Shooting Guard – Troy Daniels
Devin Booker and Josh Jackson are slashers.
Deandre Ayton is going to own the post.
Trevor Ariza is going to stretch the floor.
Rather than putting a point guard on the court just for the sake of having a traditional point guard, why not start the team’s best all-around shooter, allowing him to hang out around the 3-point line, keeping the lane open (as he is not a slasher himself) and draining 3’s the way he did for the Suns last season when he shot 40.7 from the outside as a starter.
Losing Troy Daniels as a bench player hurts somewhat, but the return on that investment is that as a starter, his shooting might actually help the Suns take leads in games that they haven’t been able to achieve in recent years, giving the bench some breathing room with which to work.
The key too to playing Daniels at shooting guard, is that it guarantees that rather than a lesser player playing point guard just to force Booker into his natural shooting guard position, by playing a still good shooting guard (especially the shooting portion of his game) this gives the team’s best player the ball as much as possible.
Josh Jackson’s poor results thus far in the preseason is further proof that the starting lineup will indeed need another shooter, and since T.J. Warren hasn’t been shooting 3’s the way many of us thought he would be based on the summer-hype that he had significantly improved his outside shot, moving Daniels to the starting lineup helps to relieve the team from both Jackson and Warren’s inability to become consistent outside shooters.