That was an awful, awful loss for the Suns

I hate to keep qualifying negative statements about the Suns right now with “it’s preseason basketball” because it is. But even when it’s preseason, teams attempt to win. Therefore, when they lose, and look terrible doing it, you know that something is not right.

(This post has been edited to erase incorrect information in regards to Head Coach Earl Watson.)

The Phoenix Suns have not looked great some far in three preseason games. In fact, they’ve looked downright awful. If you exclude the second half of the opening preseason game against Portland where the reserves actually pulled out the win, the Suns starters have looked like no matter who they play they will be over-matched.

Playing what appeared to be a generally normal rotation for the majority of the game, the Suns were not only outplayed by their Rudy Gobert-less Utah counterparts, but looked downright awful doing it.

Without getting into too much in the way of a quarter-by-quarter breakdown of a bad loss, the Suns starters found themselves down 21-11 only 6:32 into the game. Never allowing themselves to be even somewhat competitive, the score got out of control from there and by halftime Phoenix was basically out of it down 24 points, 65-41.

After falling behind by 30, 80-50, with 7:08 remaining in the third, he Suns went on a 12-0 run led by 9 points from Devin Booker, clawing to within a 16-point deficit by the start of the fourth. However, they would not get any closer than 13 the rest of the way, falling 120-102, and to 1-2 in 2017 preseason play.

The question of why the Suns lost is is an easy one to ask, and also an easy one to answer:

Phoenix turned the ball over 32 times to Utah’s 16.

Booker got the turnover parade going a whopping 12 seconds into the game with a bad pass that was picked off by Ricky Rubio. Of the 13 players who got action tonight for Phoenix, all of them turned the ball over at least once except for Elijah Millsap. Josh Jackson led the way with 7 by himself.

But the absolute worst stats is this:

Devin Booker led the Suns with 19 points and 3 steals, while draining 2-4 from beyond the arc. Eric Bledsoe scoed only 3 points on 1-6 shooting, although he had a team high 7 assists. Troy Daniels “only” went 2-4 from beyond the arc, although he is still shooting 12-21 so far during the preseason, a 57.1%. Alex Len had another good night scoring 18 points to go along with 7 boards. His -6 in the +/1 column led all Suns starters.

Next: Troy Daniels is the next great Suns sharp shooter

Ricky Rubio led all scorers with 20 points on 8-10 shooting but strangly enough had zero turnovers. No other Utah started scored in double-figures, although Donovan Mitchell scored 17, Tony Bradly scored 13, and Alec Burks dropped in 10. Joe Ingles led the Jazz with 4 steals and was one of four players with at least 3 steals for Utah, two others had 2.

On an unfortunate note, Tyson Chandler was ejected at the 8:20 mark in the second quarter for a Flagrant 2 foul on Raul Neto.