Can Chemistry Get The Phoenix Suns Back To The Playoffs?

The Chandler Effect

Another major takeaway from Suns Media Day was everyone’s glowing comments about Tyson Chandler, the team’s biggest free agency acquisition. Chandler has found success throughout his NBA career and knows what it takes to win a championship. Though he’s typically played on older teams, Chandler finds himself being the experienced veteran in a room full of younger guys.

“I can only come in and be myself; I’m not gonna try to be anything that I’m not,” he said. “At the end of the day I just want to win, and I got the same impression from the guys that have been here….I think that in itself is what you wanna see coming in, especially for me as a veteran, is that the young guys here want to get better and they wanna learn.”

This season will be the first time in Chandler’s career that he’s the “old guy” in the locker room, citing his days with the Dallas Mavericks when he’d crack jokes in the locker room at the expense of vets like Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry and Brian Cardinal.

But for the rest of the roster, everyone seems to be on the same page as far as looking to Chandler for guidance — including Eric Bledsoe, who took steps this summer to become more of a leader and face of the franchise. Still, Bledsoe wouldn’t listen to any claims that this was now “his team.”

“We’ve got great veterans on the team, Tyson is the main guy,” he said. “Whatever he’s got to say, I’m gonna listen 100 percent.”

Chandler has been just as gracious, saying that he’s been telling Bledsoe and Knight in pickup games that “this is your team.” In any event, that back and forth between current veterans and future leaders can only be good news for the Suns, especially when an established winner has nothing but complimentary things to say about the young players on the roster.

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“A lot of these players are even more talented than I thought they were,” Chandler said. “I think it’s players that have really bright futures here. When you’re on the outside looking in, you don’t know personalities, you don’t know how receptive they’re gonna be when you come in, how receptive they are to a different culture, and everybody’s been like sponges.”

As the Suns soak up every ounce of basketball knowledge they can from the 14-year veteran, the team’s offense AND defense should show noticeable signs of improvement in 2015-16. With an authoritative rebounder and shot-blocker in the middle, Phoenix can get back to its running ways and push the tempo off defensive stops.

“If you’d seen any of their pickup games out here since Tyson’s been here, it’s a world of difference,” Hornacek explained. “Our point guards are getting up the court, Tyson’s willing to throw it to anybody, even if they’re at half court. So what it does, it empowers some of our guys to say, ‘If I run, he may outlet it to me.’ It gets everybody running, so that’s gonna be a huge help.”

On the defensive end, there are Chandler’s obvious abilities as an anchor, rebounder and rim deterrent. But according to Brandon Knight, one of the biggest differences between this year’s team and last year’s team is the level of communication.

“With us having such a young team here, what Tyson’s already doing is adding that talking factor, making guys communicate with each other, because you’re gonna have some breakdowns,” he said. “When you have some breakdowns, you can either talk about it or you can not talk about it, but when you don’t talk about it, you’re probably giving yourself a zero percent chance of fixing it. But when you talk about it, you at least give yourself a chance to fix the problem.”

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