What D'Antoni did do well was to convince his players to run all the time and get into their offense quickly. Teams that did not have good transition defense were just overwhelmed.
I don't think this will go away. The whole point of hiring Genry was to make sure the Suns keep the pressure up that just trashes weaker teams.
D'Antoni had an almost religious faith in the value os speed. He wanted to create speed matchups at every position and force opponents to react by going smaller. Unfortunately, against teams like the Spurs this just didn't work very well. The refs permitted the Spurs to slow the game to a crawl and their size advantage became dominant even when the Suns did play defense.
What can we expect?
1. End to size disadvantage: Small ball may not end, but it will be significantly reduced. Amare is likely to be the smallest inside player rather than largest.
2. Greater emphasis on team defense: D'Antoni's emphasis on short practices was a way to keep his guys fresh and able to play long minutes, but it cut down on time spent on defense. The result was a fairly predictble defensive scheme that was too easy to attack.More players can make it easier to get high energy defense all the time.
3. More Patience on Offense: The "7 seconds or less" doctrine worked against teams that did not focus on getting the defense out on the shooters right from the start. The problem was that the Suns players tended to force shots even when not open. Porter says he is going to change that.
4. Everyone A Threat to Attack the Basket: Amare, Shaq, and Barbosa attacked the basket, but the Suns were long known as a jump shooting team. For several years the Suns took the fewest free throws as any team.
