By Gerald Bourguet

It’s been a lot of doom and gloom to start this Phoenix Suns season. Even after Tuesday’s dominant win over the LA Clippers, this team is still 4-6. Their roster construction is a misshapen jigsaw puzzle, their starting lineup hasn’t worked, they’ve only got one win against a team that wasn’t terrible or injured, and they’ve largely been uncompetitive against the legitimate playoff teams they’ve faced.

The list can go on and on, and in all honesty, Phoenix’s 3-1 stretch over the last week or so has done little to convince anyone that this is a surefire playoff squad. The Suns still have a Jalen Green problem, the starting five needs further changes, and it’s never too early to start thinking about potential trade candidates.

However, even small progress is still progress, and while some of our larger concerns still apply, now seems like a good time to take a more positive look at what the Suns have done lately. In no particular order, here are five encouraging signs from the last week.

1. Jordan Goodwin is back!

First things first: Outside of Devin Booker, no one has been more vital to the Suns’ success through these first 10 games than Jordan Goodwin. It feels odd to say that, considering Phoenix’s recent 3-1 stretch started without Goodie, but there’s no doubt who embodies the way this team aspires to play the most on a nightly basis.

After missing the last four games with a right calf injury, Goodwin returned to action against the Clippers, and he wasted no time in letting everyone know he was fully back. Goodie racked up 18 points, 3 rebounds and 1 steal in just 14 minutes off the bench, going 6-for-7 from 3-point range.

Goodwin’s unrelenting energy, his penchant for racking up steals and deflections, and his nonstop activity on the offensive glass are all boons to this Suns team. It’s great they were able to build some momentum before he even returned, but there’s no doubt that this team will have a much better chance of getting where they want to go as long as Goodwin’s on the court.

2. Swapping Oso Ighodaro for Khaman Maluach in the starting lineup is better for both bigs

Not to say I told you so, but it’s probably not a coincidence this team started looking more competitive the exact game where Jordan Ott moved Oso Ighodaro into the starting lineup over Khaman Maluach. We love Man Man around these parts, and there’s no question he’s the future of the center position in Phoenix, but it was clear he wasn’t ready for his trial by fire just yet. Ighodaro brings more of what the starters need, even if his numbers rarely leap off the stat sheet.

This change has been beneficial for the Suns and both of their bigs. Phoenix is 3-1 since Ighodaro entered the starting lineup, and while Oso’s individual numbers are fairly paltry, the starters aren’t getting off to abysmal starts anymore. Ighodaro is far from perfect, especially as a rebounder, free-throw shooter and dude who lacks a jumper in general. The Spurs and even the Rockets matchups showed he’s still going to be outmatched by elite bigs with size.

But he makes fewer glaring mistakes than Maluach, and the Suns’ defensive rebounding was already dead last when Man Man was the starter. If starting Maluach brought none of the rebounding and rim protection benefits it was supposed to, at least with Ighodaro, the offense has a little more synergy and purposeful movement when he’s on the floor.

As for the Suns’ second-year big, Maluach looks a hell of a lot more comfortable — and productive — in the backup role:

• vs. Orlando Magic: 8 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals, 0 blocks, 4-6 FG, +13 in 22 minutes
• vs. Houston Rockets: 8 points, 10 rebounds, 0 assists, 1 steal, 2 blocks, 3-4 FG, +11 in 18 minutes
• vs. San Antonio Spurs: 11 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 0 steals, 1 block, 4-6 FG, -6 in 20 minutes
• vs. LA Clippers: 11 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, 0 steals, 0 blocks, 4-5 FG, +2 in 22 minutes

That’s solid production for a backup big who’s only logging around 20 minutes a night! You’d like to see the blocks and steals creep a bit higher as he gets more comfortable, but Maluach is making a larger impact coming off the bench than he was as a starter.

Until Man Man proves without a shadow of a doubt that he’s ready to seize the center mantle for good, starting Ighodaro is the right move to make sure the starters don’t begin games in a hole and to allow Maluach to grow at the right pace.

3. Suns beat teams they should (and even one they shouldn’t) as schedule eases up

Perhaps we should clarify: The schedule itself isn’t necessarily easing up. In this 16-day span between Nov. 4-20, the Suns will have played 10 games. That’s a pretty brutal stretch from a fatigue standpoint, even if this ongoing 6-game homestand reduces the travel quite a bit.

However, the encouraging part is the Suns are starting to do what good teams do: Beat teams they should beat. Over the last week, they responded to another drubbing at the hands of the Portland Trail Blazers by beating a Magic squad that was 2-5 at the time and missing Paolo Banchero.

From there, they got their first respectable victory of the season by upsetting the Houston Rockets, which was a legitimately great win. Sure, they got absolutely routed by the Spurs a couple nights later, but Victor Wembanyama is a brutal matchup for everyone, and especially this Suns squad. San Antonio is a legitimate contender, and Wemby went God mode. It happens, even if it showed the chasm between Phoenix and where they want to be.

Luckily, the Suns caught a break with the 2-7 Clippers in town, and they took care of business with a blowout win. Moving forward, here are Phoenix’s next 12 games:

• vs. Charlotte Hornets
• vs. Los Angeles Lakers (2 days of rest beforehand)
• @ Denver Nuggets (back-to-back)
• @ Sacramento Kings
• @ Utah Jazz
• @ New Orleans Pelicans (2 days of rest beforehand)
• @ Houston Rockets
• vs. Dallas Mavericks
• @ Utah Jazz
• vs. LA Clippers
• vs. Sacramento Kings (back-to-back)

Yes, the Lakers, Nuggets and Rockets are all good, or at least expected playoff squads. And yes, the Mavs and Pelicans are a bit feistier than expected. But the Hornets are banged up and floundering with the worst offense in the NBA, and there’s two matchups apiece against the 1-10 Kings and the 1-10 Jazz, not to mention a rematch with the 2-8 Clippers.

Even if the Suns, at 4-6, lost to the Lakers, Nuggets, Rockets and one of the Pelicans/Mavs in the actual litmus test games, they could still improve to 11-10 by taking care of business against the Hornets, Clippers, Kings twice, Jazz twice and one of New Orleans/Dallas.

This is a critical stretch to make up lost ground in the standings, so even if the Suns still don’t feel like a very good team, they have been beating opponents they should beat — and even one they “shouldn’t have.” That’s an encouraging place to start if you’re hoping for a turnaround.

4. Collin Gillespie busting out of his shooting slump?

We’re working with small sample sizes here, so we don’t want to overreact too much to two good shooting nights in a row. But Collin Gillespie has probably been a 40 percent 3-point shooter since he first started taking shots on his Fisher Price hoop as a kid, so all it really takes for a good shooter to bounce back is a couple games of positive momentum.

Over the last two games, Gillespie has shot 6-for-13 from 3. He only went 2-for-4 against the Spurs, but he did shoot 4-for-9 from deep in a true bounce-back performance against LA. Again, we understand the Clippers are terrible, but sometimes all a shooter needs is to see the ball go through the net, regardless of the level of competition.

After watching Gillespie set the Suns’ single-season franchise record for made 3s last year, it’s been disappointing to see him get off to such a bad start to this season. Before the last two games, he was shooting just 27.7 percent from deep on 5.9 attempts per game.

But thankfully, if a shooter like Gillespie can be bad in a small sample size, a few great games can turn those numbers around pretty quickly. After this last two-game stretch, he’s back up to 31.7 percent on the season — still a far cry from where he needs to be, but encouraging to see such a jump in efficiency after only two good games.

Hopefully this is the start of Gillespie busting out of that early-season shooting slump, because as much as Jalen Green is clearly a bad fit for the starting lineup, Gillespie has to give Jordan Ott enough reassurance that making this inevitable switch won’t be a disaster.

5. Devin Booker is on a tear

After witnessing Book explode for 43 points on the shorthanded Golden State Warriors, and then watching him lay 3-point egg against the shorthanded Oklahoma City Thunder, it was easy to assume at the start of the year that this Suns star was falling into a familiar pattern: lighting it up against poor defenses while struggling against the legitimate ones.

Fortunately, Booker has been stringing together great games lately, regardless of the level of opposition.

In the Orlando win, Book put up 30 points and 8 assists to lead Phoenix to a much-needed victory. Against Houston, while he only finished with 24 points on 24 shots, he scored the last 9 straight points for the Suns, carrying his team across the finish line.

He continued that momentum into the Spurs game, scoring the Suns’ first 9 points and finishing with 32 points on 10-of-17 shooting. He couldn’t keep up with Wemby’s insane production, but Booker was genuinely the only Sun who showed up through those first three quarters.

Finally, while his 17 points against LA seemed like a step backward, Booker didn’t need to play the entire fourth quarter (or produce much in general) because the game was basically out of reach by halftime. Had the Suns needed him to continue producing, it probably would’ve been another 25-30 points on decent efficiency in a convincing win.

That bodes well for the upcoming season, because the Suns need Devin Booker to stay in attack mode, be moderately efficient while doing so, and put up big numbers — and shot attempts — to buoy this offense. There have definitely been a few duds in the early going this season, but over the last week, at least, Book’s been on a nice little heater.

The post 5 small signs of encouragement for Suns over the last week first appeared on Sports360AZ.

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