Phoenix Suns: 5 areas for improvement for youngsters

5. Turnovers

Surprise! A team with an average age of 25 is not good at taking care of the ball.

Aside from being the fourth-youngest team in the association, Phoenix’s rotations have been in a constant state of flux. Between the coaching change, the Bledsoe trade, the Devin Booker injury, switching between two underwhelming power forwards, a three-man carousel at center, Mike James falling off to be replaced by Tyler Ulis AND the recent additions of Isaiah Canaan and Danuel House, it’s no surprise establishing offensive chemistry has been an ongoing struggle.

However, for this young team to improve and stop shooting itself in the foot, it needs to reduce those 16 turnovers a night, which is the fifth-worst mark in the league. Unlike more talented turnover machines like the Golden State Warriors, the Suns don’t have the talent to afford losing as many possessions as they can get.

After Phoenix committed an atrocious 29 turnovers in a loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Nov. 22 — the game Devin Booker sent to overtime with his impossible buzzer-beating 3 — Triano found little solace in his team’s competitive performance because of all the giveaways:

"“It’s like the other night when we came in here and we said everybody had an assist in the game, everyone had multiple turnovers in the game. It’s not even just one person. I think our execution, it’s good for our young guys to go through this and play in a game like that, but you have to execute better in the overtime period. We turned it over on the first three possessions and you have to be better than that.”"

For an inexperienced group that ranks 26th in offensive rating, those turnovers are not only turning down the chance of getting extra shots up, but they’re directly fueling their opponents’ offense as well.

The Suns give up 18.4 points off turnovers per game, which is the sixth-most in the league. Triano is fine with aggressive turnovers when his young playmakers — especially the often out-of-control Josh Jackson — are trying to make something happen.

But the careless, passive turnovers are the ones that need to be addressed, and in those cases, Triano would rather force 29 bad shots than 29 turnovers.

"“I don’t have an issue with our turnovers if we’re playing the right way, if we’re moving the ball. But when we’re lazy and we’re sloppy with it and we’re letting pressure affect us and it backs us up and we’re throwing lazy cross-court passes with nobody on us, then those are the turnovers I can’t live with. I can live with the aggressive ones when we’re driving hard to the basket and maybe we take a charge or we’re trying to make a play for somebody, but we can’t be sloppy with the basketball.”"