Poor Execution Has Made This A Lost Season For The Phoenix Suns

Following the Phoenix Suns’ worst letdown of the season, a loss to the 15-win San Antonio Spurs without Victor Wembanyama on the floor, head coach Frank Vogel didn’t mince words.

From inexplicable turnovers to a lack of generating quality looks, the Suns resembled a lottery team on Monday — just 48 hours after handling the same team and controlling the game from start to finish.

“It’s just unacceptable to lose that game for our guys,” Vogel told reporters after Monday’s loss. “We all said the right things and did the right preparation coming in. But we didn’t play with the necessary focus and disposition throughout (the game). If you give a team like that life, that’s how the NBA works. They get going, get charged up, and they start believing they have a chance to win it.”

With his team struggling to find consistency over the last five months, the frustration is warranted. Between the offense sputtering late in games and their point-of-attack defenders not keeping the ball out of the paint, there are too many errors that keep reappearing.

Now, with a couple of key starters banged up again at the worst possible time, things could be spiraling out of control.

Bradley Beal sprained the ring finger on his shooting hand during the fourth quarter and couldn’t finish the game. Considering he didn’t practice on Tuesday, his status for Wednesday’s game against the top-seeded Nuggets is up in the air.

Jusuf Nurkic also suffered an injury in San Antonio, rolling his right ankle and only playing 19 minutes. Nurkic has arguably been the Suns’ best connective passer this year operating out of the elbows and high post, along with their only elite rebounding force. They can’t afford him to miss any time with the upcoming schedule being a bloodbath.

With only 10 games left, it’s past the time for sugarcoating. If there is a deep playoff run in store for Phoenix, they now have the toughest path imaginable. It would have to be shades of last year’s Miami Heat, who narrowly made it to the first round and pulled off three consecutive upsets in the East playoffs.

The Suns haven’t been able to escape the injury bug for more than two weeks at a time. While other teams around the league have dealt with worse, the timing of the Suns’ misfortune is the biggest reason they are in this position.

Beal missing 24 of the first 30 games — during the easiest portion of their schedule — was always going to put them under immense pressure later in the year. The odds of a team being under .500 on Christmas and then evolving into a championship threat are fairly low in any season.

With all three of Durant, Booker, and Beal in the lineup for longer than five minutes, the Suns are 19-11. Both the total number of games (30) and the winning percentage (.633) aren’t good enough. Not for a team that sprinted through the NBA’s second tax apron to construct this roster. And certainly not for a franchise that leveraged most of its future draft capital for one of the greatest scorers ever. Durant might be having a spectacular two-way season, but he’s in the back half of his career with not many chances left to win as a premier superstar.

Looking back, nobody should’ve expected the Suns to magically discover the on-court chemistry and connectivity with all of the lineup inconsistency they’ve dealt with.

Some teams can get away with it — but only if they’ve been together for a long period of time.

And remember, Durant and Booker only had eight regular season games and two playoff series together in 2023. In many ways, this was a brand new team with one of the lowest continuity ratings heading into the year.

“Execution” is one of the buzzwords that flies around the NBA all year long. Sometimes, it can feel as if players and coaches overuse the term, especially when they aren’t in the mood to deal with the media after a bad loss or rough stretch of games.

But for the Suns, the lack of execution in second halves is precisely why they find themselves in eighth place and fighting for their postseason lives.

After 72 games, they still have the worst fourth quarter offensive rating in the league. Worse than the Pistons, who went on a 28-game losing streak this season. Worse than the Blazers, led by a rookie point guard and bereft of quality decision-making in the halfcourt. Scoring just 104.6 points per 100 possessions, the Suns’ offense in the fourth quarter is 10.2 points worse than league-average and nearly three points below the 29th-ranked team.

Because of how ineffective they’ve been at closing games, their scoring differential in the fourth quarter is still one of the five lowest of the last 27 years (since the NBA started play-by-play tracking in 1996-97).

Phoenix’s turnover issues, which Gerald Bourguet recently dissected, have interfered with their offensive flow in tight games. When the pressure intensifies, the Suns have fallen flat and coughed it up far too often. In fourth quarters, they have turned it over on 16.5% of their offensive possessions — also dead last in the NBA.

A lot of their problems stem from not having the adequate time together. But that excuse eventually has an expiration date. At a certain point, a team’s record is who they are.

There’s a reason only two eight seeds in NBA history have reached the Finals. In a best-of-seven playoff system, marching through the postseason without homecourt in any series is too steep of a challenge.

According to PlayoffStatus.com, which uses a detailed formula to predict playoff seeding, the Suns are most likely to end up eighth or ninth in the conference.

The tiebreaker situation won’t be friendly for them, either. They currently have two fewer losses than the Lakers, but lost the head-to-head tiebreaker. So, it’s effectively just one loss ahead because the Suns know they will have to finish above Los Angeles.

Currently in the sixth seed are the Dallas Mavericks with 29 losses, leaving the Suns tied with Sacramento at 30 losses. Phoenix lost the tiebreaker to Dallas but still has an opportunity to claim it against Sacramento. That makes the final Suns-Kings matchup on Apr. 12 one of the most significant games of the NBA season.

However, the final couple days on the schedule only matter if the Suns tread water in this upcoming stretch. It’s a gauntlet with one contender after another and could be the final nail in the coffin for Phoenix.

Their final 10 opponents have a combined winning percentage of .648, equivalent to a 53-win team. That includes road games against the Nuggets, Thunder, Pelicans, Clippers, and Wolves — all teams currently in the top six of the Western Conference.

The Suns’ fate might be sealed. And if a play-in berth is the ceiling for this team, they will undoubtedly look back on the games they let slip through their fingers.

There’s more than a handful of them.

All three losses to San Antonio, a young and inexperienced team that isn’t on pace to crack the 20-win mark. In fact, the Suns are currently accounting for 18.8% of San Antonio’s victories since October. That should paint the picture of how uninspiring the Suns’ season has been.

What about the inexplicable home losses to Brooklyn and Memphis? Two teams that were struggling to find an identity — one of them marred by injuries — outclassed Phoenix down the stretch. The Grizzlies had no business taking that game, much less wrecking the Suns 35-18 in the fourth quarter.

They also had a home meltdown against the Knicks after taking a two-point lead into the fourth quarter and getting blitzed 42-23 in the final 12 minutes.

Or, the two-point loss in Indiana after scoring 80 first-half points and having the wheels fall off — again — in the fourth quarter. Devin Booker’s 62-point performance was wasted in a game they should’ve closed against one of the worst defenses in basketball.

There’s also the last-second gamble for a steal against Stephen Curry in mid-February, which cost the Suns a victory after holding an 88% win probability with just four seconds remaining.

For the Suns, those eight games will come back to haunt them. Even just splitting them puts Phoenix in the West’s No. 5 seed. Instead, they are sitting at 30 losses and in danger of falling to ninth.

Of course, playing the hypothetical exercise is never a great idea. The NBA season six months of peaks and valleys. Every team in history can point to various stretches that ultimately cost them a higher seed.

But this season was supposed to be a smoother experience for Phoenix than last year. Instead, it’s been worse, on top of watching their West counterparts make significant strides and leap them in any “contending” conversation.

Still, there’s some positive news for the Suns. It’s not all doom and gloom.

If this year ends poorly and they fail to get out of the first round, all of their superstars are under long-term contracts. There will be more bites at the apple. After all, year two of a new core is typically when you see tangible results on the court. It takes time for players to learn each other ... and the Suns were robbed of that earlier in the year.

This is just not how the franchise envisioned 2024 would go with such a pricey roster, a new coaching staff, and passionate ownership that’s determined to win at all costs.