Suns’ defensive miscues through three games show uphill battle to come

With all the change around the Phoenix Suns this offseason, it’s hard to remember they won only 21 games last season and were dead-last in both offensive and defense rating.

The team was, quite simply, not competitive for most of the season.

The logical progression for the Suns this year is to be competitive, landing somewhere around 26-30 wins.

Phoenix, as constructed, isn’t built around defense. Players like Devin Booker, Deandre Ayton, Ryan Anderson, Jamal Crawford, Josh Jackson and T.J. Warren are defensive liabilities at this point in their careers.

To take that point, though, the Suns will still need to be respectable defensively to compete.

Take the New York Knicks last year, for example, a 29-win team that was 22nd in defensive rating and 20th in offensive rating. Not good by any means, but tolerable enough to win a certain amount of games.

The worry for the Suns through one win against Dallas and two losses to the Nuggets and Warriors is they look like one of, if not the worst defensive team in the league, and it’s not like they are going to have a top 7-10 offense to fix that imbalance.

Where that trajectory leads is another season not too dissimilar from the last campaign, featuring loads of blowouts.

The biggest red flag early on is the basic screwups Phoenix is committing, and by default, how they are essentially giving away free points in doing so. That’s a catastrophic ingredient to a defense that is already lacking on that end because of the team’s roster makeup.

With effort and a decent understanding of the concepts, though, that can be manageable.

We are not seeing any of that so far.

Cleaning the Glass’ Ben Falk had a detailed video breakdown of Deandre Ayton’s defense in the opener against the Mavericks. The main theme: Ayton can’t react in the NBA — he has to anticipate.

Speaking to that, watch how simple this play is between Paul Millsap and Jamal Murray under the basket when one Suns defender can do neither.

Firstly, Jackson doesn’t anticipate the cut back by Murray to set the screen. He’s a step behind already, but when he gets stuck in no man’s land, he doesn’t switch or recover hard back to Murray. So, no proper reaction or anticipation.

He’s stuck between the two, and Richaun Holmes is also late on his recovery, making for an easy mid-range jumper for Millsap.

Watch Warren on this motion run by Dallas and Isaiah Canaan’s reaction after.

Again, he’s not anticipating the need to switch or even reacting to the play.

One more time — take a look at Trevor Ariza’s response when Warren doesn’t anticipate the need to switch on Wes Matthews.

Lastly, observe Jonas Jerebko during this possession for the Golden State Warriors.

Where these issues persist is when the Suns have to react and anticipate the most as defenders — fastbreaks.

Through three games, the Suns are allowing 25.7 points in transition, far and away the worst number in the league. For reference, only three teams in the league were giving up at least 20 a game prior to Tuesday’s action.

At the start of this play, watch Crawford off your screen and Jackson under the basket.

The two glide to the left wing, one of them covering Millsap and the other marking Gary Harris on the wing.

Jackson thinks he has Harris and is gliding back while Crawford goes right to Harris to cover him.

There’s either no communication from Crawford, a lack of effort from Jackson or both.

Look at how easily Green disperses of Ariza and opens up a lane for Kevin Durant.

Again in Denver, we’ve got two guys going the same way. Booker and Ariza both go to stop Nikola Jokic and both leave Will Barton and Harris wide-open for three.

We’ve finally got Jackson and Ariza seeming to communicate here, but no one stops the ball anyway.

You get the point.

After a practice following the season opener, head coach Igor Kokoskov was asked about reviewing defensive film with Ayton.

Kokoskov said there is no perfect basketball and you’ll see mistakes everywhere if you look hard enough.

“You can coach every possession,” Kokoskov said.

“If there [were] no mistakes (the) game would be 0-0. We have to find certain areas — more teaching concepts than one play.”

That’s a good mindset to have about defense, especially with a young team.

With that being said, the Suns have an abnormal amount of head-scratchers and mixups defensively already, something they can’t afford given their defensive shortcomings as it is.

At practice on Tuesday, Kokoskov said “the film is never lying” and cited lots of mental breakdowns.

“We are very quiet on the court,” he said. “We are kind of a little bit — not confident enough.”

They are a largely new roster with a new coach and that’s going to take time, but the Suns’ first three games show how much of an uphill battle they face this season if they want to avoid being one of the league’s worst defensive units.

The next three games against more manageable opponents than Denver and Golden State like the shorthanded Los Angeles Lakers, Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunder will tell us more about how much of a worry that should be this early in the season.

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