playstation said:
i'm pissed off because i think i could have done a better job with strategy.
-why double diaw's man in the post? with NASH of all people? that's useless. doubling in the post is the kiss of death against a team that is hot.
-if they couldn't create offense off nash, give it to Diaw in the post! the guy has proven effective at finding the open man, and in the post he can kick out.
these two things frustrated the hell out of me. yes barbosa played great, yes nash did not do great defensively, but strategically, the two points above were the biggest issues imo.
And kick it out to who? What pissed me off the most about that game is James Jones not starting AND him not being in the game at the end. We went out to get him to fill a role that we lost in the offseason, which was three-point shooting and to be a scorer.
At the end of the game, the Suns had a terrible offensive set going on. It was like Nash vs. The Pistons 5. It was awful and was like that against Dallas as well. Now I haven't seen all the games totally through (except the Dallas one, which I went to) but James Jones has that shooter/scorer swagger to him on the court. He isn't afraid to shoot the ball and he can shoot it well and we all know that. Otherwise we wouldn't have him.
Back to the game, we needed Jones in there so that we could have a different look besides Nash: drive, tight pass, turnover. ESPECIALLY with Kurt Thomas (sorry excuse for an NBA center/power forward) and Brian Grant (another sorry excuse) being our post options. If there is nothing inside, why not try outside? We had two (Jones and Barbosa) significant outside threats sitting on the bench in the last 6 or so minutes of the game and instead we have Brian Grant and Kurt Thomas in the game, quite sad, no wonder we lost. Or like you said, we could have had Diaw in the post and have him kick it out to Jones and Barbosa.
Everyones complaining about how Nash is having problems late in games, but its because everyone else seems scared to shoot the ball, (because they are worried about missing and D'Antoni bringing someone else in because we have a bench now) which forces Nash to take bad shots and makes dangerous passes. This new philosophy (more equal playing time for everyone) is not looking good in the early stages, I know that to fully judge it without our superstar isn't totally fair but with proper coaching, we could be undefeated. I say stick with what worked (6-8 man rotation) until its not working anymore. I see D'Antoni AND the front office pulling this bull and panicking because Amare's gone, and because the Suns ONE knock last year was we had no bench. But look where "No bench" got us last year, a 62-20 record and a Western Conference Finals appearance, which we lost in to the eventual NBA champs. We we're close and a new (togetherness wise) team and had only 1 season to gel. I feel like this team is very good but changing the lineup frequently is not a recipe for success.
Why change so soon? It was only 4 games in, give it at least 10-15 games before you make changes to the starting lineup, doing that with a young guy like James Jones could hurt his confidence.