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Most people who grew up with younger siblings understand this struggle. A group of you and your friends are planning on a night of galavanting the town. You just slipped into your best ensemble that is sure to catch everyone’s eye. After getting that last check in the mirror, you start strutting to the front door the same way that Peter Parker did in Spider-Man 3 when you hear your mom say, “Now you know that you can’t go out unless you take your little brother!” You quickly turnaround and plead with her that he is too young and doesn’t belong in the group. But she isn’t having it. She retorts, “If he doesn’t go, then you can’t go.” With your back against the wall, you reluctantly take your little brother named Phoniex with you. Now you ask, how does this story relate to our Phoenix Suns bubble preview? Well, just replace the mom with Adam Silver, the group of friends with the eight Western Conference teams in the playoffs, and you with the New Orleans Pelicans.
Vegas Odds
The Westgate Super Book in Las Vegas has the Phoneix Suns at +50000 to win the NBA 2020 championship. The Suns are in a three-way tie for the worst odds in winning the whole thing. If you enjoy throwing away money, a $20 bet on the Suns would net you a $10,020 payout. The Suns received an invite to the Orlando bubble to help bolster the chances for a Pelicans playoff appearance. Looking at some of the teams invited, they are a good four to six games back of the 8th seed. That kind of deficient is near impossible to make up when you only have eight games to play. The Suns are six games behind the 8th seeded Grizzlies. To put it in perspective, FiveThirtyEight has Phoniex having less than a 1% chance of making it to the playoffs.
The Suns Bubble Schedule
I already eluded to how unreasonable it is to expect a team to close a six-game deficit. But it gets even worse for the Suns when you dissect the murders row of teams they play. The only easy game they have is the lifeless Washington Wizards playing without Bradley Beal. The seven other teams they have are all playoff teams. What makes this worse, is they don’t even play any games against the 8th-12th seed! Phoenix has no control of their destiny in the Disney Bubble. The Suns have to wish upon a star that the teams ahead of them will lose, while also going nearly undefeated against seven playoff-bound franchises. The league has Phoenix playing the 7th seeded Dallas Mavericks twice. But it doesn’t matter since there is a 14 game deficient between them. Phoenix is going to need some Disney movie magic to make the playoffs this year.
The Roster
The Phoenix Suns actually have a halfway decent collection of young talent going into the bubble. Their coach Monty Williams, who was the subject of some early coach of the year talk, helped the young suns team jump to an early start in the season with big wins against the Clippers and 76ers. Sadly, the Suns will not be at full strength as Kelly Oubre will sit out to nurse his torn meniscus. Oubre provided a lot for the young Suns team. On the surface, he brought scoring, length, and emerged as the second best player behind first-time All-Star Devin Booker. Ayton getting slapped with a 25 game suspension opened the window for Oubre. But even when Ayton came back Oubre outshined him. Kelly was the piston that kept the Sun’s engine running and provided much-needed support to Devin Booker. He brought a swagger to the team from racking up posters all season, like this one on Paul George, and often taking the toughest assignments on defense. Oubre was having a career year averaging 18.7 points, 6.4 rebounds, 45.2% field goal percentage, and shooting a career-high 35.2% from beyond the arc through 55 games played.
When you look at the makeup of the team, they have three solid pieces to build around in Ayton, Booker, and Oubre. They have a fantastic facilitator in Ricky Rubio and surprising sharpshooting big in Aron Baynes, who shot a 35 percent three-point percentage. The Suns have a decent foundation for the future but not enough to make the difficult push into the playoffs.
Suns Bubble: Final Thoughts on the
The Suns are the little brother who doesn’t belong in the NBA bubble. They have a young roster that doesn’t have the firepower to make a push and schedule that has them set up for failure. It doesn’t seem like the Suns will rise in Orlando.
