Chaplin
Better off silent
IMO, thats a favorable schedule for this team - 11 of the first 18 games on the road, which will help it jell. They finished on a relatively high note last year so they probably have too high of an opinion of themselves - which means they are going to have learn how hard they have to play to succeed this year. A tough schedule helps that learning process.
Right now every one but JR is shooting abysmally from 3 - it will be long miserable season if it stays that way but now its a good thing because it pushes them to develop other aspects of their offense and they have to work harder on D. What an awful thing it would be if they blythely romped through the pre-season games because their 3's were falling left and right.
You'd think by now I'd have more confidence in Gentry but I keep having this nightmare that he gets locked into having Warrick and Frye as his second unit frontcourt and instead of changing it when they do poorly, he reverts to old behavior and plays the first unit more and more. I guess it could be worse - if the first unit was even poorer than the second unit because he just can't find a way to get much out of Turkoglu. Like many others I had vague ideas of Hedo's playmaking skills somehow freeing up Nash as a spot up shooter but reality is starting to set in. Maybe Chap can explain how it sees that coming to pass since he's still confident Hedo is going to be a grand success here. (What a change for him, replying to one of my posts with some basketball talk instead calling me naive, stupid and hasty.)
Nice jab there. I never said he was going to be a "grand success". I think his skill set in this style is a good fit--apparently you think differently. The whole rebounding issue is a problem besides that point.
Like I said earlier in another thread, Gentry hasn't figured out how to use Hedo on the floor. All that talk about freeing up Nash is just that, talk. They need to put it into practice, but you're talking about taking a 36 year old point guard and changing his game from what he's been doing for YEARS. I don't know if it's Nash or Gentry, but they need to concede that Hedo needs to ball in his hands--not as a catch-and-shoot guy, but as a facilitator. That's the kind of player he is and is exactly what they should have expected when they traded for him. The fact that he's put as a PF is not Hedo's fault, it's the Suns. Personally, I think the solution to the problem is to put Grant Hill on the bench unfortunately, and start either Channing or Warrick at the PF position while Hedo is at the 3. (this solution works great if we sign Dampier) Or keep Grant at the 3 and bring Hedo off the bench as the 6th man.
So feel free to put words into my mouth how I think he's the best PF we have and he'll thrive there--because I never said such a thing.