Phoenix Suns: 5 Positives From Brutal Season Opener
Let’s just get this out of the way: the Phoenix Suns‘ 2015-16 season opener was a disaster in every sense of the word. With the Suns going up against the Dallas Mavericks in their home opener last night, Tyson Chandler never got the chance at a revenge performance against his former team after a 41-41 game quickly morphed into a demoralizing blowout loss.
The Suns trailed by as many as 29 halfway through the third quarter, being outscored 34-21 in the period to put them in a 22-point hole heading into the fourth. Full disclosure: this rendition of the Mavericks is not a good team. But they out-executed Phoenix all night and wound up with eight players in double-figures in the 111-95 rout.
After re-signing Brandon Knight to a five-year, $70 million extension this summer — identical to the one Eric Bledsoe received last summer — the Suns had locked in their backcourt tandem for the future…but that promising duo was promptly outplayed by the likes of Deron Williams and Raymond Felton.
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Bledsoe went 4-for-12 from the field for his 13 points, while Knight had 15 points and committed six turnovers. Meanwhile, D-Will and Felton combined for 30 points, 13 assists, 54.5 percent shooting and only one turnover. For a team that talked all summer long about how its defense would improve, the penetration that Williams and Felton enjoyed was embarrassing.
But the humiliation didn’t stop there! Dallas shot 47.6 percent from three-point range. The Suns committed 18 turnovers. Phoenix was outscored in transition 25-17 but a team of 30-year-olds and outmuscled in the paint 48-36 despite a supposedly formidable frontcourt of Chandler, Alex Len and Markieff Morris.
From shooting 25 percent from three-point range to giving up a one-man scoring run to Charlie Villanueva, the Suns did little to inspire belief in the hearts of critics that this is a playoff-caliber team in the West.
But even though there’s plenty of reasons to be concerned about a young team that just got wiped off the floor by the likes of J.J. Barea, Jeremy Evans and Dwight Powell, Suns fans should resist slamming that panic button until it breaks. It may not seem like it, but there are a couple of positives to take away from Phoenix’s brutal season opener — and I promise they’ll all be more substantial than this:
Next: No. 5