Frank Vogel Defense

[Covert Rain]

He’s around 36% for his career so maybe a touch below for what we’d like to see. I’ve always said I think his arc on his shot needs to improve from further out.

He focuses a lot on midrange shots and is elite at that area but the threes come and go. He’s on a 3/25 stretch right now, otherwise he’d be around 37-38%.

In Feb he shot 33% from 3. Since the all-star break he is shooting 25.5% from 3. So far for March he is shooting 16.7% from 3. 30% of his shots come from 3. He is killing us with his 3 point shot. What is interesting is when he has 3+ days of rest? His average shoots up to 40%. Point Book IMO, as good as he has looked at times, has been a disaster IMO if you look at the turnover ratio this year and the lack of production in the 4th. His defense has fallen off as well.

It's not all on Book by any stretch but symptomatic of what the Suns are asking their players to do. Book being point Book. Beal handling the ball, Durant handling the ball. Guys playing a ton of minutes because of crappy bench production. It's a bad combo.

 

[Ouchie-Z-Clown]

In Feb he shot 33% from 3. Since the all-star break he is shooting 25.5% from 3. So far for March he is shooting 16.7% from 3. 30% of his shots come from 3. He is killing us with his 3 point shot. What is interesting is when he has 3+ days of rest? His average shoots up to 40%. Point Book IMO, as good as he has looked at times, has been a disaster IMO if you look at the turnover ratio this year and the lack of production in the 4th. His defense has fallen off as well.

It's not all on Book by any stretch but symptomatic of what the Suns are asking their players to do. Book being point Book. Beal handling the ball, Durant handling the ball. Guys playing a ton of minutes because of crappy bench production. It's a bad combo.

I hate to admit this, but it looks like Booker may just be a poor man’s harden. Hurts my soul to say that.

 

[Yuma]

we scored 129pts and still got blown the funk out

its almost hard to fathom - how bad you have to be at defense to accomplish something like that

I think we shot 58% on the road and STILL lost.

 

[Yuma]

Book only had 2 turn overs. That's like CP3 efficiency.

 

[1982baskets]

Suns fired this guy and blamed the season on him, but with the same team the new guy they got is doing even worse. Here's what the guy we fired did for the Lakers.

Frank Vogel’s defensive schemes turned the Lakers into a juggernaut, anchoring their 2020 title success and earning Phil Handy’s admiration.

"Frank for me man, he really gave me a master class on defense, like teaching defense and defensive principles. I was in LA with him we had the number one defense in the league for three years in a row and it's not a fluke."
"Frank is in my opinion, he knows defense and our team was perfect for his defensive schemes, the way we defended. It was just hard to score against"

That was Phil Handy, a well known assistant coach around the league on Frank Vogel.

We blamed Vogel well the owners, players, FO, they all seemed to save their butts and put it all on Vogel. However if you look at the wins and losses and the numbers, the Suns under Vogel last year were 1 game shy of 50 wins, and 13th in the league on defense. They had the same exact issues we are dealing with now with the big 3, Beal/Durant unable to stay healthy enough to be consistent and the top heavy roster.

Overall though, I feel we fired and blamed the wrong guy. Right now with Bud we're ranked 24th on defense and on pace to win less games. We may advance in the playoffs, but again, we could have last year as well if the match ups were right (Minnesota with KAT is a different monster last year).

A better alternative move may have been to work with Vogel who got a pretty bad defensive team to play above average defense last year to get him some better defenders so he could put an elite defense around KD/Book/Beal. That was the only way we can win with this group. We will not be able to build a team that can win through depth and more offense.

Don't get me wrong, I know Vogel's limitations on offense. He was far from a perfect coach. I just feel we got worse in the coaching department and just took the easy way out. I was very impressed by the teams in LA and Indiana defensively. I don't think it was a bad plan to have elite defense around Book/Beal/KD. We could have eventually moved Grayson/Nurk for better fits on defense. We will likely move Grayson/Nurk anyway at some point anyway. The defense is the way the go if you want any chance at success with the big 3.

 

[Hoop Head]

Don't get me wrong, I know Vogel's limitations on offense. He was far from a perfect coach. I just feel we got worse in the coaching department and just took the easy way out. I was very impressed by the teams in LA and Indiana defensively. I don't think it was a bad plan to have elite defense around Book/Beal/KD. We could have eventually moved Grayson/Nurk for better fits on defense. We will likely move Grayson/Nurk anyway at some point anyway. The defense is the way the go if you want any chance at success with the big 3.

Vogel was the scapegoat. His rotations and offense were awful. He'd probably do well as a defensive assistant. Unfortunately it didn't work here and we are now in this mess.

We traded defense for offense and hoped Budenholzer could create a D'Antoni like system that could mask the defensive shortcomings. That hasn't happened and was an unrealistic ask anyways because Bud has never been an offensive guru, just a good offensive coach.

I blame the front office for selling us a bill of good that wasn't likely to pan out. I also blame myself for falling for it again. Make no mistake though, we could have Bud, Vogel, and Monty sharing duties on the bench and we'd fail because the personnel isn't there for this team to be more than a pretender.