How the Valley Suns made the playoffs in their inaugural season

Tipoff is near for the first ever Valley Suns playoff game. In their inaugural season, the Suns managed to grab on to the fifth seed and will face the Santa Cruz Warriors tonight at 7 p.m. MST. Much like David Byrne in the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime,” you may be asking yourself, “How did they get here?”

I’m glad you asked, because we’re about to take a look at the most important stats on offense and defense that got the Suns to this point.

The Offense

At the beginning of the season, coach John Little said he wanted to run a similar offense to one Phoenix Suns head coach Mike Budenholzer has historically run: one which emphasizes 3-point shooting and pace. That’s exactly what Little has implemented for this team.

“We want to play fast, want to play together, we want to be unselfish and want to compete at a high level,” Little said, calling those the team’s core principles. “And then there also will be some ability for us to kind of do some experimenting and do some different things too. For the most part, we’re going to be completely aligned with what [Phoenix is] doing.”

While the Valley Suns were about average in 3-point percentage, they ranked top of the league in 3-point makes, hitting 16.2 3s per game. Leading the charge in this department was the sharpshooting Jaden Shackelford, who made 3.1 from deep per game. This was highlighted by a performance in G League’s first ever 16-game Tip-Off Tournament during November where he scored 41 points, including hitting a career-high 11 3s.

“[The game is] easier when you got teammates and coaches who trust you to take certain shots, to make certain shots,” Shackelford said. “Once you get in that state, it’s just the basket gets bigger and you’re having more fun by the play.”

In the scoring slot, the Suns have ranked sixth in points per game at 117.1, lead by TyTy Washington’s average of 20.5 points a night. While Collin Gillespie lead the squad with 11 assists per game, he only appeared in 10 games. Washington paced the team in assists with 7.0 per game, just ahead of fellow guard David Stockton, who now ranks fourth all-time on the G League assists list. The Suns also excel at keeping the ball in their own hands, leading the G League in assist-to-turnover ratio on the season.

Though the NBA Suns don’t play at a blazing pace like a typical Budenholzer offense, the G League Suns are more along those lines with the fourth-fastest pace at 103.69 possessions per 48 minutes.

The defense

While the Valley Suns as a team weren’t the most proficient on the steals front, they did have one player who did have a propensity for theft. Among players who spent the majority of the season with the Valley Suns, Stockton led the squad with 1.3 per game. Stockton is also tied for eighth all-time on the G League steals list. You may know Stockton’s name because of his father, John Stockton, who played for the Utah Jazz. The younger Stockton said it would be an honor to share the NBA and G League records for assists and steals with his father.

“Obviously, it would be a huge honor, really cool,” he said about attaining the records before the season started. “I try not to think about it too much. For me, it’s just being here, be in the locker room with the team and playing every day is what I like to do.”

What the team does excel at on the defensive end is grabbing the available defensive rebounds. They’ve been able to keep opponents off the glass by leading the G League in defensive rebound percentage at 72 percent, and ranked eighth at 34.1 defensive rebounds per game. The emphasis on crashing the glass has helped the Suns limit their opponents second chance points too. The Suns have kept their opponents to 14 second chance points a night, representing the fourth-best mark in the league. All of this has combined to ensure the Valley Suns have recorded a top-10 defensive rating.