5 Suns stats that indicate where team needs to go next

The NBA offseason is a good time to take a step back and reassess. It’s the time to take stock of the season that was, identify areas for improvement, and make a plan of action for the next campaign. That’s especially true for a team that got swept in the first round, and there are a few Phoenix Suns stats that lay out a potential road map for where this group needs to go next.

Veteran additions like Tyus Jones, Monte Morris and Mason Plumlee will undoubtedly help, and the hope is that incoming rookies Ryan Dunn and Oso Ighodaro will be able to do the same. But for the most part, it’s the same six-man core returning, only this time, under a new coach in Mike Budenholzer.

A full year of experience together and a coaching change will hopefully pay dividends, but there are also a few key areas that need to be points of emphasis for Bud and his coaching staff. To that end, let’s take a look at five important Suns stats from last year and how this team might be able to improve on them next season.

1. Taking more 3s tops our list of Suns stats

With a Big 3 of Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal, the Suns clearly have scoring and shooting. Surrounding them with role players like Jones, Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale provides plenty of spacing.

Unfortunately, Phoenix didn’t take nearly enough 3-pointers last year, despite being one of the most efficient 3-point shooting teams in the league. And that’s been a problem since their return to relevance four years ago.

THE STAT: Despite being a top-10 team in 3-point efficiency in each of the last four seasons, the Suns have failed to keep pace with the rest of the modern NBA in attempts:

• 2023-24: 25th in 3PAs (32.6), 5th in 3P% (38.2%)
• 2022-23: 17th in 3PAs (32.6), 7th in 3P% (37.4%)
• 2021-22: 26th in 3PAs (31.9), 9th in 3P% (36.4%)
• 2020-21: 15th in 3PAs (34.6), 7th in 3P% (37.8%)

According to Cleaning the Glass, which filters out garbage time, the Suns ranked 18th in their frequency of above-the-break 3s and 20th in their frequency of corner 3s. That’s just not enough in this pace-and-space league, but especially so for a team that has so many elite long-range shooters:

• Kevin Durant: 41.3 3P% last year, career 38.7 3P%
• Devin Booker: 36.4 3P% last year, career 35.7 3P%
• Bradley Beal: 43.0 3P% last year, career 37.5 3P%
• Grayson Allen: 46.1 3P% last year, career 41.2 3P%
• Royce O’Neale: 37.0 3P% last year, career 38.1 3P%
• Tyus Jones: 41.4 3P% last year, career 36.7 3P%
• Monte Morris: 38.6 3P% last year, career 39.1 3P%
• Damion Lee: 44.5 3P% last healthy season, career 37.9 3P%

Even Bol Bol shot 42.3 percent from deep last year! This team has to find a way to take more 3s. That’s the way of the league now, and say what you will about Eric Gordon, but he wasn’t afraid to let it fly. His 5.8 long-range attempts a night ranked third on the Suns’ roster, and they’ll need to replace his quick trigger collectively.

The good news is Budenholzer’s teams have historically understood the assignment on that front:

If you wanted the Suns to shoot more 3s, Mike Budenholzer should help there. Here’s where his teams have historically ranked in 3PAs:

2nd
7th
6th
16th
7th
2nd
4th
8th
5th
4th

— Gerald Bourguet (@GeraldBourguet) May 10, 2024

With the Milwaukee Bucks, Bud went as far as taping five boxes on the court well beyond the 3-point line to indicate where players needed to be at the start of every play in their 5-out offense.

None of the Suns’ centers are floor-spacers like Brook Lopez, so Bud won’t be able to repeat that same tactic in Phoenix, but he’s been preaching the importance of getting up more 3s since he was first hired in Phoenix.

“There’s gonna be philosophical approaches to how we practice every day, how important shooting 3s is, and the spacing and all the value and all the things that come from being a high-volume 3-point team,” Budenholzer said. “I’m gonna work with the whole group to help them embrace it, understand why it’s important to us.”

2. Tweaking their midrange shot profile

Expecting the Suns to completely eliminate midrange looks from their shot profile is unrealistic. It’s also counterproductive, since Phoenix has three of the best midrange shot-makers in recent NBA history (and in the case of KD and perhaps Book, of all time).

Cleaning The Glass painted a pretty striking picture of how often the Big 3 shot from the midrange last year:

• Kevin Durant: 56% frequency from midrange (98th percentile at his position), 26% frequency from long midrange (100th percentile)
• Devin Booker: 50% frequency from midrange (91st percentile), 23% frequency from long midrange (100th percentile)
• Bradley Beal: 40% frequency from midrange (70th percentile), 16% frequency from long midrange (88th percentile)

It’s also clear how efficient they were from that area of the floor:

• Kevin Durant: 51% accuracy from midrange (86th percentile), 52% accuracy from long midrange (87th percentile)
• Devin Booker: 50% accuracy from midrange (91st percentile), 47% accuracy from long midrange (77th percentile)
• Bradley Beal: 45% accuracy from midrange (63rd percentile), 44% accuracy from long midrange (73rd percentile)

Budenholzer is aware of all this, and he wisely doesn’t want to detract from their strengths.

“They’re so talented, they’re so good at everything they do,” Budenholzer said. “I don’t want to take away from anything that they do. I want to add to what they do. I want to make them better. I want to push them to be their best, and what’s best for our team, and to get all of us to understand, how do we win? And there’s no doubt that these guys will know. I think 3s are a part of it, but we’re gonna do it from day one.”

It’s not just the Big 3, though. Looking at all midrange shots, Tyus Jones ranked in the 86th percentile in both frequency and accuracy. Monte Morris had a down year working his way back from injury, but he ranked in the 77th percentile in midrange frequency, as well as the 94th percentile in long midrange frequency.

The majority of Jones’ middies came from the short midrange with that highly efficient floater of his, so he’s slightly different. But the point still stands that most of the Suns’ lead initiators can and will operate from the midrange. So what is there to be done?

THE STAT: Over the last four years, the Suns have ranked second, first, first and sixth in the league in midrange shot frequency. During that same span, they’ve also ranked second, second, third and fourth in long midrange shot frequency (4-14 feet away from the basket).

As much as an efficient shot is an efficient shot no matter where it comes from, it’s also true that the Suns’ shot profile — ranking fifth in the NBA in pull-up jumpers last year — inherently makes it harder on themselves. They have three certified bucket-getters who can take someone one-on-one and hit difficult, contested shots from the midrange, but that doesn’t always mean they should.

Case in point: In the regular-season, the Suns ranked fifth in isolation possessions (9.2 per game) but only 12th in points per possession on those plays. The individual shot-making came up big in the playoffs, when Phoenix ranked seventh among playoff teams in iso possessions and jumped all the way to second in points per possession, but the offense stagnated and failed to crack 110 points until Game 4, when the series was basically already over.

Phoenix shouldn’t completely turn their backs on the Big 3’s DNA. A zebra can’t change its stripes, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks — whatever animal-related saying you want to apply here, the individual shot-making of Durant, Booker and Beal is a strength. In the playoffs, being able to create offense and score from the one area of the floor where defenses are more willing to concede shots can be a huge help.

But it can’t be the foundation of what the Suns do offensively either. They have to find a way to dial back the midrange attempts in order for carve out space for more 3s, and ideally, more looks at the basket. Speaking of which….

3. Finding ways to attack the rim

I know, I know: It’s not exactly cutting-edge analysis to suggest a team needs to shoot more 3s, take fewer midrange jumpers and attack the rim more. That’s basically Basketball 101 in the modern NBA.

However! We can’t go through this exercise without acknowledging how the Suns have zagged while the rest of the league zigs.

THE STAT: Over the last four years, the Suns have ranked 25th, 30th, 30th and 30th in frequency of shots at the rim. Being 25th last season was somehow a step up from the three years prior.

A team doesn’t necessarily need to put constant pressure on the rim to generate good offense. The Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks — this year’s NBA Finalists — actually took fewer shots at the rim than Phoenix did last year. The difference is they also ranked first and second in 3-point attempts, bolstering their offense with a high-powered onslaught from behind the arc.

If the Suns can’t completely alter their shot profile by launching a ton of 3s, maybe they could divvy up some of those extra midrange looks between shots at the rim and shots behind the arc?

The frustrating thing is, despite Jusuf Nurkic’s well-documented struggles at the rim, Phoenix still shot 67.5 percent at the basket as a team last season, ranking 12th in that category. Once again, it’ll start with the Big 3.

Booker hasn’t taken more than 25 percent of his shots at the rim since the season before Chris Paul arrived. Beal averaged almost five fewer drives per 75 possessions this year than he did the season prior in Washington, and he scored significantly fewer points off cuts (and at the rim in general).

The hope is that having two assist-to-turnover gods allows the Big 3 to worry less about creating offense and focus more on attacking once they get the ball in motion. There are advantages and disadvantages to Phoenix’s three leading scorers not starting possessions with the ball in their hands, but one hopeful advantage is it gets Booker, Beal and Durant in positions to attack downhill or off movement.

One last thing: Cleaning The Glass uses a stat called “location effective field goal percentage” to indicate the efficiency of a team’s shot profile by measuring what their effective field goal percentage would be if every team shot a league-average percentage from every spot on the floor. The Suns have ranked 28th, 30th, 30th and 27th in that category over the last four years.

4. Cutting down on Turnovers to improve the defense

Yours truly already wrote a separate dissertation on Phoenix’s rampant turnover problem, but that came with 10 games left. We’re overdue for an update to our findings that reflect the full season.

Again, these categories are subjective, but I went through and re-watched all 1,156 Suns player turnovers from the season and put them into different groups to try and diagnose the problem. Of the 1,156 player turnovers that are documented on NBA.com (excluding shot clock violations and other “team turnovers”), here’s how they broke down:

• 288 lost ball turnovers (24.9%)
• 639 bad pass turnovers (55.3%)
• 136 offensive foul turnovers (11.8%)
• 93 miscellaneous turnovers (8.0%)

Altogether, Phoenix ranked 25th in both turnovers and opponent points off turnovers, committing 14.9 mistakes a night that led to 18.2 points per game for their opponent. The Suns went 23-13 when they committed 13 or fewer turnovers, but only 26-20 when they coughed it up at least 14 times.

But here’s the real kicker: By simply cutting down on abhorrently sloppy passes or miscommunication errors, they would’ve been a top-five team in the NBA in turnovers — and that was without a point guard.

THE STAT: Of the Suns’ 1,156 turnovers, 115 of them were the type of sloppy, lazy passes that are indefensible for any NBA player, regardless of position. That’s 9.9 percent of their turnovers right there!

Throw in 118 more turnovers on bad passes that went right to a defender’s outstretched hand in the passing lane (10.2 percent), plus another 96 as the result of miscommunication errors (8.3 percent), and nearly 30 percent of Phoenix’s turnovers were well within their control.

Of course, cutting down on sloppy mistakes is easier said than done. Most people liked to cite the overall turnover numbers as an indicator that Phoenix needed a traditional point guard, but the truth is, in watching the film back, their starting five made some confounding, inexplicable turnovers in spots where they’ll need to be able to function even with two traditional point guards coming in.

However, if the Suns can cut back on some of those brain fart passes with assist-to-turnover gods like Jones and Morris handling the rock, they’ll be in a good place. And with a full year of experience together for the returning core, hopefully they can also avoid a lot of those mishaps where a passer threw the ball to no one, expecting his teammate to cut instead of pop (or vice-versa).

Most importantly, cutting down on the easy, pick-6 turnovers would go a long way in helping Phoenix’s defense out. According to Cleaning The Glass, the Suns were 11th last year in half-court defense but only 18th in transition defense.

The biggest culprit? On a per-100-possessions basis, the Suns gave up the fourth-most transition points off steals to opponents. Simply cutting down on 1-2 turnovers a night could spare Phoenix a few points, potentially bumping them into the league’s top-10 defenses in the process.

5. Feasting in transition

Let’s wrap things up with something that applies to all 30 teams: Getting easy fast break points always helps! But this is especially true for the Suns, who were the most efficient transition team in the NBA when they were actually able to get out and run.

THE STAT: According to NBA.com, the Suns were first in the NBA in points per possession (1.22) in transition. Unfortunately, they also ranked 22nd in their frequency of fast break possessions.

Phoenix doesn’t need to run and gun. In fact, they actually jumped from 22nd in pace in 2022-23 to 15th last year. But if the Suns can get stops and push the tempo for easy buckets, they’ll make an efficient half-court offense even deadlier.

With point guards like Jones and Morris there to orchestrate the break, a Big 3 of elite scorers capable of finishing at the basket, elite shooters like Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale trailing the play, and athletic high-risers like the rookies providing some youthful exuberance, this team needs to find ways to capitalize on its transition opportunities.