How quickly things change.
What exactly happened between the last game of the preseason and the opener against Portland? Complete collapse. That wasn’t supposed to happen, not after last year, not with this team. The culture was supposed to hit the road like Fred Flintstone, toe-tapping their way to the top of the leaderboard. They weren’t supposed to no-show any games, let alone the season opener, let alone follow that disaster class up with two more duds. There weren’t supposed to be so many questions.
Jordan Ott is coaching for his job, but I’m not sure he realizes it yet. If continuity doesn’t lead to continuing winning habits, then are the Suns still winning to put a young coach in charge of Devin Booker’s final Suns window?
Dillon Brooks wants to shoot it. Miles Bridges wants to shoot it. Booker wants to pass it, but the Suns want him to shoot it. Jalen Green wants to shoot it, but the Suns are telling him to pass. No one is pulling together. No one is on the same page.
Ott’s first year was a smashing success because of how seamlessly he was able to instill the culture and procure buy-in from his veteran players. Yet in his sophomore effort, he’s returning to a locker room with new problems. Like Major League 2, when the Wild Thing went to off-speed pitches, Willie Mays Hayes decided to be a power hitter, and Cerrano found enlightenment in Buddhism, Ott’s found himself with some ego issues that need to be cleared up before questions of culture get buried under a pile of distractions.
Hold the line or lose it. The culture only works if players are held accountable to the standard. When players aren’t holding to the standard, the only recourse for a coach is the bench. Play the players who are holding to the standard. Watch it turn into wins, and watch the players that got benched take the standard more seriously; take Jordan Ott more seriously. It’s easy to coach to the standard when everyone is bought in. How will Ott respond when they aren’t?
The effort isn’t there, whether it’s keeping opponents out of the lane or being in position to gather the rebound; the Suns have looked lost on the side of the ball that some people thought might push the top ten this season. The defense was straight awful to start the year. People crushed Royce for his creaky knees, yet there has been zero defensive bump from “upgrading” the position with Miles Bridges. There has, however, been a surge from Ryan Dunn, who is holding the standard and running with it on the defensive end. The first message Ott needs to send is to start Ryan Dunn over Miles Bridges.
Ryan Dunn is still somewhat limited on offense, but he’s no longer completely inept. Instead, he’s showing promise as a threat at the rim. He’s decisive and forceful. His off-ball cuts are a weapon that doesn’t pull the ball away from the Suns’ most talented scorers. When the ball kicks out to Ryan Dunn, it doesn’t turn into a shot; the ball moves. Everything that makes Miles Bridges a talented scorer, with his post-up moves and drives to the basket, kills the flow of the Suns’ offense. Booker and Green don’t need that kind of help.
I’ve heard people referring to Brooks as the Culture after the Ishbia, KD spat online, but the culture is embodied in Jordan Goodwin. So Brooks can sit and be a scorer off the bench while Goodie makes the culture plays and hits clutch threes. There was a clear difference in how Brooks played when it was just him and Booker to how Brooks played when Green returned. Adjusting his game to be a volume shooter off the bench might be a more appropriate role for him, less needy hands clapping for the ball, and it might even extend his career.
The first ten games don’t really matter. Whether it was last year’s team’s slow start, or the Pacers slow start before a Finals run, or the Suns hot start in the final KD season that fizzled into missing the Play-In, the way teams are playing now rarely carries over for anyone but the top teams in the league. Yet the Suns’ failure to even be competitive in these games is concerning. Doing nothing would be a mistake. Ott needs to act now to reset the culture before it becomes a one-hit wonder and Ott finds himself applying for jobs.
