Phoenix Suns: Ranking 6 experiments we might see at Disney

The Phoenix Suns will be experimenting with a variety of basketball strategies when the retake the court again in Orlando, but which ones are actually exciting?

Duane Rankin over at the Arizona Republic summarized some of the potential experimentations we might see when the Phoenix Suns resume play in the Disney bubble. Monty Williams has said he will likely experiment with matchups, lineups, and other strategies, but hasn’t been overly explicit.

While Rankin surmised a few of these experiments on his own, as Coach Williams didn’t divulge all of his secrets, let’s break down the six he listed and rank them on how exciting each one would be to see, and their likelihood of success.

#6: Big Lineup

Ugh. I thought the Suns already tried this and it failed. RIP Bayton.

The idea here is to pair Deandre Ayton with either Aron Baynes or Frank Kaminsky and slide Dario Saric in at the 3. On top of that, Cam Johnson could go to the backcourt alongside Devin Booker and lineup’s average height would be 6’9″.

While part of that sounds alluring, all this really does is make the Phoenix Suns, well, tall.

The most glaring issue here is there isn’t a small forward in the league Saric could guard (you could make a similar argument with Johnson and the league’s shooting guards), so this would have to be based strictly on matchups in case the other team decided to go clownishly big.

The good news is this if there were to a set of bigs playing together, the Suns have a good group, considering all of their big men are capable of stepping outside the perimeter and knocking down the 3 (plus or minus Ayton, but more on that in a bit).

That would at least keep the paint somewhat open for drives from…Booker, I guess?

Of all these musings, this one seems like the experiment that feels like experimenting for experimenting sake, which exactly what Monty said he wasn’t going to do. Perhaps I’m wrong, though, and much like cell phone trends, big is the new small.