Cameron Johnson should start ahead of Kelly Oubre for the Phoenix Suns

To help the Phoenix Suns as a team be as competitive as possible early in games, Cameron Johnson needs to start ahead of Kelly Oubre.

One of the major drawbacks of the preseason now being only four games long, teams like the Phoenix Suns who had a lot of roster turnover do not have much time to work the new players into a cohesive unit, especially under a first-year head coach’s new system.

To compound such difficulty, Monty Williams even rested some of his stars (Devin Booker, Ricky Rubio, and Deandre Ayton) for the third of the four games, after Kelly Oubre and Mikal Bridges missed the first preseason game due to injury.

Four games is just way  too short.

However, in those four games, we did see two things that should play very strongly in Monty’s decision with his opening night starting lineup, that of the much superior outside shooting from rookie Cameron Johnson over Oubre.

The game has very much become one that has placed a premium on outside shooters – something that certainly played into General Manager James Jones‘ decision to trade back from the sixth spot in the draft and both acquire stretch-four Dario Saric, and select Johnson at 11th overall.

We were also led to believe that Ayton was going to become more of a stretch-force beginning this season; only to see him attempt zero shots from beyond the arc in his three games played.

New point guard Ricky Rubio too is not a good 3-point shooter, barely making 31% of his outside shots for his career.

This leaves Kelly Oubre as the presumed starting small forward – who is only a 32.1% outside shooter for his career, and who finished third on the team in 3-point attempts in the preseason, but finished an extremely disappointing 3-14 (21.4%).

In the expected opening night starting lineup, that leaves only two players on the court who are going to be regular threats from the outside, Booker and Saric, which means that defenses will be able to sag in on Ayton in the post fairly regularly leaving Rubio and Oubre without fear.

Ricky Rubio needs as many competent 3-point shooters as possible on the court with him at all times, or the offense will be no better than it has been the last two seasons when the Phoenix Suns finished as the worst 3-point shooting team in the league.

In the meantime, Cameron Johnson proved (at least through four preseason games) that he is the real deal  from the outside, finishing 9-20 from beyond the arc for a blistering 45.0% – tied for the 12th best 3-point shooting percentage in the NBA in the preseason.

By moving Johnson to the starting lineup, the offense can be as potent as possible, and hopefully as 3-point shooting happy as possible, to both maintain a versatile and dynamic offense that can not only keep the team in games, but hopefully even build early leads – something that has not happened with any consistency for a very long time.

Phoenix Suns

While it is unlikely that Johnson would shoot above 40% from 3 for the entire season (usually that percentage is reserved for the truly elite), Johnson might be  one of those elite shooters which would only make his presence on the court that much more valuable.

The Phoenix Suns just cannot afford to fall into holes early in games because the roster still lacks the overall talent on both sides of the ball to have the second until dig the starters out in those instances when they struggle.

The starting rotation must  be as offensively potent as possible to allow the energetic second unit to wear down the opposition and hopefully allow the starters to continue to build upon leads that can be held throughout games.

It is hard to imagine that Cam Johnson isn’t going to shoot at a much better clip than Oubre (potentially even upwards of a whopping 10% better), so moving Oubre’s energy and slashing, individual game to the bench where he does not necessarily need the best point guard to find him and where can play with a little more of a reckless abandon – which is a strong suit of his game.

Ricky Rubio and Deandre Ayton too need the offense to be as spaced out as possible so as to keep the offense from sagging in on Ayton too much, leaving man-to-man defense on the perimeter, and hopefully far more open looks in the post for the big man to take advantage of.

All of this can be accomplished by having the best 3-point shooting offense on the court to start games, meaning that moving Cameron Johnson to the starting small forward spot and Kelly Oubre to the bench will best help raise those chances.