2015-16 NBA Preview: Phoenix Suns

PHOENIX SUNS

The Suns are a solidly middle-class team stocked with quality players but no big star. They tried to lure LaMarcus Aldridge to their oasis in the desert, but he skipped town and chose San Antonio. They sit on the precipice of the NBA playoffs, and all they need is one more push from one of their guys and they can hold their own against the other lower seeds.

2015 in review:

Phoenix entered the season with three talented point guards, and while the experiment had its moments it did not ultimately work because of human dynamics. Their players openly balked at the situation. Oddly, they shipped out two of those point guards to appease Eric Bledsoe and then brought in another point guard in Brandon Knight — go figure. The transactions did not improve team. They were actually outscored by about five points per game after the all-star break. Some of that can be explained by Brandon Knight’s injury problems, but they shipped out a lot of talent as well. Don’t confuse happiness with effectiveness.

Rotation players in: Tyson Chandler, Mirza Teletovic.

Rotation players out: Marcus Morris, Goran Dragic, Gerald Green, Isaiah Thomas, Miles Plumlee.

Tyson Chandler will be an immediate boon to Phoenix’s defense, and his threat rolling to the rim could be deadly in conjunction with Bledsoe’s speed. Miles Plumlee had the high-wire act to finish like Chandler, but he lacked defense. Mirza Teletovic is an import from Brooklyn who specializes in shooting an incredible number of three-pointers. Having lost Gerald Green, they’ll need his shooting. The decided that the Morrii needed to be separated and shipped Marcus to Detroit, much to Markieff’s dismay. Although Goran Dragic[1. And Zoran!] and Isaiah Thomas were traded mid-season, the effects will still be felt this season. The team was much better with those two on the court, and it’s worth noting they’re going from a 39 win season with those guys to a season without them.

2016 Projected

Of their players remaining on the roster, Phoenix has played its best basketball with one of at least Eric Bledsoe and Markieff Morris on the court. Bledsoe is a wrecking ball of a player, and some of his defensive stats are extraordinary for a point guard. When he was in Los Angeles he blocked shots and stole the ball at nearly unprecedented rates for a guard, and though those stats have cooled with a larger role in Phoenix he’s still a menace to opposing offenses. On the other side of the court, he’s a good scorer and a solid playmaker who’s shot just well enough to make defenses think about him outside the three-point line. But his 40% conversion rate from 2013 is probably an anomaly — based on his historic numbers, a percentage near 33 to 34 is more likely.

Markieff Morris showed up high in some plus/minus rankings, but let’s dissect what happened. He’s a scoring power forward with range but he’s a much better midrange shooter than one from three point distance. He’s an okay playmaker and a lukewarm rebounder. He’s not a special defensive player either. Add it all up, and he’s not the type of player who’s shows up consistently as a fringe all-star in advanced metrics. His main issue is his tendency to jack up ill-advised midrange shots, and he actually did this more often when Marcus Morris was off the court. He’s never had a huge on/off margin before either — in 2014 the Suns were about the same with him and without him. The Suns played better with him on the court in 2015 by a huge margin, but that likely won’t happen again.

Thankfully, Markieff Morris has Tyson Chandler as a backline defender. Chandler can serve two roles on the team. One is as the Miles Plumlee/Brandan Wright role that worked so well last year as an efficient finisher at the rim, and the other is as a smart team defender near the basket. That kind of skillset blends well with nearly every lineup. His age, however, is a concern, and with a different system than Dallas there’s a chance his defense won’t be as effective.

Chandler is taking the starting job away from the young Alex Len, who had a breakout sophomore season and showed promising defense. He’s a skinny, awkward-looking center, but he was one of the highest ranked players in a rim protection per minute rating and his block rate was healthy.

Brandon Knight is another young player with a varied skillset, but in reading the roster closely and the projected minutes it’s a little confusing as to what their actual plan is. They’re not good enough to compete in the west, and they’re not rebuilding either. PJ Tucker, for example, would be a nice piece to trade to a good team for an asset, but it’s unclear if Phoenix wants to do that and the Tyson Chandler move confirms that. They already had an unexpectedly great season in 2014; they can’t assume another leap, one that’ll take them past 50 wins, is just waiting to happen.

Quick statistic/graph

The reality of a sudden improvement in three-point percentage is that the most likely outcome afterwards is a hard regression to the mean. For example, Brandon Knight was shooting 41% with the Bucks before the trade to Phoenix, and lo and behold he shot a mere 31% there. His percentage projects to a perfectly normal 36% next season. We should be under no illusions that he’s a great outside shooter. The same applies to every regression candidate listed below. We live in an age of information, and we should stop relying on single seasons to explain or predict shooting.

Table: biggest year-to-year jumps in 3PT% (min. 100 3FGA 2015&2014)

Summary

After a game of musical chairs and a season of courtship, the Suns will be … exactly the same strength-wise. In other words, the parts going in roughly equal the parts going out. Most models and predictions have the Suns near league average or maybe a little under. It’s disappointing for such an entertaining team that surprised the league a couple years ago, but the NBA playoff race is intense and the Suns failed to land a star player.

PBP-Metric[1. This is the initial version of my own metric, which uses a full range of stats collected from play-by-play logs and tested extensively to avoid overfitting.]: 39.9

PT-PM: 34

Nick‘s[2. For a short description, the predictions use regression models and neural networks to apply various stats like BPM, RAPM, and Win Shares to 10,000 simulations of the season game-by-game to select the “best” result.]: 39

Nathan Walker: 39