In those six games, Josh Okogie averaged 35.4 minutes per game. He scored at least 11 points or more in six consecutive games, the longest double-digit scoring streak in his five-year NBA career. The following are his averages in these six games: 18.5 points, 5.8 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 2 steals, and shooting measurements (two points/three points/free throws) were 53%/48%/71%.Maybe the six games are a small sample, but the performance during this period is the best in my career so far
The Suns need a defensive point guard with drive and energy and some offensive threat.
Although the Suns suffered a lot of injuries this season, there were always players who jumped out at the right time, which allowed the Suns to be able to make the playoffs before the arrival of Kevin Durant. The Suns are currently ranked 4th in the Western Conference with a record of 36 wins and 29 losses.
The two main players, Devin Booker and Chris Paul, both missed a lot of games this season due to injuries, and are not expected to win any individual awards this season. Come out to take on the vacancy left by these two when they are absent.
Although the 32-year-old Torrey Craig has started as a backup forward for more than half of the games in his career, he has taken on many starting tasks for the Suns this season and set many new career records, including starting games (49 games), Average time per game (25.8 minutes), shots per game (6.6 times), three-point shooting percentage (40.5%), offensive rebounds (117), Craig this season seems to set a new high in his personal data.
In addition to Craig, 30-year-old Damion Lee also jumped out. Lee, who played mostly as a backup guard in his career, is currently the fourth player with the Suns this season. His three-point shooting percentage (43.8%) this season is the best in his career. In addition, even though the 28-year-old former American football player Ish Wainright signed a two-way contract with the Suns at the beginning, his 3D wing skills allowed him to stay in the Suns for the past two years.
*The above data is as of March 1
The Suns have one young player who has shone brighter than any of the aforementioned players this year, and that’s Josh Okogie. After the 24-year-old Okogie’s rookie contract (4 years, 11 million US dollars) was over, the Timberwolves did not intend to continue to cooperate with him, which made him only accept a basic salary contract in the market.
The 6-foot-4 (about 193 centimeters), 213 pounds (about 96.5 kilograms) Okogie has amazing athleticism and strength, and has a 7-foot (about 213 centimeters) long wingspan, as well as the league’s top defensive players. activity.
However, during the Timberwolves period, his offense was not outstanding, and even became a burden on the offensive end. Poor offensive performance has limited his playing time during the Timberwolves, because the Timberwolves needed players to complement the lack of offensive stars Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell. Last summer, the Timberwolves released Okogie after his contract expired.
In last year’s offseason, adding Okogie was only a small reinforcement for the Suns. After all, the team doesn’t necessarily need a shooting guard who can’t shoot (before this season, his career three-point shooting rate was 27%).
How is he going to compete with Landry Samet and Damion Lee as Devin Booker’s backup if he can’t even handle the gap? Or is he defensively friendly enough to be a backup to Mikal Bridges (traded to the Nets by the Suns in February)?
In the early part of the season, his performance was not as good as everyone expected. In the first 23 games of the Suns’ season, he played 19 games in total, leaving only 30% of his two-pointers and a disastrous 5% of his three-pointers (1 of 18 shots). 6.2 minutes.
The turning point occurred on December 5 last year. That day, the Suns beat the Spurs by 38 points, and Okogie played 26 minutes. At that time, the Suns’ record was an impressive 16 wins and 7 losses, but it has taken a sharp turn for the worse since then. Injuries plagued players and weakened the Suns lineup, which has since swallowed 17 losses in 22 games. The bright side of the Suns’ injury woes is that secondary players (eg: Craig, Lee, Okogie) get a chance to express themselves and find their best form on the court, even if the team wins less and loses more.
In 22 games through the middle of the season, Okogie averaged 17.4 minutes per game, up from 6.2 early in the season. During this period, the two-point shooting rate rose to 45%, and the three-point shooting rate increased to 37%.
In the first 19 games he played for the Suns, he only hit one three-pointer, but in the next 20 games, he scored at least one three-pointer in 11 games. During that span, he scored in double digits in more than half of the games and had nine rebounds in two of those double-digit scoring games. Maybe his performance is not particularly outstanding, but everyone will find that as long as he continues to maintain a stable output on the offensive end, the offensive pressure and rebounds he brings to the opponent may change the outcome of the game.
With the Suns’ main players returning to health one after another, you might think that Josh Okogie’s good performance should draw a pause, but he is just getting started.
- Go forward with the main force
After the teammates next to him became stronger, Josh Okogie became stronger. When the Suns went 12-5 and made it to the Final Four in the Western Conference, Okogie was playing the best game of his career, even though he had to wear a mask for the past few weeks due to a broken nose. This period of good performance makes people wonder whether he should wear a mask for the rest of his career.