Valley of the Suns
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The Phoenix Suns’ projected starters had a very bad preseason

By Adam Maynes

Phoenix Suns Devin Booker, Ricky Rubio, Deandre Ayton, Cameron Johnson (Photo by Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images)
Phoenix Suns Devin Booker, Ricky Rubio, Deandre Ayton, Cameron Johnson (Photo by Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images) /
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Phoenix Suns, Kelly Oubre, Ricky Rubio, Devin Booker (Photo by Barry Gossage/NBAE via Getty Images)
Phoenix Suns, Kelly Oubre, Ricky Rubio, Devin Booker (Photo by Barry Gossage/NBAE via Getty Images) /

Okay, tell me just how bad it really was

Of course too, one can pick and choose statistics to paint any picture that they want about a particular team at anytime.

(I will lead off with one positive: Cameron Johnson might really be as great of a shooter as advertised, finished 9-20 from beyond the arc for 45.0%, right at where he shot last season at North Carolina).

However, the following stats are still tremendously worrisome:

Projected starting Lineup +/-

Kelly Oubre Jr -31 (-10.3 per game)

Deandre Ayton -27 (-9.0 per game)

Devin Booker -26 (-8.7 per game)

Ricky Rubio -26 (-8.7 per game)

Dario Saric +11 (+3.7 per game)

Of the five projected starters for the Phoenix Suns’ opening day lineup, four of them have a minus in +/-, something that should be terribly troubling for fans, players, coaches, and management alike.

And it gets worse: those starters each only played three  total games each, so it’s not like those statistics are spread out over the full preseason.

Deandre Ayton: 0 free throw and 0 3-point attempts in 62 minutes.

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Where was the fire from Ayton? Where was the desire to take a step forward and become one of the most dominant centers in the league?

Why is it that Ayton could not play with such ferocity in the post to have demanded at least a couple  of intentional fouls in an attempt to hold the supposed beast down?

Wasn’t he too going to shoot 3’s? Why talk about adding something to your game, then never actually implement it?

Yes, his first preseason game was statistically impressive in a short outing, and it was against the Minnesota Timberwolves’ starters so the stats can be taken as about as true  as one might expect in the preseason (18 points, 13 rebounds, and a +/- of 5, all in 21 minutes), but then, against the Denver Nuggets, he finished at -21 in 17 minutes with only 4 rebounds.

On the flip side – Frank Kaminsky shot 12-14 from the free throw line, and even Aron Baynes had four attempts (draining three).

Kelly Oubre: 3-14 from beyond the arc for 21.4%, the third most 3-point attempts on the roster.

Was Oubre’s hand still bothering him? Is it possible that with the week off between the final preseason game and the start of the regular season that it will heal completely and his shot will improve?

He became so worried about his 3-point shooting over the course of the preseason that in the final game I tweeted out how on one play he passed up on a wide open  3-point attempt to drive against two players in the post where he missed his heavily contested layup.

Although he was fortunate enough to grab his own offensive rebound and was eventually fouled, the fact that he was forced to take two free throws on a possession that should have ended five-to-ten game seconds earlier with his 3-point attempt was a very poor sign indeed.

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