Fair and Unfair crticisms of D'Antoni....

[da_suns_fan]

Its funny that D'Antoni doesn't prepare his players, doesn't call timeouts when the game momentum changes, doesn't have the respect of his players, doesn't rip his players when they decide to not play defense etc., yet the most universally accepted criticism from the fans and the media is he doesn't play his bench enough!

I always laugh at this one. Did D'Antoni tell the Suns not sign Tim Thomas? Did he tell them to trade Kurt Thomas and James Jones? Did he tell them to trade away our first round draft picks for cash?

Which former players proved D'Antoni wrong? Which players couldn't get any time with D'Antoni and went on to be a rotation player with another team?

Jalen Rose? Casey Jacobsen? Pat Burke? Steven Hunter? Jimmy Jackson?

Outside of Brian Skinner, there's not a single guy on our extended bench who deserves to be playing. Linton Johnson, Sean Marks, Pike and Strawberry are LUCKY to even be in the league! Yes, I said Strawberry! This guy was the second to the last player taken in the draft and he plays like it!

That doesn't mean he doesn't have talent. He wouldn't be able to even make it this far without talent. But they all have talent, and I believe if he wasn't playing for us, he'd probably be taking 10 day contracts with various teams or maybe even playing in the D-League.

Hows Nick Fazekas doing for Dallas? Oh wait, they cut him and he just signed a ten day contract with L.A.

Lets look at the rest of the draft board from last year:

http://www.nba.com/draft2007/board.html

Are ANY players taken in the second round getting any playing time? I think Marcus Williams might have been cut by the Spurs and picked up again. Im not sure, but I do know he hasn't gotten any playing time.

So there you go. Instead of saying D'Antoni needs to play/develop his bench, please tell me WHICH players deserves to be playing.

If D'Antoni had capable players, he would play them! But he doesn't! He's given them ALL plenty of opportunities, but they just don't have the ability to play at this level. For all of Pat Burke's griping this year, he couldn't even stay in the league without the Suns.

 

[BeeBeard]

Outside of Brian Skinner, there's not a single guy on our extended bench who deserves to be playing.

Are we counting Giricek as part of the regular rotation at this point? Or would you expect D'Antoni to bench Giricek practically the moment he starts to learn the system and make consistent offensive contributions? (kind of a rhetorical question I suppose)

 

[mojorizen7]

Good post.
Mike D was the General Manager right up thru this past summer so i'm not buying the entire argument though. He was in the thick of the desicion making with guys like T.Thomas and J.Johnson.

 

[Phade]

lol @ suns fans thinking they know how to run a basketball team better than d'antoni..

i think the majority of fans on this forum are pathetic..

 

[carey]

i think the majority of fans on this forum are pathetic..

Nice. Why don't you **** then?

 

[joshstmarie]

props to dantoni for running some new sets ive never seen. great adjustments.

 

[bigfoot]

props to dantoni for running some new sets ive never seen. great adjustments.

SVG commented during the game that it took guts for coach to play both Shaq and Amare with 5 PF each. I agree and I'm happy he took the aggressive way. I think it made all the difference.

 

[da_suns_fan]

Good post.
Mike D was the General Manager right up thru this past summer so i'm not buying the entire argument though. He was in the thick of the desicion making with guys like T.Thomas and J.Johnson.

Mike wasn't GM during the Joe Johnson fiasco. Bryan Colangelo was still the GM and all that crap was because of Sarver anyway. Colangelo bailed Sarver out with a decent trade for JJ.

So Mike didn't play Strawberry today and during KTAR's press game show, the host actually complained about it.

I wonder if Popovic is getting any crap for not playing Jaque Vaugn for more than thirteen seconds.

 

[BC867]

The "except for"'s early in this post are the best points that the bench should have been developed.

I believe that if D.J. had been given regular playing time over the course of the season, he'd be a valuable commodity to the Suns right now and looking ahead to the playoffs.

Especially with management not providing D'Antoni with a backup Point Guard (or D'Antoni not wanting one) and Steve Nash getting sloppy as the season wears on.

I won't even get into banishing Brian Skinner so Diaw could get more playing time for the one game in five or six where he actually does well.

 

[Mainstreet]

Did anyone notice Steve Nash had a bounce back in his step tonight? It was great to see and it was something I have missed for awhile.

 

[malooga]

If D'Antoni had capable players, he would play them! But he doesn't! He's given them ALL plenty of opportunities, but they just don't have the ability to play at this level. For all of Pat Burke's griping this year, he couldn't even stay in the league without the Suns.

Absolutely brilliant. Right on. All the couch potato, DA bashers around here just crack me up. They all think they know more about coaching than one of the most successful coaches in the league. Is DA perfect? Of course not, but he's pretty damn good.

 

[JS22]

lol @ suns fans thinking they know how to run a basketball team better than d'antoni..

i think the majority of fans on this forum are pathetic..

Cool. Hopefully you get banned soon so you won't have to deal with us.

 

[Ouchie-Z-Clown]

So Mike didn't play Strawberry today and during KTAR's press game show, the host actually complained about it.

I wonder if Popovic is getting any crap for not playing Jaque Vaugn for more than thirteen seconds.

that's a dumb argument. vaughn was getting burn before he was REPLACED BY A BETTER BACKUP PG in mighty mouse. we don't have an adequate replacement for nash, so might as well put in a selfless player who looks for others and plays tight defense . . . that doesn't describe barbs. sounds like strawberry, don't it?

 

[cly2tw]

Are you defending him because he gets the credit for signing players he never could use and never would have been useful for other teams? Weird logic to say the least.

Suns used to be one of the best FA destination in the league. The first question you need to ask is why any FA of any value would shun the Suns like pest now, unless we promise them a starter role like in case of Hill!

 

[Griffin]

Suns used to be one of the best FA destination in the league. The first question you need to ask is why any FA of any value would shun the Suns like pest now, unless we promise them a starter role like in case of Hill!

Let's look at some of the players who did not receive playing time last season:

Jalen Rose - Current team: none/retired?
Jumaine Jones - Current team: Basket Napoli (Italy)
Pat Burke - Current team: Khimki BC (Russia)
Sean Marks & Eric Piatkowski - still with the team

Can you really argue that any of the above players should be getting regular rotation minutes on a playoff-bound team?

So the only question mark is Marcus Banks, and as we have debated to death already, imo Banks have received plenty of opportunities to prove himself and did not deliver. Right now he is in the perfect situation getting minutes on a horrible team, but even Riley said that Banks still needs to learn how to play point guard.

So the argument that players don't want to come here because they are afraid they won't get minutes does not hold. Barry for instance knew that he would get more minutes here than in SA, but still he chose to go back.

 

[shazaam6]

One big problem is not that Dantoni plays the 7 best guys the most minutes. It's that if one of them misses a game, no one else on the bench is familiar enough to play with their own team to even fill in.

 

[cly2tw]

Griffin,

read my whole post. You are repeating the same of what dasunsfan said and mine was questioning the logic behind it!

- who is responsible for hiring those useless players as you put it for our bench?

- why couldn't we get some useful pieces for the same said bench?

I didn't doubt that Banks was overpaid, after all.

 

[Griffin]

- who is responsible for hiring those useless players as you put it for our bench?

- why couldn't we get some useful pieces for the same said bench?

Because there aren't that many good players that are willing to sign for the league minimum, and that is all Sarver was willing to offer. The reason players like Piatkowski and Jurmaine Jones were signed was to have 13 players on the roster as required by the league. Banks was the exception, but I think it goes without saying that signing him was a mistake, and only happened because Tim Thomas and John Salmons signed elsewhere.

Now if we both agree that these bench players should not have been given significant minutes, then you cannot argue that this is the reason why we cannot sign free agents now, unless you also believe that a team should play all their players regardless of how little they contribute.

 

[cly2tw]

Because there aren't that many good players that are willing to sign for the league minimum, and that is all Sarver was willing to offer. The reason players like Piatkowski and Jurmaine Jones were signed was to have 13 players on the roster as required by the league. Banks was the exception, but I think it goes without saying that signing him was a mistake, and only happened because Tim Thomas and John Salmons signed elsewhere.

Now if we both agree that these bench players should not have been given significant minutes, then you cannot argue that this is the reason why we cannot sign free agents now, unless you also believe that a team should play all their players regardless of how little they contribute.

There is a chicken-egg problem here. There have been a lot of good players reasonably priced signed by other teams. Moore, Stoudamire, Azubuike, Moon, ...

Why do we end up with bad signing only? (To be honest, the above mentioned would have become more bad signings, had they come to Suns. But the self selection mechanism prevented that from happening.)

- we are not willing to pay much because we wouldn't play them given DA's said philosophy

- knowing this only the most desperate would come to us for min., so they are not playing; which makes you guys feel vindicated that he plays a 7-men rotation

This is a self reinforcing cycle centered around the phenomenon call D'Antoni. Sarver is only a side problem. He is a business man and know that cost saving makes sense only when it doesn't much reduce the quality of the product to sell. When DA assures him, Kurt wouldn't play more than 15 min a game unless we see Spurs and Suns would be as good without him, only then the business man in Sarver would do the deal we saw.

 

[Griffin]

When DA assures him, Kurt wouldn't play more than 15 min a game unless we see Spurs and Suns would be as good without him, only then the business man in Sarver would do the deal we saw.

This is where we will disagree. KT cost Sarver $16 million. If KT averaged 20/10 for us last year, then someone else (Diaw) would have been traded. James Jones was part of rotation but was let go of too. You can't tell me that DA didn't mind losing those players.

 

[cly2tw]

This is where we will disagree. KT cost Sarver $16 million. If KT averaged 20/10 for us last year, then someone else (Diaw) would have been traded. James Jones was part of rotation but was let go of too. You can't tell me that DA didn't mind losing those players.

Fine, as long as we agree that the philosophy-induced short rotation is the origin of those problems discussed in this thread.

As to Kurt, I bet they were thinking along the line of "either signing a cheap replacement or getting KT for min after being waived before deadline". Spurs knew it and acted to prevent that from happening. All that just reminded me that PJ shunned the Suns too while we are not even using Skinner anymore.

 

[Griffin]

Fine, as long as we agree that the philosophy-induced short rotation is the origin of those problems discussed in this thread.

Not really. You are arguing that Sarver is not willing to pay competitive salary for players that DA is not going to use anyway. I disagree with that. If DA told Sarver that he wants Artest and he'll give him 30 minutes a game, would Sarver shell out the $12 million it would have cost to get him? Sarver and Kerr replaced KT with Skinner and James Jones with Grant Hill. Had we kept both of those players in addition to the two signings, we would have at least a 9-man rotation now. But the problem is, even on teams that use deep rotation, the 9th and 10th players don't usually get more than 10-12 minutes a game (see Utah), and Sarver could not justify to himself paying $16 million for a player with such a limited role.

 

[cly2tw]

Not really. You are arguing that Sarver is not willing to pay competitive salary for players that DA is not going to use anyway. I disagree with that. If DA told Sarver that he wants Artest and he'll give him 30 minutes a game, would Sarver shell out the $12 million it would have cost to get him? Sarver and Kerr replaced KT with Skinner and James Jones with Grant Hill. Had we kept both of those players in addition to the two signings, we would have at least a 9-man rotation now. But the problem is, even on teams that use deep rotation, the 9th and 10th players don't usually get more than 10-12 minutes a game (see Utah), and Sarver could not justify to himself paying $16 million for a player with such a limited role.

Sure, if we could have Kobe and KG to the roster, I'm sure DA would find playing time for them. Of KG/Amare/Kobe/Nash, you really don't have a need to carry all 4 contracts to win the title, so what'd be the problem to say dump Kobe to Sonics along with 2 picks for cap to save 60 mil for the next 3 years? What is this kind of reasoning leading to? Sarver too cheap?

KT hardly played late last season, right? Then, what makes you think DA would have played him more had we not given him away to Sonics? Or that JR would still have gotten any playing time say more than what DJ got with Hill starting? Is it DA's philosophy to blame or Sarver's alleged cheapness?

 

[BC867]

Steve Nash went into a funk because we had no backup Point Guard.

If Marcus Banks was supposed to be that guy, he either wasn't developed by the coaches or couldn't handle it.

Now it's late in the season and we still have no backup Point Guard.

Was that the team's error in judgement or failure to make it work?

Either way, that can be described only as failure. There is no justification for it.

 

[da_suns_fan]

Steve Nash went into a funk because we had no backup Point Guard.

If Marcus Banks was supposed to be that guy, he either wasn't developed by the coaches or couldn't handle it.

Now it's late in the season and we still have no backup Point Guard.

Was that the team's error in judgement or failure to make it work?

Either way, that can be described only as failure. There is no justification for it.

So what are we arguing about here?

Saying that the team screwed up by not acquiring a back up point guard is a legitimate gripe with management (which included D'Antoni for one off-season).

Complaining that D'Antoni doesn't play his bench is not. If he had capable players past Barbosa and Diaw, he would play them.

Does anyone doubt that if the Suns had Noah, Salmons, Korver, Bellinelli etc. that D'Antoni wouldn't play them?

We're talking about the second to last player taken in the draft last year in Strawberry and a bunch of career practice players. As I said before, they're LUCKY to even be in the league. If we cut all of them, none would be picked up by any other team.