3 years from now is when the suns window is going to open up for them to win a championship.
Why, because Penny will be off the books? I got news for you, Penny may not be worth 13 million dollars, but he's worth a lot to this team, and it's very difficult to find a guy like that in the league, who truly does make the players around him better. If Joe Johnson starts this year, this team may be in trouble. I can't stress enough the fact that this team was top 5 in the West when Penny was in the line-up, and pretty much bottom of the barrel when he was not. Maybe Joe Johnson has improved, but even then it probably won't be very beneficial to take Penny out of the starting lineup.
Amare Stoudemire should be a very good player this year, and Stephon Marbury we know is great. So it really hinges on Shawn Marion. We have this guy locked up for a long time, and he's probably the key to our team. Even in 3 years we're not going to sign some superstar free agent because we're going to have Amare's big contract on the books, so it all hinges on whether or not Shawn can play in the playoffs. Last year, he made a strong arguement for the people who say that he cannot play in the playoffs at a level we need to. But I don't see that just all the sudden changing in 3 years. If Shawn Marion can play well this year in the playoffs, then we'll be as good a team as we are in 3 years, all things being equal, but if he can't, we won't have a chance this year or any other year.
I read the article as well about our "door" being open in 3 years, but it doesn't make it true.
what is small ball? is this line up small ball? 6'2", 6'8", 6'7", 6'10" and 6'11"? what would you say if i told you that all of these players but one was at the nba average or above. and the one player that is below is ranked by many at the best at his spot. small ball was something that the suns did a couple years ago just to stay in game with players that they had. it was a 6'4", 6'1", 6'4", 6'7" and a 6'9", now that team was smaller then nba average at every spot.
None of this really matters, because these are all just arbitrary heights. It's all about match-ups. If we have Shawn Marion matched up against a power forward, we won't win. When we play the Grizzlies, Bo Outlaw will dominate Shawn in the post, let alone the talented offensive players he'd be matched up with. The whole thing reminds me of last year's all star game, when Vince Carter was matched up against Kevin Garnett. Vince can jump out of the gym, and he's pretty strong, but he got killed in the second Overtime of that game when Garnett just backed him up and shot fadeaways right over him.
When did we play small ball with a guys who were 6'4, 6'1, 6'4, 6'7, and 6'9? I can see Jason Kidd and Tony Delk in there, but other what about the top 3 positions? If anything, we'd have Shawn Marion or Mario Elie at the 3 position, both of those guys being 6'7. At power forward, we had Cliff Robinson or Tom Gugliota. Even when Rodney Rogers played power forward, he may have been 6'8, but he made up for it with his strength. At center, we had Jake Tsakalidis the past 4 years, and we've had Daniel Santiago or Jake Voskhul coming in most of the time. 4 years ago, we had Oliver Miller, who was listed as 6'9, but he had a long wing-span and was never one to be overpowered by his opponent. Keep in mind though, Cliff Robinson was always an excellent low-post defender, and with Jason Kidd's ability as a help-defender, we were a very decent defensive team.
Last year I'd say is the smallest "small-ball" we've played in recent years. We would have lineups where we had Marbs, Penny, JJ, Marion, and Voskhul in there. But we made up for it in that lineup because we created match-up problems on the offensive end of the court. That's the whole idea behind our "skill ball", and in many instances that lineup won games for us last year. However, we really got into trouble when we had lineups of Casey Jacobsen, JJ, Dan Langhi, Bo Outlaw and maybe Marion or Voskhul in there. It was a terrible lineup both because we were overmatched on defense, we had Joe Johnson in there posing as a point guard in just about the worst experiment conducted since they blew up nuclear bombs at chernobyl , and because we didn't have any offensive potency to react to the other team's scoring. The problem is, unless Carbakapa turns out to be a real good player, and history says this year he won't be, our bench is going to be even thinner than it was last year, which means we're going to see more lineups like the one i listed above.
If we got Mutombo, we might not have him in there with our running lineup, but any person with any knowledge of basketball knows you can't run the whole game, and that way we'd have somebody solid downlow who could help us out on the defensive end when some of our better scorers are resting. Right now, our skill-ball lineups would probably be Marbury, Penny, JJ, Marion, and Amare, which is 6'2, 6'7, 6'8, 6'7, 6'9. That's not 6'2", 6'8", 6'7", 6'10" and 6'11". Or we might have Barbosa, JJ, Marion, Demarr Johnson, and Carbakapa, which would be 6', 6'8, 6'7, 6'9, and 6'11. Keep in mind here, Johnson is a very skinny 6'9, and although he has long arms, we would still be overpowered if he had to match up with a power forward. Then, we have the same problem we had with Marion last year against the Spurs.
named Scott Williams who played in all 6 games who averaged over 26 min per game? Didn't the Bulls have Bill Cartwright playing center who averaged over 21 min per game?
