Phoenix Blew A Nineteen-Point Lead Because Detroit Wouldn’t Stop Taking The Ball

Phoenix was up 68-50 at halftime, stretched the lead as high as 19, and somehow walked out losing 109-107. You know what the fuck has to happen for a game to flip like that? The Suns turned the ball over 29 times and Detroit came away with 21 steals. That's not a little sloppy shooting night; that's giving the other team damn near another offense to work with. Detroit turned those mistakes into 37 points, and the Pistons' young guys kept punching holes in the game until the whole thing changed. Ron Holland had 15 points and five steals, and rookie Ebuka Okorie made the kind of plays people are going to remember after most of this exhibition nonsense is forgotten, including the basket that won it late. Devin Booker had 13 in his limited run and Phoenix's early offense actually looked pretty good. That's why this bothered me. The Suns weren't completely outmatched — they were beating themselves, possession after possession, until Detroit finally made them pay for it.

And this is why I always want us looking past the big-name scorer when we start talking about FanDuel lines. You could've liked Booker to score, you could've liked a Phoenix game total, you could've had a whole reasoned idea about their offense, and then the turnovers just murdered the normal flow of the game. A defense turning chaos into 37 points the other way changes everybody's minutes and shot opportunities. I'm not about to assume Detroit gets 21 steals every time they take the floor because that's ridiculous, but I absolutely want to know whether their young guards keep applying pressure like this. For Phoenix, we now have two separate questions: how clean the starting unit looks and what happens once they start mixing the rotations. If a preseason result is going to teach me anything, it's that one team can look good for a half and still spend the other half giving the game away. That's not something the final two-point margin explains by itself.

Getting the lead means shit if you keep handing the ball back.6IX / WHAT I'M TAKING AWAY