Despite the obvious, maybe all time offensive firepower they’ve assembled, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that there is no chance in hell we see them making noise past the first or second round. Curious to hear the counter arguments, if that’s how you really feel.
Yes - and a lot of NBA fans are going to be shocked about it.
The biggest threat to them isn’t offense or defense…it’s health. If Booker, Beal, and Durant are healthy come playoffs - they are the favorites.
People just didn’t pay attention to their off season. This team is legitimately 11 deep - and all 11 are worthy of playoff minutes.
Their Achilles heel is center position defense; and yeah…I fully expect Jokic and AD to dominate in the middle, but I also expect Booker, Beal, and KD to dominate their matchups…and then we have a barrage of 3 point shooters.
We also have Frank Vogel. And as awful as Nurk looked on PnR defense, everyone in the world knows it…so I expect one of the best defensive coaches in the league to figure out a scheme to deal with it. Phoenix’s perimeter defense already looks great.
I do not think we will play Nurk much in the playoffs. He is unplayable againts smaller players, he is too slow and he gets eaten alive by the great bigs (Jokic, AD, etc). I hope we will find a small ball lineup which at least will be playing a good positional defense and the offense should be unstoppable.