Even with this loss, the Suns are off to a fast start this season, a welcome sight to the fans who have witnessed naught but crud since Steve Nash left. They had that one season where they missed the playoffs with 48 wins or something like that. That’s how you know it’s bad, when the one season you can feel good about didn’t even end in a playoff berth.
Aron Baynes deserves some of the credit for the Suns’ fast start. Actually, he probably deserves most of it, if not all of it. He’s the one who’s putting up numbers that smash his career averages. I tried looking at some advanced stats, which is hard for me since I barely can comprehend the regular ones, but looking at on/off stats gave me some serious insight. That insight is that the Suns are WAY better with Baynes on the court than with his off the court. Players like Devin Booker and Kelly Oubre are more neutral, telling me that Baynes is the one killing teams.
Besides his scoring, which is off the charts this year compared to his career, he has some other positive attributes that make him and his team successful. The most prominent of these is that he’s just a badass on the court. He’s physical. He’s “rough and tumble”. Softies like Meyers Leonard and Kelly Olynyk had no chance against his Grade-A prime Australian beefage.
He also has a really nice beard, and looks way better since he cut that topknot off. Basically, everything’s trending upwards for him right now.