Boo! With Halloween upon us, the Phoenix Suns are playing great basketball. It has been a treat thus far, but has some of this success been a trick to get Suns’ fans hopes up? Let’s explore.
The Phoenix Suns do not play on Halloween for the first time since 2013, breaking a streak of five straight seasons of suiting up on this spooky date. During this stretch, they are 3-2, and the franchise is 8-10 all-time on October 31.
With no game tonight, it leaves young Suns fans free to dress up as their favorite Suns player, roam their neighborhood, and scream, “Trick or treat?!” to all those within earshot.
Even the official Suns Twitter account is getting into the Halloween spirit, as they posted a superbly photoshopped Kelly Oubre Jr. looking like he just crawled up out of a grave and started dunking on unsuspecting players.
Phoenix Suns, but make it spooky.#HappyHalloween pic.twitter.com/g2n1LunOxc
— Phoenix Suns (@Suns) October 31, 2019
Actually, that metaphor isn’t all that inaccurate. No one expected the Phoenix Suns to have success, much less look this good. Kelly Oubre has been one of the primary catalysts of this transformation, and he is certainly not the only one to unafraid to dunk on someone’s face.
It has been a treat to watch the entire team this season. After five games, a team in which even hardened fans presumed would not be ultra competitive, sit at 3-2 with wins against the likes of the LA Clippers and Golden State Warriors.
It is starting to look like this is no trick of the eyes. No mirage. This is real.
Even after their game-two overtime loss, the Suns showed encouraging signs this team might actually be good. Those signs have further materialized through five games now, even without Deandre Ayton.
Some of their early eye-popping statistics could be chalked up to a small sample size, however even a slight regression would put the Suns in serious playoff contention if this keeps up.
Other statistical anomalies are actually good for the Phoenix Suns, and a reversion to the mean would only help the team win more games.
To break it down further, let’s look at which aspects of this early season success are real treats (here to stay) and which ones are tricks (anomalies that might not long last) in this Valley of the Suns Halloween special.