The past week has certainly been tough for the Suns as a whole, but Jeff Hornacek still sees positive signs in how the team has played.
“We’re getting shots; we’re just not making them,” Hornacek said on Arizona Sports’ Bickley and Marotta. “When things go cold on us, we don’t have that one guy who can get us a couple buckets and get us going again. We start pressing a little bit and then it snowballs on us. That’s part of the learning process with young guys – trying to find that consistency.”
Part of the reason for the variance in play has been due to several nagging injuries such as the one sustained and re-aggravated by Brandon Knight. Still, in spite of Knight’s injuries, Hornacek feels he is a key component in regards to how the Suns want to play.
“He’s 23-years-old, he’s got a good feel for the game [and] he can shoot the ball,” Hornacek said. “He hasn’t shot the ball as well as he did in Milwaukee but that’s part of adjusting to the team and getting a comfort level. We think he’s going to be great. He’s a competitor. He’s one of those guys who is professional about playing basketball. It’s about doing your job and playing as hard as you can.
“He won’t tolerate guys who are out there playing the game just to play it; he wants to win.”
As the regular season winds down, there is no denying the Suns have a difficult stretch of games against teams like the Blazers, Warriors, Hawks and Clippers to name a few. Nevertheless, Hornacek and the Suns remain committed to continued growth and improvement.
“We have to get a lot better at things,” he said. “We have to be more consistent. You look at the other young teams across the league and they’re even more behind than we are. We just have to continue to work and get better with our execution. When things go bad is where we really need to improve. We’re in the middle area right now, and we need to try to get better. We have stretches where we’ve seen it all – really good offense and really good defense, but we’ve just got to do it for 48 minutes.”
Listen to the entire interview with Arizona Sports below.