For a team with the talent the Phoenix Suns do, upcoming games against the Chicago Bulls and the Toronto Raptors should be easy. But while the Suns have strong talent, they struggle to put victories together.

After falling to the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday, the Valley is three games under .500 for the first time in over a month. As they drift deeper away from the playoff standings, let alone the Play-In Bracket, the team is continuing to underperform their expectations, even from the start of the season where they started 8-1.

The more losses that pile up, the more questions and uncertainty arise with the unit; one of them is how you expect them to fair against the few weaker opponents they have left this year.

With the Raptors and Bulls combining for a 39-73 record, the Suns should be well-positioned to be 28-29 by the weekend’s end. But the games aren’t played on paper; if they were, the 2013 Dwight Howard and Kobe Bryant Los Angeles Lakers and 2014 Deron Williams, Paul Pierce, and Joe Johnson Brooklyn Nets would be champions or been less disappointing. This iteration of Phoenix is heading toward the place that those teams are in historically: a talented batch but underwhelming as a squad.

While that is not set in stone yet, what appears to be the current reality is that the team cannot be trusted to take care of easy victories, and they rarely play up to their competition (a poor record against the top teams proves this), unlike last year.

No one over the next two days should be confident about anything related to the outcome of the Valley basketball team’s games except that they are not confident in what type of performance they will bring against both teams. This has been the case with the team for some time now this season.

Don’t let the fact that Chicago just gave the New York Knicks a tough overtime matchup Thursday night on the road be a reason that a close game with the Bulls would be acceptable for the talent of the Suns; they just traded their best player in Zach Lavine. Toronto got a talent upgrade at the deadline by trading for Brandon Ingram from the New Orleans Pelicans, but he remains out due to injury.

I’m not willing to say they’re at this point yet, but every game the team inexplicably blows makes every inexplicable loss more explicable. Until something changes for the Suns, expect the same old unpredictable team this weekend.

---

, Castbox.

Please subscribe, rate, and review.