Suns get control against Pistons, maintain it for comfortable victory

The Phoenix Suns did enough to win on Friday without much threat of losing in a 109-92 final over the Detroit Pistons.

The way it unfolded is open to interpretation. You could argue the Suns got control of this game and never let go. You could also argue their overall performance didn’t inspire a ton of confidence.

The Pistons are one of the worst teams in the league, now dropping to 5-17 on the season. There were stretches of the game the Suns lacked much pop in where a better team would have taken advantage, but Phoenix was able to come out unscathed.

A majority of that was with the starters in, where Suns head coach Monty Williams took out Cam Johnson for Frank Kaminsky. More on that later.

At halftime, Devin Booker was minus-8 while Abdel Nader was plus-22. The starters weren’t necessarily lethargic throughout the game but looked disconnected and out of sorts.

After a bad start to the game for Phoenix, its bench blew the game open with a 16-point lead in the mid-second quarter. Thanks to poor shooting from the Pistons, Detroit never was able to get close.

The Pistons were a horrid 7-of-36 (19.4%) from three-point range. They got within 11 in the fourth quarter, thanks in part to 21 Suns turnovers, before the best three minutes of the game from either team via Booker and Chris Paul iced the game.

The duo combined for 20 points in the fourth. Booker finished with 23 points while Paul had 20 and eight assists.

The Suns had 40 bench points.

It took a few games as the backup point guard, but E’Twaun Moore finally got to show that he’s got way more to his game than just being a high-IQ veteran. Moore gets buckets and had 11 points, three assists and three steals.

The move to the bench for Johnson helped him piece some things together. He had some good drives to the basket and shot 6-of-10 from the field for 14 points.

Kaminsky did his job as the starter in hitting open shots and staying aggressive on offense. He scored 15 points and connected on a trio of three-pointers.

Deandre Ayton had eight points, 13 rebounds and five turnovers on 4-of-11 shooting. Ayton’s found some consistency on the offensive glass, where he had five of his rebounds Friday, but everything else in his game being there most nights still looks to be an ongoing process.

That and the Suns’ play on Friday are particularly relevant after what Williams said about potential starting lineup changes beyond just Friday.

“I think that’s gonna be the way we’re gonna do this going forward because we’re seeing all these teams who are big and they’re playing big power forwards,” he said of starting Kaminsky. “Points in the paint and production in the paint has been something that we’ve wanted to nullify as it relates to playing against teams like that. I just felt like we needed more size. Also felt like I put Cam in a tough spot playing against guys like Zion and Paul Millsap and all these teams that go big, so we were just trying to match size for size.

“It may be a deal where we change it up for the rest of the season depending on who we’re playing against at that position. Because that’s the position that changes the most throughout the league.”

Kaminsky getting the nod felt like a one-night deal, with injuries and a bad matchup factoring into it. But this sounds like more than that, with going big being a real option going forward. Dario Saric could very well be in Kaminsky’s role when he gets back from a left ankle sprain.

Williams moved Johnson into the starting lineup for Crowder 10 games ago for a few different reasons, primarily to shake up the offensive flow and make the team move a little faster. Now, it sounds like going big when needed is the latest switch-up, which will slow the team down to give the team more of an interior presence.

That certainly was not the plan for the team’s roster construction in the offseason when it gave Crowder $30 million, to decrease the minutes available for him and Johnson. Obviously, things change, and Williams has never been afraid of moving quickly on rotation tweaks when he thinks it’s necessary.

The question is what changed. The lack of cohesion for the starters is the main factor, of course. Crowder and Johnson’s play sure hasn’t been spectacular, but not bad enough to look towards two bigs when the matchup warrants it. They’ve been fine.

Ayton is the only real piece of the puzzle here to consider with the team’s play around the basket. The discussion around him only continues to get more polarizing the longer his career goes on, but he hasn’t met expectations for 21 games into his third season. The indecisiveness and timid play will always be a negative until it simply isn’t and it has been present more this year than ever before. There was a four-game blip two weeks ago where it looked like that huge step had been taken. That did not come to fruition.

It’s not solely on Ayton and there are complexities to what’s still not clicking yet for the main group of the Suns’ rotation. It goes beyond just him.

What’s evident right now, though, is that the Suns are not in a position where they can consistently dictate their own style of play on other teams. Instead, they are now adjusting accordingly to the opposition while they figure themselves out.

How concerning should that be? Well, the Suns are 12-9 after Friday’s win. That’s just about on schedule with where they’d like to be as a playoff team. Until that starts trending in a different direction, there shouldn’t be much worry. They’ve got plenty of talent, time and a smart basketball mind in charge to put it together.

But they’re going to need to. Eventually.

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