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Phoenix Suns: Troy Daniels playing a crucial role with Devin Booker out

By Gerald Bourguet

Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images
Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images /
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With Devin Booker out for the short-term, Troy Daniels is filling the crucial role of 3-point sniper for the offensively challenged Phoenix Suns.

The Phoenix Suns are not a good basketball team. Their 12-22 record is fifth-worst in the league, their -7.0 point differential is second-worst and nine of their 12 wins have come against teams at or below .500.

The Suns are in a rebuild, but only have one sure thing in Devin Booker. Unfortunately, that lone, redeeming grace for Phoenix fans has been sidelined for the last eight games due to a groin injury. His return should come before the calendar flips to 2018, but the time without him on the court has unearthed very few reasons to keep tuning in.

Dragan Bender continues to struggle finding consistency on the offensive end. Marquese Chriss seems lost trying to be a jack of all trades and a master of none except early foul trouble. Josh Jackson plays the part of “out of control” more often than he does “No. 4 overall pick.”

Alex Len is devouring rebounds against opposing bench units, but even he and the occasional — albeit far too infrequent — T.J. Warren scoring burst do little to distract from the fact that the Suns are extremely hard to watch without their 21-year-old franchise star.

And yet, Phoenix has surprisingly won three of its last four games after starting 0-4 with Booker sidelined. It’s been a combination of favorable matchups and the Minnesota Timberwolves laying an egg against an inferior team, sure, but the Suns are, strangely, competing.

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It takes a team effort to replace a player like Booker, but one of the steadier boons coming from the bench unit has been 26-year-old journeyman Troy Daniels. Now on the fifth NBA team of his five-year career, Daniels is once again proving how valuable a skill 3-point shooting can be in this league.

The backup shooting guard is only averaging 8.1 points in 17.3 minutes per game this season. He doesn’t do much else on the stat sheet other than shoot, and he’s come off the bench in all 34 appearances for the Suns. But he’s shooting a blistering 43.3 percent on 4.8 long range attempts per game, and that’s been crucial for a team like Phoenix that ranks 29th in 3-point percentage.

There are only three regular rotation players (Jared Dudley and the new arrival Isaiah Canaan don’t count here) on the roster shooting respectable percentages from downtown:

  • Troy Daniels:  43.3 percent
  • Devin Booker:  38.3 percent on 6.5 attempts per game
  • Dragan Bender:  36.8 percent on 3.4 attempts per game

Everyone else is below 29 percent.

Since Booker went down, Daniels has been a reliable source of floor-spacing for an offensively incompetent group. He’s averaging 13.9 points per game in that eight-game span, shooting 33-for-70 from the field (47.1 percent) and 25-for-58 from downtown (43.1 percent).

Against the Toronto Raptors last week, Daniels was the biggest reason Phoenix was able to stay in the game against an Eastern Conference powerhouse until the very end, igniting for a career-high 32 points on 11-of-16 shooting from the field and 7-of-10 shooting from deep.

Thursday night with his former team in town, Daniels only recorded 14 points on 3-of-7 shooting, but his last shot — the game-winning 3 — was the difference in downing the Memphis Grizzlies. He had been 2-for-6 to that point, but that’s the thing about shooters: They shoot.

"“Oh yeah, it had to go up,” Daniels said. “We live for moments like this and we work each and every day for moments like that.”"

Josh Jackson remains the starter at the 2, which keeps Phoenix’s surprisingly strong bench unit intact. Once Booker returns and rookie Davon Reed is healthy, it’ll be interesting to see how interim head coach Jay Triano handles the available minutes at shooting guard, even with Jackson shifting back to the 3.

For now though, Daniels brings a much-needed skill-set to a team sorely lacking perimeter shooters. With only $3.3 million on his contract for next season, it appears Phoenix has nabbed an extremely useful bench piece who knows his role and fulfills it dutifully.

Will Troy Daniels’ hot shooting make any Suns fans feel better about this bizarre 3-1 stretch with Devin Booker sidelined, which could impact their standing in the top-heavy 2018 NBA Draft come June? Probably not. At this point, every win that doesn’t come on the backs of Booker, Bender, Jackson, Chriss, Len or Tyler Ulis is going to feel relatively empty.

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But at some point, these young pieces are going to have to start chipping in. And when they do, it’ll be nice to have a proven sharpshooter like Troy Daniels, who’s not only stepping up in Booker’s temporary absence, but cementing his potential value for the 2018-19 season when it’ll really be time for #TheTimeline to start going places.

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