Khaman Maluach at media day<\/a>. Members of the front office, coaching staff, and even veteran players brought him up, unprompted, several times.<\/p>\nLuke Kennard said he\u2019s the \u201cone of the hardest workers\u201d he\u2019s been around in his career. Coming from a 10-year vet, that means something. Pat Spencer praised his energy. Devin Booker said he\u2019s been pleased with his development and willingness to work.<\/p>\n
Khaman quotes and praise will be sprinkled throughout this article. It\u2019s quite impossible to leave them out with how often we heard his name. He is clearly hungry to keep improving, and is doing all of the right things to get where he (and we) want him to be as a player. The next step is translating that to consistent production in games that count.<\/p>\n
3) Devin Booker said all the right things<\/p>\n
I typically don\u2019t feed into the generic offseason buzzwords or \u201cgreat shape\u201d everyone seems to be in when entering camp. Have you ever heard someone come in and say, \u201cYeah, I\u2019m in pretty bad shape right now.\u201d Of course not. But Devin Booker isn\u2019t the type to talk himself up like this, specifically about the shape and overall state of mind he\u2019s in.<\/p>\n
He also mentioned that he \u201cloves the game more than he ever has\u201d right now.<\/p>\n
Another fun Booker quote: \u201cSometimes I fall into passing too much and this year, hopefully, I fall into shooting too much.\u201d Yeah, inject that into my veins. If we get a more aggressive and assertive Booker, that will only make the Suns better. He\u2019s always at his best in attack mode. That doesn\u2019t mean to force up dumb shots, but to look for his more rather than being too unselfish at times when they need him to take over.<\/p>\n
Building off that last point regarding Maluach, Devin Booker and Khaman got some work in together this summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s asking a lot of questions, but you can tell he\u2019s asking them when he already knows the answer and knows what to do. It\u2019s been a pleasure to watch him grow.\u201d<\/p>\n
4) Luke Kennard was told to be aggressive<\/p>\n
Kennard said on a call with Coach Ott that it was \u201cgreat\u201d that I led the NBA in 3PT%, but that may not be the case this year, because \u201cwe want to see you take tougher shots\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said he is excited for the opportunity in Phoenix and feels like there is a ton of confidence in him and his game, which makes his job easier.<\/p>\n
While that is music to many Suns fans\u2019 ears, it may be wise to pump the brakes there. LeBron and JJ Redick were each in Kennard\u2019s ear last season, constantly telling him to shoot more to no avail.<\/p>\n
Maybe it will be different for us, and we can get him back in the 6+ attempt range that he hit a few times earlier in his career in Memphis, Los Angeles (Clippers), and Detroit. It\u2019s time for Luke Kennard to let it fly!<\/p>\n
5) Pat Spencer fits right in<\/p>\n
As we all predicted, Pat Spencer is going to fit right in with this team from a culture and mindset perspective. He is a competitor through and through and will bring a feisty style of play every time he steps on the court.<\/p>\n
I wrote about his seamless fit, linked below.<\/p>\n
This quote was one of my absolute favorites from the entire day. He and Dillon Brooks are going to absolutely agitate opponents, and I\u2019m here for it.<\/p>\n
Spencer also joined in on the Maluach praise, saying he has the \u201cbest energy\u201d he\u2019s ever seen in the NBA. For Maluach to get kudos from a couple of new guys, plus returners, speaks to the impact and impression he\u2019s made in a short period of time leading into the new season.<\/p>\n
All aboard the Khaman train, full steam ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As John Voita always puts it, it felt like the first day of school again at Suns Media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":911430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85,31961],"class_list":["post-911429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-suns-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/911430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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