Better find a different assumption to work with. I didn't miss a minute of the first 3rd of last season.
This is not the same team we watched last season. Perhaps it will all come together but right now, our second team defense is even worse than our first team defense has been historically. I don't think preseason games tell the whole story but the story it does tell is not pretty.
I agree that, in a few important ways, this is not the same team that we watched last season. Last season's team was pretty amazing - we swept the freakin San Antonio Spurs out of the playoffs and, although I think the Lakers were always going to find a way to win the series, actually had a shot at going to the Finals (the chances of Kobe Bryant shooting an airball in the final seconds of a game are virtually zero, and the likelihood that a Kobe Bryant miss from 3 feet behind the 3-point line was going to result in a long rebound is much higher than a short rebound that can easily be controlled by someone sprinting toward the short corner) - and for those reasons, the team isn't going to win an NBA championship this year. The prospects for success beyond this season are also much grimmer than they were at the end of last season on account of Kerr's departure (not only was Kerr an incredible GM, but even if Kerr was just a mediocre GM he probably still deserved a salary increase, because he was no longer a first-time GM with no experience or track record, making him fundamentally less risky or, defined another way, more valuable) and Admunson's departure and then to a lesser extent Amare's departure, all of which seem to imply that Sarver is unwilling to commit enough money in aggregate to build a team. It almost seems like he's building a diversified portfolio of players that will produce slightly above-average success with low volatility. In other words, in five seasons, he's trying to win 250 games in total by winning right around 50 games per season rather than winning 250 games by winning, for instance, 60, 63, 51, 42 and 34 games. Same amount of wins, but he isn't willing to put the team in a position where, 5 years from now the team might suck.
However, the preseason is indicative of nothing, except that maybe 1) the guys that are going to be cut or sent to the D-League from the Suns are worse than the guys from other teams, and 2) the role players from last season need to be just as willing and committed to being role players this year. That means Dudley, Dragic and Lopez need to be play with the same intensity on defense while carrying a little more of the offensive load. I know they have the physical ability to do this, but the fact that they haven't displayed a mental willingness to do this night in and night out during the preseason means nothing.
There's no denying that Nash had an incredible start last season but other than that you're rewriting history here. Both Stat and JR had good to great games during that stretch and were hardly the wastes you make them out to be. They frequently led the team in scoring during that 17 game stretch and one or the other of them accounted for 20 point games 17 times. Leandro also started out real strong until another injury struck.
Barbosa injured his wrist in September. He was sort of coming around before the ankle injury, but he wasn't the impact player that he had been in previous years. J. Rich was shooting the ball extremely well, but he wasn't yet a reliable second or third option. As for Amar'e, it was never an issue of how many points he scored, but rather how he was scoring his points. Even if his numbers were the same throughout the season - which they weren't - he didn't start demanding double or triple coverage until around the midpoint of the season, at which point he was seeing defensive attention that he had never seen before in his career, AND he was still getting 25+ points and 9 boards every game. From then on, our perimeter guys had an easier time getting open looks because teams had to pack it in to contain him. The point is, in the first third of the season, teams didn't have to pay so much attention to Amar'e, the pick-and-roll wasn't as potent as it once was because he was still adjusting to the goggles, and yet Frye, Dudley, J. Rich, Dragic, Nash and Hill were all averaging better than 40% from three.
Nash was the best overall player on the team at that point but at no time did he play to that level again for the rest of that season. Why should we all of a sudden expect him to return to that performance level?
We shouldn't expect him to return to that performance level. However, if we're going to have a discussion about whether Steve Nash could win the MVP this season or not, his level of performance should at least factor into the conversation. That was my point. This thread largely was focused on how Nash can't possibly win the award this year because of politics, "Nash-regret," or that the Suns aren't good enough all-around to win enough games for Nash to be in the discussion.
If your entire point is that if Nash played like he did at the start of last season and did it for a full season, he could win the MVP then I would only slightly disagree. No matter how well he plays, he's never winning another MVP in the NBA unless they add a senior citizen league.
I agree. It would take an absolutely remarkable performance from Nash to be the MVP of the league. I don't think he's good enough to pull it off, but I wouldn't completely put it past him.
There is too much "anti-Nash as MVP" sentiment out there for him to overcome it. The only possible way (again, IMO) is if he were to play all season like he started last year AND lead us to the NBA finals. He still wouldn't win it this year but it would give him an outside chance if he were to repeat this regular season performance the following year.
This whole "anti-Steve Nash as MVP" argument is misguided. While it's true that most NBA fans seem to have that sentiment, it has never had much of an effect on the awards/accolades that he has garnered. IMO, he deserved to win the MVP in his third year as a Sun in addition to the first two years, but it's not like the award just fell to Dirk Nowitzki because of some league-wide Steve Nash freeze-out. The Mavs won close to 70 games that season and Nowitzki's clutch play was the biggest reason for their success, so you can't fault anybody for voting for him over Nash, can you? And other than that season, what has transpired that would give you this idea that Nash can't win an MVP award because the league has decided that he's not good enough?
