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Paul House: Chris Paul made the Suns youngsters smart and efficient, just like him

After years of wandering, Chris Paul has finally found the team he needs to end his career with.

With the help of a candidate for the defensive player of the season and an X Factor who has signed an amazing figure, he builds Phoenix in his image and likeness and brings it to the top.

Is this the group that will win that will take advantage of the vulnerability of the contenders for the crown?

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• Phoenix Suns

• Chris Paul

Assaf Ravitz

Thursday, March 18, 2021, 2:30 p.m.

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Danny Abdia talks about adapting to the NBA (from the Washington Wizards' Twitter page)

Is this season more open than it seems at first glance?

The persistent injuries of Anthony Davis and Kevin Durant make the two favorites reach the injury final.

Players who spend a large part of the season injured have a hard time getting into the playoffs and often drag the injury, if AD and KD are not at their peak, the playoffs will be completely open.

The Clippers and Milwaukee, the two other senior candidates, are dragging professional and psychological barriers that they may not have the tools to cross.

This season could turn out to be a rare opportunity for the teams that are successful in the regular season.

So after Utah and Philadelphia already got quite a bit on stage, it's time to talk about Phoenix.

Quite quietly, the Suns are already ranked second in the West, ahead of the Lakers and with a gap over the Clippers.

After a mediocre season opener, the Monty Williams team has won 18 of its last 22 games and is only getting better as the season progresses.

This means that it is possible and even necessary to ask about Phoenix the same question we are dealing with regarding Utah: Can what works so well in the regular season also work in the playoffs, against the best players in the world and their teams?

The story of Phoenix, in a few lines: The group of children who blew up the bubble joined Chris Paul in the summer, who will be 36 months old in a month and a half, and immediately became Chris Paul's team.

The current Phoenix plays slowly and measuredly and calculatedly, not flashy but very smart and efficient.

Each of the senior rotation players has a very defined role, each performing his role on the best side and not trying to deviate from it.

CP3, who have replaced four teams in the last five years, seem to have found the team tailor-made, a team that was just looking for a leader of its kind, a team that looks like the place where this small-big player should end his career.

More on Walla!

"The Hottest Team in the League": Phoenix continues to shatter all predictions

To the full article

Reinventing himself.

Chris Paul (Photo: GettyImages, Christian Petersen)

protection

Phoenix's Chris Folios is especially noticeable on defense.

This is one of the best defensive teams in the league (ranked 4-5 defensively alongside Utah), and it does so almost without Hassel, ranking among the last in the league in both steals and blocks.

Third-year players Michal Bridges and Diandra Eyton are the two most important defensive players on the team, the first keeping the senior foreign player of each opponent and always making it difficult for him, the second being the anchor in the middle.

The best way I have found to describe their defensive work is this: If Chris Paul had Pick n 'Roll defense, he would have been Mick and Eyton's pick n roll.

They come to work in every position, almost make no mistake and their level of performance is very high.

Bridges will be a regular member of the defensive five of the season for the next decade, he is a legitimate candidate for the top five already this year.

He is like a glue that mimics the movements of the players in front of him, it is impossible to get rid of.

Eyton, who Crook looks helpless on defense, has evolved into a senior defensive chin in the league.

His level of decision-making is particularly impressive, he understands when to stay on his player, when to need a replacement and when to aggressively go out to the ball carrier and come back.

They both have this elusive feature of quality guards: opponents just do not have fun playing against them.

The ability of Bridges and Eyton to tackle the central move on their own allows Phoenix to be a team that sends very little help.

On blocks far from the ball Monty Williams' players often make substitutions, so it is very difficult to get away from them.

The result is that Phoenix's outstanding defensive ability is to prevent threes from opponents, who are ranked 26th in the number of threes per game (32.1), 29th in the number of threes from the corner (6.3) and 27th in percentage of the three (34.6).

The rivals also deliver the fewest assists per game (21.9) because the ball carriers have no delivery options.

Became a senior defensive chin.

Diandra Eyton vs. LeBron James (Photo: Reuters)

attack

Phoenix's offensive numbers are also very characteristic of CP3's team: a lot of assists (27.2 per game, second place in the league), excellent assist / loss ratio (2.07, also second place), excellent shooting percentages from all ranges.

Paul and Devin Booker did not get the memorandum banning half-distance shots, they throw from there together 10 times per game and score together more than 50 percent.

It comes at the expense of getting to the color, the Suns are ranked 28th in the number of shots under the basket and last in the league in the number of free throws per game.

Paul has an important part to play in this, he throws only once a game under the basket and reaches the penalty line only 2.5 times a game.

But he produces a lot of threes from the corner for teammates - Phoenix is ​​ranked fourth in the league in the number of threes from the corner (9.6) and third in percentage (44.8).

This paragraph is laden with data because Phoenix is ​​a team with pretty extreme offensive data, which is very much in sync with the qualities that Paul brings and does not bring to the team.

One of the most important offensive issues has to do with the positioning of Devin Booker - the star of the team and its leading slingshot, alongside Paul.

Morning can be a very effective scorer even when the ball is not in his hand most of the time, he did it last season alongside Ricky Rubio, but he does not do it classically.

He rarely releases himself for shots in the catch and shot and prefers instead to take the time and create shot situations for himself.

There is a thin line that separates the creation of situations from the flow of the game and the stopping of the attack and an attempt to create net throwing situations thanks to the talent, and Boker moves between the two sides of this line.

In the minutes when he is not in the flow, the Suns' attacking play seems ballooning and stuck.

But as the season progresses Boker is increasingly learning to take advantage of the presence of one of the greatest coordinators of all time.

In the last 16 games he has scored 27.8 points on 52 percent from the field and delivered 5.3 assists on 2.8 turnovers, the best ratio in his career by a huge margin.

The rest of the attacking players perform various roles of role players, with an emphasis on the two defensive experts.

Bridges appears to be an ideal offensive roll player: he scores his threes, knows how to take advantage of an initial advantage to reach the ring or be released for a half-distance shot, knows how to deliver the extra delivery, hardly loses balls, has no problem passing whole quarters almost without touching the ball.

For Eyton the secondary offensive role is unnatural, this is not what the first draft pick is supposed to do.

The question of how much to run Eyton as a scorer in the post and a half distance is one of the hardest for Monty Williams, because the team works great when he settles down to function as a picker on a pick n 'roll who lives off leftovers.

His blocks are good and create shot situations, he has improved the timing and position of the block, but he will also need to maintain his post play to develop into the player he is capable of being.

In the future, Eyton as another senior scorer will be able to provide the Phoenix attacking game with another tier that it lacks now and will make it difficult for rivals to deal with it.

Learns from the genius of the coordinator next to him.

Devin Booker (Photo: GettyImages, Ronald Martinez)

Assisting staff

Alongside the four senior players mentioned, three other important players in Williams' rotation can be noted.

The first two are fighting for the opening power forward role.

Veteran Jay Crowder came after a playoff in which he quite successfully maintained Yannis Antocompo and Anthony Davis, not many players are capable of doing that and scoring threes at 37.8 percent.

He will no doubt have a very important role in the playoffs.

Second-year player Cameron Johnson is a threesome specialist who is not consistent enough yet, but he adds to the Suns' attack a dimension of movement without a ball without compromising the quality of the defense.

Dario Sharich already deserves two paragraphs of his own.

The Croatian inside player has reinvented himself in the bubble as a replacement chin who could also play as a power forward, and this year he is taking the role one step further.

Sharich missed almost half of the season due to a combination of isolations and injuries, but when he plays he adds a new dimension to the Phoenix offense.

He keeps moving, and his movement is very creative and opens up possibilities for the players around him, something in the joy of his game catches up with the teammates and in his minutes the attack is flowing and full of life.

Sharich is also responsible for one of the most amazing figures of the season: he leads the league in Bennett Rating (the difference to 100 passers per minute he plays) with 23.7.

To clarify how insane this figure is, I will note that in second place Bennett Rating (out of 302 players with at least 15 games and 15 minutes per game) is Mike Conley with 14.3.

The league's official website has data from the last 25 seasons, and the highest net rating measured for a player who has played at least 15 minutes in 40 games is 18, by Drymond Green in the 73-game Golden State wins.

Sharich's figure will probably be straightened out, but he attests to a very special added value he gives to Phoenix that makes him finish quite a few games this year, instead of Eighton or alongside him.

If he stays healthy he will become a strong contender for the title of sixth player of the season.

The rest of the roster makes Phoenix one of the deepest teams in the league.

Cameron Payne, Jabon Carter, Itwan Moore, Langston Galway, Abdel Nader and Frank Kaminski are all legitimate NBA players, except for Moore who all fitted nicely into Williams' wide rotation and found a way to contribute.

Now Tori Craig is also joining as another potential stopper.

The question is whether any of them will be able to get significant minutes in the playoffs, because Williams will need another two-player like that alongside his seven seniors.

Payne, the man and the weird shooting, consistently continues to look like a successful substitute coordinator, and he may turn out to be the senior guard on the bench.

Phoenix could have enlisted the help of someone like Tyrese Halberton, the player general manager James Jones missed in the draft to select inside player Jaylen Smith who is far from fit.

Early to judge, but this seems like the great big mistake of the great Jones.

Surprising sub-player data.

Crowder and Sharich (Photo: GettyImages, Hannah Foslien)

Temporary sentence

The obvious comparison for Phoenix is ​​Utah, both of which raise the question of whether they could face the big stars from Los Angeles, as well as the stars of potential first-round teams like Nikola Jukic, Steph Kerry, Damian Lillard and Luca Doncic.

On paper, Phoenix has more playoff tools than Utah.

She has two senior creative guards, one of whom is one of the most experienced players in the league, and she also has the senior defensive stopper that Jazz is missing.

The Suns' defense looks real, one that can be expressed even against senior rivals and make it difficult for them, making Phoenix a stubborn opponent who will make life difficult for any opponent.

But in the meantime I have a hard time believing in Phoenix's attack as one that belongs to the highest levels.

Dependence on Paul is enormous, and in recent years he has struggled to physically survive entire series.

Very few players on the Monty Williams roster are able to initiate on their own and a large portion of the players lack playoff experience, including Morning.

Utah looks more like a team that was formed years ago and found something special, it reminds me of Toronto two years ago, currently Phoenix seems to me a step or two earlier in the process of building a big team.

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