The Phoenix Suns’ four-game preseason is simply too short

Players might hate them, teams rarely broadcast them because fans rarely watch them, but the Phoenix Suns’ four-game preseason slate is way too short.

Recently I discussed how one former Phoenix Suns player predicted the length of the current four-game preseason schedule almost forty years ago.

However, in that age of little player movement and consistent coaches, four games might have made more sense for athletes who really had a great sense of who their teammates were because they played with them for extended periods of time.

Today, NBA rosters are generally in a constant state of flux – especially when the teams have been bad and winning comes at a premium.

Take the Phoenix Suns for instance.

A ridiculous 25 players suited up for the franchise at one time or another last season, such high attrition that has been a mainstay for the team for far too long now (22 players in 2017-18; 18 in 2016-17; 23 in 2015-16 and in 2014-15).

For a franchise like the Suns who have been struggling to find a winning combination of players, at least a core that can be built around for the foreseeable future, having such consistent turnover never allows for a level of continuity to develop month-to-month, let alone year-to-year.

And now, after another offseason of tremendous roster turnover, only six players remain from last season, with at least 10 new faces definitely to receive playing time this coming season.

Fortunately, while the franchise has a team head coach in Monty Williams, that only makes a difference to six players as all other were going to have a new head coach whether Igor Kokoskov had been retained or not.

To make matters more difficult for the players, the only remaining starters from last season to this coming is Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton, with three new starters having been added – most importantly point, guard Ricky Rubio (yes I include Kelly Oubre as a “new” starter as he only had 12 starts last season, hardly enough to have considered him the “2018-19 starting small forward”).

So, what? Devin Booker, the franchise’s primary ball-handler for the past two seasons, is supposed to move off the ball without issue, breaking the habits he has developed over two years of play in only two weeks?

And yet – the NBA had shrunk the preseason from the traditional eight (although it had been seven and five for a few years now), to four, which one might assume is where it will settle for the foreseeable future.

Sure, fans don’t really watch preseason games, the statistics are generally lost and never truly recorded, and because of it, outside of radio, television broadcasts are a rarity.

I personally do try and watch every preseason game (and have done so for years), and diligently watched every play of the Suns’ preseason opener broadcast on Suns.com.

Because it was a live stream, there had been a counter on the top left of the screen throughout, showing that only approx. 2,500 people watched it at any one time, a tremendously  small number by comparison to  broadcasts on Fox Sports during the regular season.

And yet, teams with a ton of turnover like the Phoenix Suns, are expected to piece together what the offensive and defensive strategies are, plus have the players develop an effective sense of camaraderie and understanding of how each other play, in less than one week of Training Camp and four individual preseason games – games in which starters do not even receive regular season minutes.

The Phoenix Suns too are not an aberration either among their league-wide counterparts.

Numerous teams went through tremendous roster upheaval this offseason, in particular, multiple teams that acquired stars who had been elsewhere as recently as July.

Each of these teams are attempting to come together within a similar brief period of time and under comparable circumstances, a difficult task regardless of the level of talent.

It takes time for rosters to gel and find a level of consistency in play, which is why it is exceptionally rare for teams to jump out of the gates with long winning streaks – a situation that usually occurs in the middle to end of the season when they have had months to gel with one another.

Regardless of what your win/loss expectations might be for the Phoenix Suns this regular season, fans should likely not expect a hot start out of the gate by any means. In fact, expect those first few games to look a lot like the preseason – lots of turnovers and plenty of missed shots – while the players continue to learn and grow within the system and with the new teammates they are laying in the trenches with.

All because they received a finite amount of time to really get to know each other in an era in which a player is actually far more likely to be moved at some point during the season or immediately following it, than not.

The NBA should re-consider it’s shrinking of the preseason and extend it back out to the eight games that had been the traditional length for many years in the past. Teams need the extended free work, especially after an offseason of significant change.

The Phoenix Suns in particular will be hurt by it, a legitimate problem that for a team not expected to even be competitive enough to make a run at the playoffs – a particularly slow start could actually ruin what little hope the players and fans alike might actually have for 2018-19, well before the season really even gets into full swing.