Last year, this defense was the whole identity of the team. We watched a roster nobody believed in become a problem every night because they chased, they swiped, they dove on the floor, and they made you earn every bucket. Four games into this season, that team is gone.
The Suns are 1-3 and have allowed 122 points or more in all four games.
Dillon Brooks stood at the podium and called it what it is: “We’re 30th in defense, so that’s not great. That’s terrible.” Then they spent three days drilling it in practice,
came home, and let Denver rain threes in their own building.
The fanbase is past the “small sample size” stage. We are watching the same breakdowns repeat.
This stat from Cody Hunt on X/Twitter blew my mind. How much is it bad luck? How much is it real? I believe it’s a bit of both, personally. And small sample sizes can blow stats like this out of proportion. But it is clear that this is a massive issue that needs correcting, ASAP.
Tactical Breakdown
Rotations to shooters are late, every time.
Murray and Braun combined for 14 threes, and Brooks and others kept rotating or closing out too late on kick-outs to Braun. Ott pointed out that Braun was “a guy that’s made five all year.” Credit to Braun, but when you leave a shooter wide open, he gets hot.
The switching scheme leaves too few defenders on the back side.
About a dozen times, the aggressive switching and double-teams on Jokic left one help defender covering two Nuggets on the perimeter. That scheme only works with perfect timing, and right now nobody is in sync. And we saw it snowball.
Off-ball attention in the corners.
Brooks and Bridges are often stationed in the corner, where they tend to doze off, whether that means losing a backdoor cutter, reacting late, or failing to rebound. Booker’s league-worst 137.2 individual defensive rating gets the headlines, but the leaks are coming from every spot on the floor.
Again, the problem I have with all of this is that they had a full three days to talk about this and work on it. And while they looked much sharper offensively (outside of Jalen Green), the defense stuck out like a sore thumb yet again.
The Size/Athleticism Filter
This roster was built to be long and nasty, and the length is not showing up where it matters. At 27.7 defensive rebounds per game, only Golden State has been worse at ending opponent possessions. With Mark Williams out and Oso Ighodaro missing a couple of games, the frontcourt has been thin and young, and Khaman Maluach is taking on a big role early.
Ott explained the trade-off himself: the team is “so concerned on the glass” that players retreat to rebound instead of pressuring the ball, and without stops they end up inbounding after made baskets. Last year the athleticism produced steals and transition buckets. This year it is being spent cleaning up misses that should have been contested in the first place.
The defense was the engine for everything else. The Suns ranked third in steals last season, and that pressure is what made the chaos offense work. Without it, this is a half-court team with spacing problems. The front line defense is vital not only for containing penetration that leads to clean looks, but also for stopping guys like Jamal Murray from going supernova and dropping 39 with ease, which I talked about in my latest episode of Suns Hit.
The lineup questions are already here. Jalen Green’s defensive rating sits at 130.7, while Collin Gillespie’s is 120.3, and Ott went with Gillespie next to Booker down the stretch instead of Green.
They will need the defense to step up against a Warriors team that can shoot the basketball well from deep. They hunt three-point looks. And have some guy named Stephen Curry who is pretty good at shooting the basketball. Golden State drilled 22 threes on 45% shooting in a win over the Clippers on Sunday night, and have won 4 straight games since their loss to the Suns.
That decision (starters) is going to get louder every week the defense stays at the bottom of the league. The lone cure to that is winning, and even that may be a band-aid if they can’t figure out how to make this group work long-term.
Closing Thought
The talk is already done. The film is there.
Close out on shooters. Box out the man in your area. Defense should be the priority. If the Booker-Green-Brooks-Bridges core can’t defend together, Ott has to stop forcing it and play the lineups that get stops.
Last year’s top-10 defense came from effort and execution, and right now this team has neither.
