At present, the pattern of the West has undergone earth-shaking changes, and the Thunder have lost to the Pistons through the outstanding performance of the youngsters, although they unfortunately lost to the Pistons today, but the record is 32-14, which is the same as the Timberwolves and tied for first place in the West. After completing the trade to get Harden, the Clippers are currently riding a momentum in the Northern Expedition, and they are third in the West with five straight wins. However, the Suns, who are also the Big Three, do not seem to be in such a clear situation at present.
The Suns have welcomed a good reinforcement in the offseason, sending away the aging Paul in exchange for Beal, a guard who has performed very well with the Wizards, and forming a big three with great offensive ability such as Booker, Durant and Beal. Such an excellent trade result also made many fans think that the Suns will perform very well this season, but fate seems to play a joke on the entire Suns. The Suns have experienced a double test of injuries and run-in in the new season.
Since the beginning of the season, Beal and Booker have been unable to play due to injury problems, and can only rely on Durant to support alone, it is clear that they have not been able to get a good start, and the Suns once hovered on the edge of the play-offs, which also affected Durant's mentality. After Durant was dissatisfied, Beal returned early, and the Big Three also had a chance to run in. Even the Big Three, who were in the run-in period, still won seven consecutive victories and rushed to sixth in the West in one fell swoop, but just when everyone thought that the Sun was about to start the Northern Expedition, the reality hit the ground again shattering people's illusions.
In their last three games, the Suns have gone 1-2, which may seem like a poor result, but Booker's performance is out of step with the result. In those three games, Booker scored 46 points, 62 points and 44 points, respectively, averaging 50 points per game7 points, such an exaggerated performance could not make the Suns continue their winning streak, which is really surprising. Especially in this morning's game, Booker scored 44 points on 17-of-26 shooting, but only two players in the team scored double-doubles, and the other player who scored double-doubles was Durant, who only scored 15 points, but the performance of 7 turnovers was also very bad. The worst of the Big Three was Beal, scoring just nine points on 4-of-13 shooting. This begs the question, what is the problem with the sun?
In fact, the main problem of the Suns is that their performance in the fourth quarter was very poor, and we can see from the stats that the Suns' scoring ability in the final quarter was not good enough, and the Suns netted 137 points in the final quarter of the season, only making 109 three-pointers, and shooting 31 from three-point range4%, all three figures are at the bottom of the league. For a team with a big three, that's a terrible performance.
And the reason for the Suns' collapse in the final quarter is not only in terms of scoring, but also in terms of organization, the Suns have not had a real playmaking guard on the team after sending Paul away, although Booker has averaged 73 assists, but players except Booker are not so good at passing, which also makes the Suns have the second-highest turnover rate in the league in the fourth quarter. And the lack of organizational ability means that you must rely on the individual ability of the star to complete the attack, which also makes the physical strength of the Big Three decline very much.
As a championship team, I hope that the Suns can find their form as soon as possible, and after reasonably solving the team's current problems, the Suns can also become a favorite team to win the championship.