SUNS - MAVS aka The Season GAME THREAD!!!!

[Blackification]

100 points with 4:27 in the 3rd quarter. Suns Basketball!!

 

[Sunburn]

barnes with another timely pass.

Bench won't be going in as this is considered a must win game and our starters supposedly give us the best chance of winning.

 

[Michael]

I agree with the blowing- up plan. However, I believe it to be one year too early due to this **** Kurt Thomas trade. No point in tanking next year!

 

[Blackification]

I wonder how hard D'antoni is laughing right now. Same with Bell and Diaw.

 

[green machine]

I wonder how hard D'antoni is laughing right now. Same with Bell and Diaw.

I don't know, none of them are likely to be in the playoffs either I don't think.

 

[cly2tw]

So, in your opinion, is Nash this season a much worse defender than he was in the past seasons?

He got even more exposed which caused him to be even more desinterested in defense. Without Marion/Bell for transition defense, and more TOs, aggreveate the issue further.

 

[Sunburn]

I agree with the blowing- up plan. However, I believe it to be one year too early due to this **** Kurt Thomas trade. No point in tanking next year!

We want something from these guys while they still have trade value. Doing it now gives us one year sooner to get new guys in and start gelling. Nothing we can do about giving up our draft pick in '10. It's gone and it's not coming back, unless we trade for it. It hurts but what's the point in putting a mediocre team that's going nowhere out on the floor just to spite OKC out of a top pick. We're just delaying the inevitable. Time to just suck it up and get on with it.

 

[cobbler]

Spoken like a true front running troll.

Wasn't I who made the comments then.... was you. Nice to see you came to your senses.

 

[Blackification]

We want something from these guys while they still have trade value. Doing it now gives us one year sooner to get new guys in and start gelling. Nothing we can do about giving up our draft pick in '10. It's gone and it's not coming back, unless we trade for it. It hurts but what's the point in putting a mediocre team that's going nowhere out on the floor just to spite OKC out of a top pick. We're just delaying the inevitable. Time to just suck it up and get on with it.

Best idea would be to trade for a pick.

 

[Griffin]

You didnt ask me but:
Much worse? No.
Worse? Yeah.
Add to that a deteriorating floor game.

And yet we are arguably a much worse team this year than any season since Nash was signed. Point is, it is easy to try to find a scapegoat (again) for our shortcomings, but it is never as simple as pointing a finger at one person. Nash has always been a bad defender, but we played better team defense in the past with him on the floor. I have argued all along that if you want to improve on defense, you have to bring in defensive players, yet Kerr did the opposite by trading our best defensive players away. Is it any surprise then how poorly we play now?

 

[mojorizen7]

I wonder how hard D'antoni is laughing right now. Same with Bell and Diaw.

Meh, D'Antoni would just blame it on lack of energy and/or the refs. He'd also look at a 30 point deficit and continue to draw up P&R's with no effort to stop anybody.
Let me know when Mikey wins a playoff series.

 

[Ryanwb]

Talk about craping the bed

 

[Bufalay]

I DIDN"T bring up Amare in the thread you ******** learn to read! Can you get that learn to READ!!!

Someone brought up Amare in this thread, but I guess it wasn't you.

He [Amare] would not have an impact on them hitting 3's at a ridiculous clip can you get that? Thats what I wrote!

Wait, so it was you?


Congrats nashman you are now the worst poster on this board.

 

[mojorizen7]

And yet we are arguably a much worse team this year than any season since Nash was signed. Point is, it is easy to try to find a scapegoat (again) for our shortcomings, but it is never as simple as pointing a finger at one person. Nash has always been a bad defender, but we played better team defense in the past with him on the floor. I have argued all along that if you want to improve on defense, you have to bring in defensive players, yet Kerr did the opposite by trading our best defensive players away. Is it any surprise then how poorly we play now?

Nash isn't the lone scapegoat,just answering your question.
The defensive problems are many. Cultural,scouting,managing,coaching and certainly with our personel.

 

[jpdavis82]

This is so disappointing, I was expecting a great game today and have been looking forward to this game for the last month. WHAT A JOKE!!!!

 

[Proteus]

Suns down 84-114 after the 3rd quarter. Can we at least keep the Mavs from scoring 140 on us? Ugh.

 

[slinslin]

And yet we are arguably a much worse team this year than any season since Nash was signed. Point is, it is easy to try to find a scapegoat (again) for our shortcomings, but it is never as simple as pointing a finger at one person. Nash has always been a bad defender, but we played better team defense in the past with him on the floor. I have argued all along that if you want to improve on defense, you have to bring in defensive players, yet Kerr did the opposite by trading our best defensive players away. Is it any surprise then how poorly we play now?

He had too basically, he bend over to Nash because Nash was unable to play efficiently at a slower pace under Porter. Trading Bell and Diaw for Richardson was a move to get our offense rolling again which it wasn't.

Also Diaw was overpaid for what he did and except for a few games every once in a while he is still the same in Charlotte while Bell is declining fast.

If Kerr wanted to improve the defense it had to start with trading Nash because Nash was a killer under Porter. He was bitching and he was a turnover machine despite fewer posessions plus the fact that he is an easy target to attack for any team offensively.

This season is just a waste, 50 games of Terry Porter trying to play slow and some defense with a team full of offensive players and a PG who can only play the opposite and then 30 games without our best player and another 10 with our best bench player on top of that.

If Kerr still wants to build a contender he has to start from scratch and rehaul the entire roster because we will never adapt a successful style as long as Nash forces a run and gun no defense style on our team.

Oh and I doubt D'Antoni is laughing, he is coaching the 2nd worst team in the East and that's only because it is very hard to be worse than Washington.

 

[cly2tw]

And yet we are arguably a much worse team this year than any season since Nash was signed. Point is, it is easy to try to find a scapegoat (again) for our shortcomings, but it is never as simple as pointing a finger at one person. Nash has always been a bad defender, but we played better team defense in the past with him on the floor. I have argued all along that if you want to improve on defense, you have to bring in defensive players, yet Kerr did the opposite by trading our best defensive players away. Is it any surprise then how poorly we play now?

Your theory is flawed. With SSOL, the other team used to be out of breath to do any good offense. They can now, because we can't run like we did. Thus, the weakness of Nash gets further exposed to an dimention not to be cured with OTHER good defenders.

 

[cobbler]

Nobody ever mentions how you are now a worse team under Gentry than you were under Porter. Porter got shafted. If Nash and company would have bought into the defensive mentality he was trying to create, and then made some adjustments to the offensive strategy that would have allowed the team to score like they can, then you guys would have been credible. Bringing Shaq in, though he has played well was a huge mistake in that it created two completely seperate offensive scenarios. But by far, as everyone knows, the reluctance by the majority of the players to play defense is just unacceptable. That starts with your captain. The season was doomed from the start when Nash didn't buy into Porter. And now he will bail on the team....

 

[Bufalay]

Nobody ever mentions how you are now a worse team under Gentry than you were under Porter.

No one mentions that because the firing of Porter coincided with Amare's injury which makes it difficult to compare the two.

I keep hearing this crap about Porter getting shafted because the players didn't buy into his system like he's some sort of victim. Blaming the players is fine, but that doesn't change the fact that Porter sucked.

 

[slinslin]

Please check a few pages back, I did say that in hindsight keeping Porter would have been better even if Nash would have continued to bitch about Porters' style behind closed doors and struggled on the court.

That being said, I think Porter is a horrible coach anyway and we needed to get someone better sometime. But going back to Gentry and our old style with all of its flaws and STILL coming up short just goes against everything Kerr wanted to accomplish. That is why I find it absolutely ridiculous how Kerr can come out and talk about how Gentry is doing a great job etc.
On the other hand it is not like he has a choice right now since he was still hoping we could make the playoffs.

This offseason will determine Kerr's fate.

 

[Bufalay]

Kidd with 20 assists. Nice

 

[Griffin]

Your theory is flawed. With SSOL, the other team used to be out of breath to do any good offense. They can now, because we can't run like we did. Thus, the weakness of Nash gets further exposed to an dimention not to be cured with OTHER good defenders.

Okay, so we can't run as well as we used to, and we don't have as many good defenders as we used to. But that's due to the moves that the organization made and not anything that Nash has done differently. If you have bad defensive players on your team, but you rely on those players to run your offense or to score the ball, then you need to devise a defensive scheme and/or add defensive players that enable you to hide the defensive limitations of your bad defenders.

 

[Michael]

We want something from these guys while they still have trade value. Doing it now gives us one year sooner to get new guys in and start gelling. Nothing we can do about giving up our draft pick in '10. It's gone and it's not coming back, unless we trade for it. It hurts but what's the point in putting a mediocre team that's going nowhere out on the floor just to spite OKC out of a top pick. We're just delaying the inevitable. Time to just suck it up and get on with it.

Maybe the best value is cap space with the guys. We would have one mediocre year with the old guys or a bad year with new players.
In the offseason, we could just be stuck with no draft picks and our new players or we could try to go after some free agents with the cap space freed up due to the ending contracts of O'Neil and co.
Not sure if we could become attractive to FAs in one year, but we'd still have Leandro and Amar'e as a core.

 

[slinslin]

Yes but the problem was that when they tried to play that way, Nash was averaging only half as many assists while turning it over twice as much and giving up career nights to every PG.
Some players were bitching about the style because they couldn't adapt and especially Nash was so out of sync under Porter that it started to affect the entire offense.

You can't be a good team when that happens.

Oh and a mediocre year is a lost year, even if we lose our pick it would be better to suck, get some young talent and devellop those guys.

It's unlikely we can return to contender status by adding just free agents in 2010. The ones that will be availabe will cost a fortune and the rest won't make a big difference.