Article by John Hollinger, on ESPN Insider:
How the Suns got even better
By John Hollinger
ESPN Insider
Archive
Is any team more misunderstood than the Phoenix Suns? Perhaps not.
With the loss of leading scorer Amare Stoudemire, the Suns were expected to fall well off the pace of last season's 62-20 juggernaut. A few people (ahem, cough) even thought they'd miss the playoffs entirely. So much for that prediction. The Suns have run away with the Pacific Division and are only getting better as the year wears on. They're riding an 11-game winning streak into tonight's showdown with San Antonio and are on pace to finish the year with 58 wins.
Even that 58-win total understates how well the Suns have played. The general perception is that, despite losing Stoudemire, the Suns have played nearly as well as their 62-win season a year ago. That's selling the team short. In reality, Phoenix is playing slightly better than it did a year ago, but that has yet to reflect in its win-loss record.
Want proof? Consider that thus far it is Phoenix -- not Dallas or San Antonio -- that has the best average victory margin in the West and is rivaling Detroit for the top spot overall. In fact, if we look at Expected Wins, which measures how many games a team could expect to win based on points scored and points allowed, the Suns are playing like a 63-win team -- a one-game improvement on last year's 62-20 mark.
But there's another level on which the Suns are misunderstood, too. The general perception is that the Suns have maintained the lofty standards of last season's offensive juggernaut and that has fueled their surprising run. On the contrary, Phoenix is quite a bit worse offensively. This statement may surprise some folks since the Suns are currently first in the NBA in Offensive Efficiency, my measure of a team's points per 100 possessions.
However, the Suns last year weren't just first in the league -- they were one of the greatest offensive teams of all time. If we compare teams' performance to the league average for that season, only the 2003-04 Dallas Mavericks outperformed last year's Suns (note that this goes back only to 1973-74, when the league began tracking turnovers, so comparisons to Wilt Chamberlain's teams or the Celtics of yore aren't possible).
Relative to the league, the Suns' Offensive Efficiency was 8.8 points ahead of the competition last year. This year, they're only 5.8 points ahead. Thus, Phoenix effectively has lost about three points per game offensively compared to a year ago.
Those three points might not seem like much, but it's a fairly large difference. It's the same as the difference between a decent offense (14th-best Boston) and a very bad one (26th-best New Orleans), or between a pretty good offense (11th-best San Antonio) and a poor one (22nd-best Indiana). If Phoenix had gone from 14th to 26th, people would have noticed, but since they're still first, it seems as though nothing has changed. In reality, this is one instance when there's a big difference between being first by a mile and being first by a millimeter.
Where Phoenix has more than made up for those missing points is on the defensive end. Last season the Suns ranked only 16th in Defensive Efficiency, allowing 103.8 points per 100 possessions. This season, they've improved to 100.0, placing the Suns sixth among the league's 30 teams.
What I want to look at today is how they're doing it. The Suns still play the same gung-ho pace -- easily the league's fastest, in fact -- and Stoudemire's absence has meant they're even smaller in the frontcourt than they were a year ago.
Amazingly, you can find almost no evidence of this in the Suns' statistical profile. You'd expect an undersized team trotting out Boris Diaw as its starting "center" to get murdered on the offensive glass, resort to rampant fouling to avoid giving away layups, and give up a ton of 3-pointers because it had to double-team the post. This is especially true since the Suns exhibited some of those problems even when Stoudemire was playing. For instance, in 2004-05 Phoenix ranked only 29th in Defensive Rebounding Rate, grabbing 68.3 percent of opponent misses (only Portland was worse).
But the boards have been the site of perhaps the biggest transformation for the Suns. Instead of the nightly drubbings Phoenix absorbed last season, this year's Suns are above the league average in Defensive Rebound Rate, grabbing 72.9 percent of opponent misses. New acquisition Kurt Thomas has been a big help here, as his Defensive Rebound Rate of 23.9 percent is an improvement on Stoudemire's 17.9 percent, while Shawn Marion upped his production slightly, as well. Meanwhile, newcomers Diaw, Raja Bell and James Jones have effectively replaced the output of predecessors Quentin Richardson, Joe Johnson and Jim Jackson. Thus, a big test for the Suns will be whether they can still control the glass effectively while Kurt Thomas is sidelined.
But there are many other ways in which Phoenix defies the small-team stereotype. Instead of hacking away to prevent baskets inside, for instance, the Suns are one of the least foul-prone teams in the league. Phoenix opponents average just .272 free throws per field-goal attempt, ranking them second behind only Detroit. That's a continuation of last season's success in this category -- when Phoenix was the least foul-prone team in basketball -- but what's striking is that the Suns have kept it up with a smaller unit.
Teams that are small also normally give up a ton of 3-point attempts and permit teams to shoot a high percentage from out there -- the undersized Raptors and Sonics, for instance, are near the bottom in both opponent attempts and opponent percentage. But not the Suns. They're right at the league average in attempts and rank sixth in opponent 3-point percentage.
And believe it or not, the Suns block more shots than the league average -- 6.5 percent of opponent shots, compared to 6.1 percent leaguewide. The freakish Marion leads the way here, sending back nearly two a game despite standing just 6-7, and the trio of offseason acquisitions -- Thomas, Diaw and Jones -- combine for nearly three a game as well. Considering two of those players are hurt at the moment, it's another area where the Suns face a big test coming down the stretch.
But wait, it gets better. The Suns aren't just good at the things you'd expect them to be bad at, they're also bad in the one area you'd think they'd be good at. Despite being a small, fast team, the Suns don't force many turnovers. Phoenix ranks a mere 20th in opponent turnover rate, generating miscues on 15.1 percent of defensive possessions.
So how is that the Suns have managed to make their lack of size such a nonfactor? We're all hungry to give individuals credit for the shift, and certainly a few candidates come to mind. Marion, for instance, has been a monster on the boards and is helping out with his unexpectedly prolific shot-blocking, while Diaw, Thomas and Bell have made major contributions with their toughness and ability to defend multiple positions. As the stats from 82games.com show, the Suns are substantially better defensively when any of those four are on the floor, with Marion and Diaw having the greatest impact.
However, two other factors may also be at play. First, the offensive threat of Boris Diaw at the center spot (yes, I really just wrote those words) forces opposing coaches to react, in many cases, by playing a smaller center. The threat of Marion's outrunning opposing power forwards evokes a similar reaction at that position. Because of this, the Suns' opponents often play much smaller than their normal lineup -- and thus Phoenix often isn't undersized compared to the opponent.
But an even bigger factor may be the Suns' team defensive concepts. While hoop scribes have used reams of paper glorifying Mike D'Antoni's offensive philosophies, his most impressive work has perhaps come at the defensive end.
If I could summarize the Suns' defense in one sentence, it would be, "They play with their feet." This is not a risk-taking defense by any stretch of the imagination, as can be seen in the low turnover and foul totals. Instead, the Suns' concept is to keep opponents in front of them, avoid giving away freebies from the foul line (which also keeps their undersized big men out of foul trouble) and force opponents to either shoot over them or beat them off the dribble.
The manifestation of this philosophy can be seen in one stat in particular: They give up fewer assisted baskets than any team in the league. Only 45.5 percent of their opponents' baskets came with the help of a teammate, compared to 57.7 percent leaguewide. In general, this is an indicator of a successful defense -- the next three names on the list are San Antonio, Dallas and Detroit -- and further validation of the idea that Phoenix makes opponents work much harder for their baskets than most realize.
Thus, while tonight's battle may seem to some as the immovable object (San Antonio's top-ranked defense) against the irresistible force of the Suns' offense, that's only part of the story.
Phoenix's defense is playing a much bigger role in its success than a year ago, and it's a major reason that, come late May, the Suns have a great chance of avenging last season's conference finals loss to San Antonio -- with or without Stoudemire.
. This team is for real and will win 2-3 championships in the very near future. 10-15 years from now, the NBA historians will see how the Suns changed the NBA landscape and made it fun again; similar to Lakers Showtime.
