Suns Need to Keep it Simple to Find Success
It is not hard to see that the Phoenix Suns have been going through a bit of a cold streak, going 1-5 in their last six games. The Suns' offense has almost uniformly all become cold quite quickly as well.
In their last six games, Phoenix has been the second-worst shooting team in the NBA with an unremarkable 42.9 field goal percentage and 21st in their three-point percentage at 33.3%. They are the second best team in attempts per game after the Charlotte Hornets, respectively.
It was a much-needed win on Thursday against a Los Angeles Clippers team that may be even more short handed than the Suns currently are. Devin Booker returned after a six-day injury stint where he missed two games. Many of the shooting issues continued for Phoenix still as Booker and Paul shot a combined 12-35.
What did change was Phoenix’s overall attempts from beyond the arc, cutting down from the 51 attempts against the Rockets earlier in the week to just 32 against the Clippers. They focused on their usual paint-based attack and kept the ball moving.
Suns head coach Monty Williams explained the plan:
“We’ve been talking about it for a while, especially against this team. We saw a stat that said if you only pass the ball once or twice their defense is top five.”
He elaborated, “if you can move it around a little bit, you can get into their defense a little bit. We’re a second-side, attack the paint team. So that’s what we do, but we knew we had to against this team because they’re too good defensively.”
It was their lowest number of attempts from the three-point line since the losing streak started. Keeping it simple will be imperative until someone for Phoenix can find their shot it may be Williams best interest to keep the scheme similar going forward.
They will look to keep that same moment going into tonight’s matchup against the Western Conference leading New Orleans Pelicans.
