Bye bye, Mike

[Rab]

Do you remember when some of us were saying earlier in the year that it seemed like DA was losing his players? We may find out if that was true pretty soon here.

 

[SirStefan32]

Let's hope they replace him with a real coach.

 

[WuRaider]

This is a terrible move by management. What coach is out there that will come in and make us a better team, maybe we should figure that out before we kick out a coach with a .700 winning percentage.

Just my two cents.

A coach that stresses defense and develops a half court offense around Amare. Its hard to win games in the end when you rely on a spontaneous offensive set. You need a bread and butter offensive that forces the other team to react or foul.

Run and gun basketball is entertaining and all (04-05 was insane fun) but I was a fan before that madness and still will if this team becomes a half court slow it down team. As long as the ball goes in the basket, I don't care how they do it.

 

[Cheesebeef]

That was incredibly fast. If the Cards would do this with their lame GM, we might be able to win more than 8 games.

yup. as much as I bang on Sarver, at least the Suns won't tolerate failure (or a little luxury tax unfortunately). the Cards not only tolerate it, they reward it with a 150% raise!

i hate the two franchises I love.

 

[goldseraph]

Dumbtoni's colossal gaffes in Game 1 should be enough to bar him from ever coaching professional sports again.

 

[cly2tw]

No, I meant D'Antoni and Nash. Kerr doesn't have this much clout. I think Nash is fed up with getting run into the ground and with the team not having anything more than a one-paragraph playbook. When he says he felt lost in the offense, that's about as direct a condemnation of D'Antoni as you can get.

I believe that's true. Spurs of last year already knew how to stop Nash and we still don't have a counter move yet, to lose the game on the same kind of turnovers we lost numerous games to NO and Spurs. If his game plan consisted only of giving the ball to Nash, then what else could Nash do other than what he has been doing to failure repeatedly? It's the coach's responsibility to work on alternatives. Otherwise, it will only make Nash look terrible!

Run to the ground have also been Hill, Bell at times, next to Nash, BTW.

 

[Haren]

I'm not much of a Suns fan, but I honestly can't wait to find out what's going to happen to this team during the offseason. I think that if they can hire a new coach who would be a good replacement (I'd prefer a defensive minded coach, personally), make a move or two, get rid of a couple of guys on the bench and replace them with somebody who can actually contribute, and use their draft pick(s) wisely, that they may be just as good as anybody next year.

 

[elindholm]

Let's hope they replace him with a real coach.

Dream on. The last time the Suns hired a new head coach with more than a single season of previous experience was when they brought Cotton Fitzsimmons back for the 18th time.

They'll promote Gentry, take a flier on Eddie Johnson, or have Kerr do it himself.

 

[GorrilaLips]

Dumbtoni's colossal gaffes in Game 1 should be enough to bar him from ever coaching professional sports again.

Don't forget Game 3. Oh, whatever....how about all season. His stubborness to change up was too little...way too late.

 

[mojorizen7]

Let's hope they replace him with a real coach.

Yeah maybe. There's very little roster/cap flexability here for 2 years so unless we get long term committment from a R. Carslisle-type i wouldn't object to a stop-gap HC next season.

 

[BillsCarnage]

From Coro's article tonight http://www.azcentral.com/sports/suns/articles/2008/04/29/20080429dantoni.html

With two years and $8.5 million left on his contract, D'Antoni is unlikely to be fired. If he returns, it could be with concessions to change. But there is also the possibility that he leaves of his own accord, especially with a perceived lack of support - and interest from New York and Chicago, both of which have vacancies. There is also the chance Toronto President Bryan Colangelo fired Sam Mitchell to hire the coach he brought to Phoenix from Italy.

 

[tobiazz]

This is a mess. The only available coach I can think of that might be better must be JVG. I don't think any coaching change will make much difference with no possibility of adding bench help for Nash and Shaq.

Regardless, letting the firing word out on Avery and D'A so quickly is pretty rude, but I guess they have to be open for a new coach ASAP.

 

[mojorizen7]

Dream on. The last time the Suns hired a new head coach with more than a single season of previous experience was when they brought Cotton Fitzsimmons back for the 18th time.

They'll promote Gentry, take a flier on Eddie Johnson, or have Kerr do it himself.

Thats fine.....until we can unload age and albatross contracts IMO.

 

[WuRaider]

1 WIN. A single win in the playoffs, I think thats why Kerr was so quick with pink slip.

 

[hsandhu]

But a source said that Kerr would make a few demands in the postseason debriefing: that D'Antoni devote more practice time to defense; have more confidence in his bench players, i.e., go to an expanded rotation; develop a clearer plan for a point guard to back up Steve Nash; get more planned touches out of Amare' Stoudemire in post-up situations.

It's exactly what most DA-critical fans here wanted. The team's core is too damn good that we deserve to lose due to stupid stubbornness of its head coach, year after year.

Agree totally. All those criteria sound pretty damn good.

Cheese,
We all know sarver is a clown, but I'm not sure why you throw kerr under the bus. Just listening to him commentate for the past several years it is clear the things outlined above are qualities he greatly values in a basketball team and qualties he views as necessary for success.

Not bad to have that vision as our gm. We all doubt sarver will be willing to make the moves necessary to accomplish all these goals but at least that's what the gm wants.

 

[cly2tw]

When Nash said he felt lost during Game 3, I thought he was commenting on the Shaq trade and the complete change of his style that he was the quarterback for the past 3 years. He may have been unhappy without a legitimate backup but he probably doesn't put that strictly on D'Antoni.

He felt lost because the opponents' coach made him too by adjusting, and because he never practiced anything else to combat it other than keep running into the wall the same way over and over again, like in the two costly turnovers in game 5. A real coach should have liberated that burden off his PG by instructing alternatives!

 

[BC867]

1 WIN. A single win in the playoffs, I think thats why Kerr was so quick with pink slip.

This isn't the first year that D'Antoni's narrow minded coaching has done us in in the post-season. It wasn't really quick at all. It's been heading downhill for quite awhile.

 

[sly fly]

Inserting Shaq back into Game 3 with 30 seconds left in the 1st half sealed it for me. Any idiot wanting Shaq to get fouled doesn't deserve to coach a basketball game, much less an NBA game.

Thanks for the memories, Mike D.

I'm all for Phil Weber getting a chance. I think this guy has what it takes.

 

[tobiazz]

Even though the Suns did not have a really great bench, D'A completely hosed the team by not playing the bench. Even though Pop has some lesser players on his bench, he uses them at the proper times and they are usually effective in their specific roles.

When I saw D'A put Giricek on Oberto and Giricek just have a dumb-founded look, I knew it was over.

 

[Bufalay]

No, I meant D'Antoni and Nash. Kerr doesn't have this much clout. I think Nash is fed up with getting run into the ground and with the team not having anything more than a one-paragraph playbook. When he says he felt lost in the offense, that's about as direct a condemnation of D'Antoni as you can get.

why do they care what nash wants? He's got nothing left.

 

[CardinalsFan11]

How about one who is aware of the term defense?

One who spends the .700 season getting his team ready for the post-season?

One who includes developing young players among his priorities?

One who includes the last 4 or 5 players on his bench, to be ready for foul trouble, injuries, flexibility, cold spells, etc.?

1. It seems that a majority of people believe Nash, Shaq, and Amare can't play defense anyway, there is only so much a coach can do to hide the inabilities of his players.

2. 3 out of the 4 years we were eliminated from the playoffs, it was by the Spurs who have arguably the best PF in the history of the game, so it's a little hard to gameplan around that. The other year we were without Amare and lost Bell in the Conference finals to a fluke injury.

3. When we're selling picks for $3 million a pop to stay under the luxury tax it's hard to develop young talent.

4. It would have been nice to have seen some of the guys at the end of the bench get more playing time throughout the season. But to be fair, D'antoni saw them everyday during practice, maybe they weren't performing well enough in practice to deserve time in games.

 

[GorrilaLips]

Regardless, letting the firing word out on Avery and D'A so quickly is pretty rude, but I guess they have to be open for a new coach ASAP.

Or being stubborn and ******** regarding playing the bench, making more rotations and changing up against master tactician coaches on the fly....

than getting wiped clean by one of our most hated arch nemesis in the playoffs once again....

i'd say that's pretty rude to the fans and whole phoenix suns organization.

 

[Haren]

Just out of curiosity, how legit is this article and those sources of theirs?

 

[Cheesebeef]

Agree totally. All those criteria sound pretty damn good.

Cheese,
We all know sarver is a clown, but I'm not sure why you throw kerr under the bus. Just listening to him commentate for the past several years it is clear the things outlined above are qualities he greatly values in a basketball team and qualties he views as necessary for success.

Not bad to have that vision as our gm. We all doubt sarver will be willing to make the moves necessary to accomplish all these goals but at least that's what the gm wants.

unprotected 2010 pick, getting nothing back besides Shaq even though we did Miami a HUGE favor, us "having a lotto pick in the bag" last summer. jury's just as out on him as anyone else.

 

[hsandhu]

unprotected 2010 pick, getting nothing back besides Shaq even though we did Miami a HUGE favor, us "having a lotto pick in the bag" last summer. jury's just as out on him as anyone else.

Fair enough, but we know where a lot of those moves came from.