against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Mar. 29, Warren scored a career-high 18 points on 8-of-10 shooting. He logged a carer-high 29 minutes in the loss and he added five rebounds, two assists and two blocks as well.
Warren’s most impressive performance of the season probably came a few nights later against the Warriors on the road, in a game the Suns nearly won. Oracle Arena is a brutally tough place to play for visiting teams, but Warren did not shrink from the moment, scoring 17 points on 8-of-12 shooting.
The Suns lost that game on a heartbreaking Harrison Barnes game-winner, and Warren missed one heat check of a jump shot late in the fourth quarter that was probably ill-advised. But without his efficient scoring off the bench, Phoenix wouldn’t have even been in the game in the first place.
Warren’s ability to finish in traffic and use the backboard for protection when shooting around the rim was on display multiple times in that contest and he scored nine straight points at one point for the Suns. He scored 15 points on 7-of-10 shooting in the fourth quarter. Between his scoring and one assist, Warren accounted for 17 of Phoenix’s 35 points in the final period.
When the Suns needed a bucket in the last two minutes of the game, they went to Warren, who had no problem bullying Andre Iguodala to get easy looks right near the basket. It was a remarkable performance for a rookie, and even if the Dubs had nothing to play for, the Warriors’ starters played late and Warren played at a high level against the league’s best team.
His highlights aren’t limited to offensive plays, however. Even though he’s still learning when to rotate over and could stand to improve with his on-the-ball defense, Warren is a smart player who can read the floor. That’s evident watching him sneak to the open space on offense, but it’s also pretty obvious in the instances when he’d read the passing lane for a steal or come from the weak side for a rare but beautiful block:
Most of Warren’s highlights came after the team fell into disarray thanks to the trade deadline, but with the Suns’ commitment to the future came an opportunity to see what the rookie can do. He’s still got a long way to go, but there were plenty of highlights to feel good about.
Next: Final Grade
Grade: B
For a team in the middle of a sad, playoff-less season — and for a depressed fan base trying to talk each other down from the ledge — Warren represented one of the few bright spots through it all. Is he a franchise player? No. Does he show the same limitless ceiling as other youngsters like Anthony Davis or Giannis Antetokounmpo? No.
But Warren averaged nearly eight points per game on 55 percent shooting over the last two months of the season and the intelligent manner in which he scored was telling; if he can fine-tune his perimeter shot, he’ll have no problem scoring in this league because of the way he moves without the ball and finds the open spot under the basket.
He still has areas where he can prove, as all rookies do. But as he becomes more familiar with the team’s defensive concepts, he’ll become a more well-rounded player that Hornacek will be able to trust late in games. As his career goes along, he’ll need to develop a three-point shot, but it’s hard to fault him too much right now since he’s so efficient in the paint and midrange.
Perhaps this is more indicative of how depressing the Suns’ 2014-15 season was, but Warren was consistently one of this team’s silver linings over the last few months. His minutes may have been limited early on, and he still has a ways to go, but once T.J. Warren started getting minutes he made the most of them in a lost season.
More 2014-15 Phoenix Suns Player Grades:
Jerel McNeal
Danny Granger
Brandan Wright
Earl Barron
Marcus Thornton
Next: Phoenix Suns: 10 Takeaways From The 2014-15 Season (Part 2)