Phoenix Suns’ Babby: We can’t use team’s youth as an excuse
Apr 2, 2015, 8:44 PM | Updated: Apr 3, 2015, 4:59 pm
The Phoenix Suns are one of the youngest teams in the NBA.
If you don’t know that, you would have heard it — repeatedly — from the team’s brass as well as some of its players when trying to explain some of its struggles.
But as the Suns, 38-37 entering play Thursday, sputter toward the finish line of their season, they do so knowing that change will be necessary in order to improve and end what will be a five-season playoff drought.
And if you think the team expects that improvement to come from within, that the young players will grow up and lead the team to the top of the Western Conference, you’d be wrong.
“We all point to the youth of our team, both chronologically and experientially, we have a very young team,” president of basketball operations Lon Babby told Bickley and Marotta on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Thursday. “That’s kind of the default explanation, if you will. Why don’t we finish games? Why don’t we play hard on certain nights? Guys have never been put in this situation before. I think there is tremendous validity to all of that.
“But we can’t be blinded by that and use it as an excuse.”
Babby said the team will evaluate what exactly it has, taking a “really hard look” at the roster and determining what it is missing.
“I don’t think simply saying ‘they’re young’ is a complete answer, and we can’t rely on it being a complete answer,” he said. “So we’ve got to mix the chemistry of our team up.”
To that end, Babby took responsibility for the team lacking a true veteran presence, saying they underestimated how important that would be and that he should have known better.
“That hurt us this year,” he said, adding they had Channing Frye last year, and he helped provide some ballast.
Frye departed for Orlando in the offseason, though, and the team struggled to fill the void he left, both on the court and in the locker room.
Babby believes they may have been blinded a bit by the great chemistry last year’s team displayed. That’s not the kind of mistake they’re looking to make again.
“So we’ve got to find leadership, whether it comes from a veteran or it comes from guys on the team now,” he said. “It’s got to be a point of emphasis, if you will, going forward.”
