The Phoenix Suns completed their short four-game preseason 2-2, although their starting lineup left much to be desired.
In an age in which exhibition games are no longer taken seriously, where coaches refuse to show more than just basic strategy, and players in all sports seem to sleep walk through these games with less intensity than they would a summer pickup game, the Phoenix Suns seemingly went through the motions and now enter the regular season with no more excitement attached to them then they had when they entered the preseason.
Unfortunately, this is a pretty big problem.
Nobody has pegged the Phoenix Suns to be a dark horse playoff team this season, thus overall hype from both the fan base and from basketball fans around the league is at the expected low.
Yet, fans of the franchise are desperate for any signs of life, any sign that within the very near future the team is going to kick it into gear and become one of the more competitive teams in the Western Conference.
If nothing else, fans want to at least look forward with hope that there will be a couple of stretches during the regular season where the team rattles off a decent winning streaks, potentially winning five to seven games in a row making Phoenix Suns basketball fun again.
Who knows – maybe that can still happen.
Maybe this team can still be a 37+ win team who has a couple of good winning streaks, finishes 10th in the Western Conference, and come the summer of 2020, James Jones is only a strategic piece away from making his team one of the Best in the West.
Through four games in the 2019 preseason though? All of that seems just as far away from becoming a reality as ever before – and that really sucks.
Of course they couldn’t find a way to just finish 4-0 in the practice session and at least give fans that little nugget of hope, regardless of how they pulled it off.
The biggest concern though that I have as we inch towards the regular season is that of the starting lineup.
Admittedly, the projected five is not only 3/5th’s new (with the inclusion of Kelly Oubre who only started 12 games last season), they only played two full games together (with Oubre sitting game one and Devin Booker, Ricky Rubio, and Deandre Ayton inexplicably sitting in game three), and with such a short training camp and overall preseason, it is going to take time for them to fully gel.