I’ve been watching a lot of Suns basketball lately. Why the Suns? Thanks to the Internet, I pretty much have my pick of any game. (Even if many of the best games are technically blacked out on an NBA League Pass, hypothetical websites may or may not exist to illegally stream even these elite games). So when I choose a game, it’s because it has some sort of hook.
Sometimes, that hook is obvious. I’m a Wizards fan, so whenever they’re playing, that’s the game I choose. They could be facing the 18-43 Orlando Magic on a Tuesday night in a week that I had three midterms, and I’d probably still watch. (By probably, I mean this happened last Tuesday.)
Other times, I watch games because I want to see a certain player. If the Pelicans are playing, I might watch to see how Anthony Davis is coming along.
If a team is playing that’s close to the Wizards in the standings, I’ll watch to root against them. As a result, I’ve been forced to watch the Bulls (one spot ahead of the Wizards in the standings) win ugly games against way more talented teams night after night. At this point, I’m convinced Tom Thibodeau, the Bulls’ coach, could take my middle school B team to the playoffs as long as he still had Joakim Noah. The only way Thibs doesn’t drag that roster to a 6-8 seed finish is if my old friend Pablo (aka the Brandon Jennings of pickup basketball) decides he’s better than Noah and needs to get his 37 shots per game.
When there’s a marquee matchup, I’ll watch to see two of the best NBA teams face off. Any game between the Heat, Pacers, Thunder, Spurs, Clippers or Rockets falls into this category.
So where do the Suns find themselves in all this? The answer is nowhere. This team has no real stars, it’s not a member of the league’s elite and its games have no implications for the Wizards. On paper, there’s really nothing all that interesting about them.
In their first game after the All-Star Break, the Suns played the Nuggets in Denver. This was the first time I had seen them play all year. I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I saw was a team that looked really, really different from the other 29 teams in the NBA.
For starters, none of the players on the court seem to fit the NBA mold. You’ve got Goran Dragic, a Slovenian point guard drafted in the second round with the 45th pick; Channing Frye, a seven-footer who shoots threes like a guard; Ish Smith, a six-foot point guard whose go-to shot is an awkwardly high floater off the glass that never looks like it has a chance of going in and the Morris twins (Twins! Playing together on a professional basketball team!) as well as a collection of other cast-offs and odd balls.
In general, NBA players often refer to themselves as cast-offs. “Nobody wanted us” is something players say to provide chips on their shoulders in the absence of real ones. It’s a motivator, but it’s usually not true. When it comes to the Suns, it’s not just a cliche.
The player on their team drafted highest overall is Emeka Okafor, who has yet to play a game due to injury. The next highest pick is Alex Len, drafted fifth overall by the Suns in the 2013 draft. Len is averaging 2.0 points per game. Against the Jazz Feb. 26th, Len got the ball near the top of the key virtually unguarded. After looking around for a second in confusion, he attempted to dribble toward the hoop and fell over. So he’s not exactly a key cog. Frye was drafted eighth overall in 2005, but he’s been a role player his whole career. No other player on the Suns was picked in the lottery, and nobody has ever been an All Star (though Dragic should have been this year).
The over/under for the Suns win total before the season was 21. People thought this would be one of the worst teams in the NBA. And why wouldn’t they? The Suns had all the markings of a team in the hunt for the number one overall draft pick.
But despite these predictions, it took the Suns just two months to win 21 games. They currently have a 35-25 record and are the seventh seed in a very strong Western Conference. And they’ve pulled this off despite being without Eric Bledsoe, their second best player, following his December meniscus injury against the Clippers. Nobody saw this coming.
Somehow Jeff Hornacek, the Sun’s rookie head coach, has been able to turn this roster into a really good team. Every player has made a leap from the previous season. Except for Slava Kravtsov, every non-rookie is averaging more points per game than last season.
If the Suns were bad, this wouldn’t mean much. Bad players getting more minutes on bad teams are going to score more points. But this is a playoff team. The fact that 11 out of 12 players on a playoff roster are averaging more points than they did the previous year is kind of amazing.
The individual stories that make up this stat are no less remarkable. Goran Dragic has gone from a foreigner whose name I wasn’t sure how to pronounce to a candidate for the Person-Not-Named-Lebron-or-Durant MVP Award. Gerald Green disappointed last year as part of the Pacers’ awful bench. Now he’s starting for the Suns, averaging more than twice as many points per game, shooting 43.9 percent from the field (last year he shot 36.6 percent) and mean mugging after at least three baskets a game. Ish Smith’s minutes have increased from 10.5 per game last season on the last place Magic to 14.9 per game this year on the (hopefully) playoff-bound Suns, and his field-goal percentage has jumped from 33 percent to 40 percent. Against the Jazz, Smith sped down the court on a fast break, inspiring the Suns’ play-by-play announcer to shout, “Here comes Smith, the human dart!” Awesome nickname. Then there’s Dionte Christmas. After spending four years playing professional basketball in Israel, the Czech Republic, Greece and Russia, he’s finally getting a chance in the NBA. Whenever he gets to step on the court, the 27-year-old rookie is flying around like a maniac. Seeing all of these players’ transformations, it’s impossible not to get invested in them.
At 82 games, the NBA season can drag on with teams passively walking through the motions. It’s hard to blame them: the season is a marathon. And like marathons, it can be boring to watch.
The Suns aren’t like that. You can tell how excited everybody is to be getting a chance. On a play near the end of the Nuggets game, the Suns forced a turnover. Hornacek immediately called a timeout. The players ran over to their coach, jumping up and down angrily. “Why didn’t you let us run?!” Seeing supposedly jaded professionals get mad because their coach didn’t let them run? That was cool.
Hornacek clearly felt the same way, smiling at his players’ enthusiasm. You see a lot of little interactions like this with the Suns. The closest I’ve gotten to them is sitting in my dorm staring at a laptop, but to me, it looks like a family.
I hope this team makes the playoffs. It’s fun to see such a weird collection of guys play so hard and get such unexpected results. Sure, they’ll just get blown out by the Thunder in the first round. Then again, we were sure this was a 21-win team.
James Cohan ’17 needs a nickname as good as “the Human Dart.” Send him suggestions at james_cohan@brown.edu.
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