From D'Antoni

[elindholm]

If the Suns get deeper by adding Tucker and one or two more guards to the rotation (Banks being the other candidate), that's better than nothing, but they still need more help up front. Right now we're looking at second-unit lineups with Marks at center and Bell at PF if anyone gets hurt.

 

[Rab]

D'Antoni has indicated that he knows he needs to expand his rotation. Obviously there are lots of doubts whether he will do it, but that will require guys to understand that he demands energy from the instant they go on the court. IMHO, it is a lot easier to show energy on the defensive end than on offense, and that's what they drafted.

The bad part about all of this is that even though he has indicated that a deeper bench might be necassary after all, he also indicated later that if a player on the bench is not helping the team, he won't play. This wouldn't be a huge problem except DA's definition of not helping the team consists of giving them a 3 game trial and even then giving them a very short leash to work with. While on the flip side, you see players like Jacque Vaughn making positive contributions to the Spurs in the playoffs because he's been given consistent opportunities in the regular season to play.

I guess I just don't believe the guy anymore. Until he proves to us that he is willing to trust more of his players to play bigger regular season roles, I will have to play the naysayer.

 

[azirish]

There is no doubt that D'Antoni has the rebputation for having a quick hook, but I'm not sure it is quite as quick as people make it out.

As I show below, Banks played enough in November and early December to in effect play himself out of the rotation. Jumaine was just awful. He shot just 27.5% from the field and 31.3% for three. Burke's play was widely criticized. There is a case to which Pike and Marks might have been given a bigger chance, but realistically Rose is the only player where the "quick hook" seems justified.

October games (1 game) and minutes:

Banks 1 16

November games (13 games)

Banks 13 152
Rose 10 123
Jumaine 1 13
Burke 2 11

December (15 games)

Banks 9 50
Rose 6 37
Jumaine 7 69
Burke 4 16

January (16 games)

Banks 8 80
Rose 4 23
Jumaine 7 38
Burke 4 21

Banks put up decent numbers in February, playing 9 games. His Feb minutes averaged 19.4 minutes per game for 9.1 ppg and 50.8% shooting, plus 2.1 assists per game.

However, he fell out of the rotation again. In Mar where he played just 3 games at 7.3 minutes per game and 2 games in Apr.

Banks played 11 games in a row from Jan 26 to Feb 20 then 4 DNP's with a final appearance on Feb 28). The Suns won 5 of the first 7 games in that string, but then lost 3 in a row where he played heavy minutes (20, 34, and 29). The Feb 20 game was one where he played only 9 minutes and the team won. His last game, on Feb 28 was one where Banks played 16 minutes and the team lost. In Mar and Apr. Banks had only one game with more than garbage minutes, the loss to GW on Mar 29 when he played 14 minutes.

It's not totally clear from the stats what Banks was or was not doing; but it was not like he did not get opportunties to play. Unfortunately, the team began losing with him in the rotation (2 wins in a seven game sequence).

As for the hook with the other guys, there is a very good case to made why they didn't play. Jumaine was a disaster, Burke's defense was not very good and he took too many shots, and we saw so little of Pike and Marks that there was no reason to call it even a quick hook. The only "controversial" decision was to not use Rose dispite his good stats.

The tough part for Rose was that the team began playing better once his minutes went down. Perhaps the hook was quick, but there were comments about his weak defense that may have contributed to his falling out of the rotation.

Maybe D'Antoni does have a quick hook. None the less, it is hard to tell that from last season's stats that he cut off someone who would have helped during the playoffs..