THE SUNS ARE IN THE PLAYER DEVELOPMENT GAME RIGHT NOW. They are playing young guys a lot and not really emphasizing defense, the latter part being a typical but misguided approach to developing kids. You gotta teach the young players how to play defense as actively if not more actively than teaching them offense. It can be hard in the AAU world, where players are shuffled in and out constantly, but that's not the Suns world since they seem to have a lot of the same players back. Teaching defense in training camp forces the young guns to solve harder offensive problems there than when they face other teams.
The 70 point Devin Booker game was a good game, not a great one. He did a lot of his damage when the Suns were down 20 points and, relevantly, the team's performance didn't exactly correlate to his point scoring. You can see that when the 4th quarter began and the Suns cut the lead to 11, Booker wasn't really part of that. As he picked up some of his scoring at the very end, it did cut the lead, but that was garbage time when the lead was safe.
But Devin Booker is going to get All-Star votes because of that one 70-point game. His team lost. Many of his points were meaningless towards winning (as often happens for leading scorers on losing teams). But he got famous. And that matters. He'll get more foul calls. He'll get defenses to put better defenders on him. And someone will pay him even if he ends up so-so.
Don't get me wrong. That was a helluva game even if he wasn't facing the greatest resistance. He was worth about +20 points when his team was worth a total of -10, so his teammates were awful Tyler Ulis was terrible, Marquese Chriss was terrible, and Leandro Barbosa would have been considered terrible except for how bad those two were.
But also don't let one great game blind you to the mediocre season that Booker had. No player value metric (see below) placed Booker as an above average player this past year. Yes, his defense was lousy, but his offense was below average, too. He's on a good trendline, but he wasn't good. There's a difference between good now and good down-the-road and I believe that what keeps some player development coaches from being head coaches is that they see what a player could be better than they see what a player is. And Booker isn't good. He might become good, but he isn't there yet.
In summary:
Eric Bledsoe used to be a very good defender. He hounded the ball and played passing lanes as well as, if not better than Avery Bradley in his early years. As with a lot of players who eventually learn how to play offense, Bledsoe's defense has suffered as he has become a better offensive player. Whether it's a mental or a physical thing, I don't know for sure, but I believe it's more mental than physical.
Some quick notes:
