Phoenix Suns: 5 Takeaways From Season Opener

4. The Bench Has To Be Better

This one goes far beyond Sacramento’s bench outscoring Phoenix’s second unit by a 48-34 margin. After all, it was an unconventional bench lineup that almost got the Suns back into the game early in the fourth quarter.

However, with the first quarter winding down, Watson turned to his bench to provide the starters with a breather. Phoenix’s 18-14 lead quickly turned into an 11-point deficit entering the fourth quarter, with a bench unit of Brandon Knight, Leandro Barbosa, P.J. Tucker, Marquese Chriss and Alex Len doing the self-inflicted damage.

Knight was a disaster in his first game as sixth man, finishing with seven points on 1-of-8 shooting and a team-worst -19 plus/minus. Barbosa went 0-for-2 in three minutes, Tucker was somehow a -14 in a completely flat six-minute performance and Chriss was welcomed to the NBA by a ruthless Willie Cauley-Stein poster:

“I think it’s unacceptable for us to come in and kind of leave the momentum that the starting unit had,” Chriss said. “In the second half we were supposed to keep our energy up and play defense and I think that’s what we did.”

The script changed in that second half, but only because an ultra-young lineup featuring the team’s three rookies played like they actually gave a damn.

“The way I addressed the team is, we can’t use ‘We’re young,'” Watson said. “Our young guys got us in the game, so that’s not an excuse. Our veterans have to come, they have to play with the same passion.”