Suns Hit the Panic Button With a Chaotic New Starting Lineup
Lineup alert: Suns will start Booker, Green, Brooks, Bridges, Ighodaro on Monday.
The are treating their starting lineup like a fantasy basketball roster that just got auto-drafted by a guy who fell asleep in the third round.
According to Underdog NBA, is rolling out , Josh Green, , Mikal Bridges, and for Monday's matchup against the .
This is the kind of rotation you throw at the wall when your defense is entirely theoretical. The Suns are currently sitting at 3-5, boasting a 120.2 defensive rating that ranks an abysmal 27th in the league. That is a polite way of saying their current defensive strategy consists of hoping the opponent simply gets tired of scoring.
For the prop market, this rotation shuffle is pure chaos. is pacing the team with 25.3 points and 4.9 assists per game, but trying to project usage rates when you cram this much overlapping wing talent onto the floor requires a degree in advanced calculus. There are only so many shots to go around, and the half-court spacing is going to look like a crowded elevator.
Throwing into the frontcourt mix is the real wild card here. The big man is getting a massive promotion to try and plug a leaky paint, but he has to share the floor with a backcourt pairing that has looked clunky at best. You do not shuffle the deck this hard in early November unless the internal panic meter is already flashing red.
We will find out if this desperate reshuffle actually works when the take on the Spurs on Monday night. If they get run out of their own gym again, might have to start holding open tryouts in the arena parking lot just to find a combination that can get a single stop.