PHOENIX -- As the regular-season clock continues to tick, we find the Suns still sitting as the 10th seed in the NBA's Western Conference.
Sunday's victory over the dismal New York Knicks leaves them 2 1/2 games behind the eighth-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder entering Tuesday night and two shy of the ninth-seed New Orleans Pelicans with only 14 games remaining.
Having Brandon Knight and Alex Len still recovering from ankle sprains, the opportunity for additional slippage -- especially when the Suns' schedule is considered -- is difficult to overlook.
Starting with Thursday's home date with the Pelicans, 11 of the Suns final 14 will be contested against teams currently ahead of them in the conference.
They also have a rematch with the Hawks -- the Eastern Conference's top seed -- in Atlanta.
Beyond his team's focus on winning as many games as possible (and hoping circumstances cause a couple of teams to falter), Suns coach Jeff Hornacek can identify plenty of reasons why motivation should remain high.
And most of those can have a long-term impact.
"Just the ball movement, obviously, and harder screens, better decisions, lowering turnovers," he said before Sunday's game. "Let's face it, when you're not a championship team, there's a lot of things that you can get better at, and we can't correct them all in one 15-game stretch. But it could give you a good start to the upcoming years if we do start making some improvement."
Sunday's win over New York provided Suns point guard Eric Bledsoe with another leadership opportunity.
Bledsoe -- who finished with 21 points, 9 rebounds and 11 assists -- was particularly efficient and leader-like in the fourth quarter. Most importantly, he was assessed zero turnovers and finished the game with only three. Bledsoe had piled up at least five in nine of the last 12 games. He also made all three of his shots from the field in that decisive quarter and handed out two dimes.
"I just kept attacking," Bledsoe said. "I've been doing it all season long, just keep attacking. I had some turnovers, but at the end of the day, I thought we played as a team."
Hornacek has been pleased with Bledsoe's rise, including the process that has required even more adjustment since the franchise traded Goran Dragic and Isaiah Thomas.
And with Knight out of action for almost a week so far, the second-year Sun has assumed even more responsibility.
"I thought he made better decisions in the second half," Hornacek said. "When he came off a pick-and-roll, he almost looked like, 'OK, I'm going to shoot the jump shot at the free-throw line.' "
That, by the way, is a mindset Hornacek and the coaching staff has been encouraging since Bledsoe arrived in Phoenix.
"They closed in," Hornacek said of the Knick defenders, "he didn't try to do anything special and just pivoted and threw it to the open man. The open man knocked it in. That's what we need from him is to just draw the defense to him and find our open guy."
In Knight's absence, second-year guard Archie Goodwin has been receiving big minutes as Phoenix's back-up point guard.
Although Sunday's 3-of-10 shooting effort put Goodwin at 5 for 18 in his last two games, he did enough good things to remain on the floor with Bledsoe for a portion of the fourth quarter.
"With experience comes rewards, I guess is what you say," Goodwin, who had five assists and four rebounds against the Knicks, said. "If you continue to get more playing time, I get used to things and I get to see things develop more and it's helping me out.
"If I could just get a call . . . it's making my field-goal percentage look bad. I can't get a whistle. I guess it's because I'm young, but I can't get a whistle right now."
The most important calls, however, are provided by Hornacek, who is becoming more comfortable using Goodwin.
"He has that ability to get by guys," Hornacek said, "but again he's working on his strength. He's getting stronger. Last year, he probably would have been flipped on those drives to the basket.
"Now he's taking that contact and he didn't finish a couple of them, but as the years go on and he gets stronger and stronger, he's just going to be blowing right by those guys and laying it in or dunking it. His aggressiveness put them on their heels. He's a young guy who should be able to run and run and run, and that's what he was doing."
And it doesn't hurt that Goodwin has increased his awareness on defense, Hornacek said.
"The biggest thing that we tell Archie is, 'if you're not killing us defensively, it's easier to keep you in there.' I thought he was doing a good job of fighting over screens to put pressure on guys. He was our one guy picking up guys in the backcourt, and we're looking for a guy that can do that."
