Season Preview

The Suns will finally tipoff the season tonight against the New Orleans Hornets. The starting lineup will be full of familiar faces as this is the first time the Suns’ opening day starting lineup is the same as the previous season’s end of season starting lineup since Jeff Hornacek and Kurt Rambis were in purple and orange 21 years ago. Unfortunately for the Suns, that cohesiveness may not be a good thing. The Suns missed the playoffs last season finishing in 10th place in the Western Conference and negative efficiency differential at -0.4 (difference between offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency per 100 possessions) finishing 16th in the NBA in that category.

Without any significant improvements and an additional year on the legs and backs of Grant Hill and Steve Nash as well as a lockout-condensed 66 game schedule, this year’s team does not appear to have much hope for a return to glory. Most prognosticators have the Suns finishing toward the bottom of the Western Conference. John Hollinger’s analysis has the Suns finishing 14th in the West with a 24-42 record. Considering the fact that Hollinger uses analytics to make his predictions and his Vegas-beating history, he has some credibility toward his predictions.

ESPN’s Bill Simmons, who has significantly less credibility, but is entertaining to listen to nonetheless has a much nicer prediction of 33-33. Most likely this will still not be good enough to make the playoffs, but it does make for a rosier season and at least something to play for.

Using David Berri’s Wins Produced stat, I calculated my own quick predictions. Unfortunately, this also has the Suns finishing with a poor record at 21-45, preparing for the lottery. To find these numbers, I used last season’s WP48 with my own quick estimation of minutes played to come up with each person’s contribution of wins. Of course, we do not have a last season for Markieff Morris, so I used a rough estimate based on previous power forwards’ rookie seasons to come up with about one win attributed to Morris. Now, if Morris turns into a rookie of the year candidate and fulfills the Suns’ wildest dreams and therefore takes more minutes from Frye, I predict he adds an additional six wins for a 27-39 finish. And again, the Suns will still finish in the lottery.

Player WP48 Min. Wins Produced
Steve Nash 0.244 2046 10.401
Jared Dudley 0.173 1848 6.661
Grant Hill 0.102 1914 4.067
Channing Frye 0.017 2046 0.725
Marcin Gortat 0.176 1980 7.260
Shannon Brown 0.056 1320 1.540
Markieff Morris 0.037 1188 0.916
Robin Lopez -0.031 1056 -0.682
Josh Childress 0.202 660 2.778
Ronnie Price -0.094 1254 -2.456
Hakim Warrick 0.092 198 0.380
Seb. Telfair -0.037 132 -0.102
Garret Siler -0.014 198 -0.058


The Suns are still feeling the departure of Amare Stoudemire. They do not have a go-to scorer that can score on isolation plays and get to the free throw line. They went into last season hoping Jason Richardson and Hedo Turkoglu could fill that role but had to part with Richardson in order to dump the Turkoglu disaster. After that, Vince Carter also could not live up to expectations of a go-to scorer and the Suns were left without someone who could score when the offense went stagnant.

As far as the additions are concerned, both Sebastian Telfair and Ronnie Price are a step down from Aaron Brooks who is stuck in China after signing a contract a week before the lockout ended. And Shannon Brown, while talented, has not shown the ability to create his own shot and will not give the Suns the consistent firepower that they need.

As it is now, the lockout-shortened season may be one of the bright spots on the year, as it will mean less misery for a bottom-feeding team than in a normal 82-game season. Steve Nash will still be Steve Nash and will be the main reason why the Suns will be competitive in many of their games, but overall will just come up short too many times. This season will provide a good opportunity to get better through a deep draft in 2012. If it were up to me I would try to keep Nash as healthy as possible through this season by significantly reducing his minutes on back to backs and stretches with three games in four nights. This will keep the Suns competitive for a high lottery pick as well as a big-time free agent next summer. Showing that loyalty to Nash can hopefully bring him back with a retooled roster in 2012 and one last run or two to the promised land.