A Season In Review

How far are we into the season? Three games? It's practically over, right? Okay. Then it's time to review the performance of our players, clearly.

Thus far, in 2/3rds of our games (That's 67%!) the Suns have beat a team that they should have no problem beating. So far, in 3/3rds of our games (That's 100%!) we have failed to show up to play through the first 30 minutes of the game. In 1/3rd of the games (That's 33%!), the Suns flat out failed to come alive for those last 18 minutes and continued to play like garbage until garbage time, when, oddly enough, they played quite well.

Now, I'm not overly concerned, the season just started, after all. Everyone knows the Suns have talent, a good system, and enough firepower to win 60 games. The problem in all this? The Suns themselves don't seem overly concerned. That's a big problem. We as fans know this, but the players, the coaching staff... they have to work as hard as possible to keep that status as an elite team. If they don't wake up and start playing in the first half, it could cause problems. We are talented enough to beat teams with middling-to-low levels of talent. (Like Cleveland or Seattle, and honestly, we still could have won in L.A. if they didn't play like crap in the 3rd quarter.) We can't let elite teams blow us out in the first half and then just go ahead and come back though, against elite teams we would have thrown all three games away.

It's clear that the Suns aren't completely healthy. Amare's knee seemed to bug him in L.A, Raja might as well not be playing (And yet, he's barely leaving the game. Odd), Leandro's elbow is clearly still bugging him, along with the rib thing.

In other news, D'Antoni is still overplaying his starters. Against Cleveland, Grant Hill (the guy who's minutes need to be limited) played 40 minutes and 8 seconds. Shawn played 45 minutes and 42 seconds. Raja played an agonizing 40 minutes and 29 seconds of poor offense and mediocre defense. (First part is fine, he'll get his rhythm, the defense part is absolutely awful though. That's why he's on the team. He's got tendonitis right now, for Christ's sakes. That doesn't mean play him for the majority of the game, that means take it easy.) All in all, my biggest criticism is that here, early in the season, the time to give bench guys chances to prove what they can do, D'Antoni is running his starters straight into the ground. It seems unnecessary, especially considering how banged up some of the major rotation guys are.

Will these problems be solved shortly? Will the team wake up in the first half? Will the Suns go on a team hunting trip and develop an eternal sense of conviviality that lasts through the years, then accidentally shoot Sean Marks with a crossbow?

Only time will tell.