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Hornacek Talks Swagger, Alex Len on Arizona Sports

After what could be considered their best performance of the season Saturday night against the Hawks, could the Suns have collectively rediscovered their swagger?

It’s somewhat of a rhetorical question, but Jeff Hornacek talked about the importance of motivation during his weekly radio show on Arizona Sports’ Doug & Wolf.

“You can do all the speeches and yelling you want, but until they do it themselves you’re just going to have temporary success,” Hornacek said. “It has to come internally, but you have to put them in the right situations.”

Indeed, one of the players who seems to have found that combination of swagger and self-motivation is Alex Len. The 7-1 center set a career-high in assists for second straight game (five) and tallied his fourth double-double this season with 16 points and 12 boards in the Suns’ win over Atlanta -- all while still battling a lingering hand injury.

“We all have extreme confidence in Alex,” Hornacek said. “He’s a young guy; obviously the first year he had an injury, so his playing experience is still short. They always say with bigs it takes a little longer. He wants to be one of the best centers in the league. When you have that attitude and work ethic that he has, he’s going to get there.”

Indeed, the experiment with two seven-footers in the starting lineup – Alex Len and Tyson Chandler – seems to be working.

“It was a necessity with all the injuries we had,” Hornacek said. “We tried it earlier in the season and it wasn’t hat great but it was fantastic the other night. The guys bought into it. The biggest question if they go with that lineup is defensively if they pull them out, can one of Tyson or Alex get out there and guard those guys?

“I thought they did a great job.”

Listen to Hornacek’s entire interview below: