The Phoenix Suns are only three games into the season, but the defensive numbers already tell a rough story.
After finishing last season as one of the NBA’s better units on that end, Phoenix has stumbled badly out of the gate. The Suns sit at 1-2, own the league’s worst defensive rating at 124.5, and are giving up a league-high 40.7% from 3-point range.
“We're 30th in defense, so that's not great. That's terrible, and we're figuring out ways to jumpstart our defense and jumpstart our offense,” Suns forward Dillon Brooks said.
Phoenix gets back on the floor tonight against the Denver Nuggets after three full days off, and coach Jordan Ott said the last stretch has been spent trying to clean up the defensive issues that have followed the team through its first three games. The Suns were coming off a 125-114 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday.
Ott said the group knows where the problem starts.
“When you're 30th in defense, we need to get better there first and foremost,” Ott said. “Our defense last year fueled our offense a lot, when you physically steal the ball from the other team. Now we're so concerned on the glass that now we're coming back to try to get a rebound, and then when you're not defending at a high level, you're taking the ball out of bounds.”
That has been part of the issue all along. Phoenix is also allowing the most offensive rebounds per game in the NBA, and that extra work on the back end has made it harder to get anything going the other way.
Miles Bridges, brought in to add size to the starting lineup, said the fix has to start with basic defensive effort.
“It’s an effort thing. Sometimes we're not in the right spots, but that could be handled with communication. Right now, it's just giving more effort, getting to the ball more, and finishing possessions with rebounds,” Bridges said.
“We just been working on all defensive stuff. Getting into the ball, finishing the plays with rebounds.
Just our physicality on defense needs to get better. So that's what we've been working on.”
The Suns have spent the first three games letting opponents set the terms, which is a sharp change from last season, when their defense usually dictated the flow. They’ll get an early chance to reset in their first NBA Cup group game against Denver.
“We all know we're not at our standard right now. We haven't played the best defense in the past three games, but it's three games into this season, and we gotta keep on getting better, game by game,” Suns center Khaman Maluach said.
“We just gotta play to our standard, the us we know. We got to play to the Suns way, and we had two good days of practice. So we'll see what happens (against Denver), and we'll get better from game to game.”
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Phoenix has been looking for more stability inside, and Ighodaros availability comes at a good time as the Nuggets bring a physical front line. The Suns have struggled with rebounding and defense without him, so his return gives them a chance to tighten up a problem area and see whether the frontcourt can hold up better in a matchup that tends to expose soft spots. [Read more 🡒]