The big picture

[Errntknght]

That's sounds all great but it's not how it works. Sarver is the one that dug the hole. Just because you hire some guys to fill the hole doesn't erase that fact. Plus, Sarver is the one that is responsible for bringing these guys in.

Intentions don't make someone a good owner. I give Sarver credit for trying something new.

History certainly has its uses but lets not dwell on it too much - in broad strokes we agree that Sarver sucked in the past but he's made some strides in recent years. I think Sarver was ready to meddle again with Dragic but Goran wanted out and he let McD execute the trade. He will probably take too active of a role again in the future but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it now. Besides I'd much rather talk basketball than 'discuss' endlessly the workings/non-workings of the FO.

I wish Hornacek didn't dwell so much on the past - he seems very intent on replicating the Stockton/Hornacek backcourt of his playing days. Too intent on it, it seems to me, instead of adapting to the players he has to work with - their temperaments as well as their skill sets. I'm inclined to think Bled and Knight will always be trying to prove their dominance - I think Ennis would be a better match with Bledsoe, making up the latter's weakness as playmaker and court general but letting him have the stage with his flamboyance. It would take longer for the team to reach its potential but there is plenty of development needed in the front court, too,so there isn't a great rush. Oops, I'm dwelling in the past now.

What might make Bledsoe/Knight pairing work is that Eric will have a better defender next to him so he won't have to take all the tough covers. If he appreciates that he might be more inclined to work more cooperatively with him than he did Goran - I'm not giving Eric undue blame for that, Goran seemed to be no more inclined to do and, of course, Hornacek did little to foment it.

 

[AzStevenCal]

History certainly has its uses but lets not dwell on it too much - in broad strokes we agree that Sarver sucked in the past but he's made some strides in recent years. I think Sarver was ready to meddle again with Dragic but Goran wanted out and he let McD execute the trade. He will probably take too active of a role again in the future but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it now. Besides I'd much rather talk basketball than 'discuss' endlessly the workings/non-workings of the FO.

I wish Hornacek didn't dwell so much on the past - he seems very intent on replicating the Stockton/Hornacek backcourt of his playing days. Too intent on it, it seems to me, instead of adapting to the players he has to work with - their temperaments as well as their skill sets. I'm inclined to think Bled and Knight will always be trying to prove their dominance - I think Ennis would be a better match with Bledsoe, making up the latter's weakness as playmaker and court general but letting him have the stage with his flamboyance. It would take longer for the team to reach its potential but there is plenty of development needed in the front court, too,so there isn't a great rush. Oops, I'm dwelling in the past now.

What might make Bledsoe/Knight pairing work is that Eric will have a better defender next to him so he won't have to take all the tough covers. If he appreciates that he might be more inclined to work more cooperatively with him than he did Goran - I'm not giving Eric undue blame for that, Goran seemed to be no more inclined to do and, of course, Hornacek did little to foment it.

I don't think that's it or at least, not just it. I think it's the combination of the disappearing shooting guard and the advantages the referees give to the perimeter ball handler. Just like the change down low, it wasn't that all the teams looked and decided they didn't want good big men with strong back to the basket games. They found a way to win that made up for the shrinking pool of legit big men.

Steve

 

[boisesuns]

Seems like we keep moving things around to plan for the future when the big targets might not even want to sign here, and we're just good enough to be middle of the road in the draft every year. It's like going to vegas and making your money back gambling, but trying over and over again to win the big one.

 

[3rdside]

Agree with this.

A good owner lets the people he hired do their jobs. He's doing that now. His past is certainly littered with horrible moves, but blaming him because you don't like a trade is completely misplaced.

People don't get that if he continued on his downward trajectory after the Warrick and Turkoglu fiascos, we would be in a LOT worse shape than we are now. That's a simple fact.

In theory yes but if they hire the wrong person the wrong person isn't physically capable of doing a good job in the first place. Blanks is one of the most humorously bad hires of all time and RMcD is a 50/50 bet, at best, to not be a fail as well. If that's Sarver who's responsible then this club is doing nothing pretty quickly.

 

[3rdside]

In theory yes but if they hire the wrong person the wrong person isn't physically capable of doing a good job in the first place. Blanks is one of the most humorously bad hires of all time and RMcD is a 50/50 bet, at best, to not be a fail as well. If that's Sarver who's responsible then this club is doing nothing pretty quickly.

...doing nothing pretty quickly if RMcD is a losing bet.

 

[KloD]

In theory yes but if they hire the wrong person the wrong person isn't physically capable of doing a good job in the first place. Blanks is one of the most humorously bad hires of all time and RMcD is a 50/50 bet, at best, to not be a fail as well. If that's Sarver who's responsible then this club is doing nothing pretty quickly.

You're just making stuff up. Yes, Blanks was a horrible GM for the Suns, but one of the worst hires of all time? Based on what standards? Or is just something to say because of a heavy bias against him? My guess is the later is closer to the truth. Who isn't 50/50 to fail (or succeed)? Even GM's who've been successful in one city have failed in another. The reverse is true too. Hate all you want, but don't make **** up attempting to validate your bias. IMO McD has had a great year and a half in the Suns front office, but I wouldn't claim him to be one of the best hires in history to make my point.

 

[SweetD]

I am going to allow all this BS frustration till Wednesday, after that peeps need to come with some reasonable grips, instead of ludicrous crap.

 

[Covert Rain]

I am going to allow all this BS frustration till Wednesday, after that peeps need to come with some reasonable grips, instead of ludicrous crap.

?? Define ludicrous crap.

 

[Phrazbit]

... I would actually consider this one of the more tempered and rational debates that have taken place here recently.

 

[3rdside]

You're just making stuff up. Yes, Blanks was a horrible GM for the Suns, but one of the worst hires of all time? Based on what standards? Or is just something to say because of a heavy bias against him? My guess is the later is closer to the truth. Who isn't 50/50 to fail (or succeed)? Even GM's who've been successful in one city have failed in another. The reverse is true too. Hate all you want, but don't make **** up attempting to validate your bias. IMO McD has had a great year and a half in the Suns front office, but I wouldn't claim him to be one of the best hires in history to make my point.

Okay, I think we've had a wire cross as I meant the Suns hires, not all NBA GM's of all time - surely that award goes to Isaiah Thomas of the Knicks. I wish i'd understood this when I starting doing some analysis (!) as it's pretty obvious Blanks is a contender.

RMcD's has had a great year? Far too early to say that as you can't paint the fiasco of last week as a positive even though it may turn into one. It was unforseen and uncomfortable and - depending on where you stand - had, at the very least, something to do with RMcD's roster moves. And RMcD failed abysmally in the 'assembling a good roster / team culture' test; you can have all the talent in the world but if everyone hates each other... Chemistry, what I keep banging on about, is more important than people think - look at us last year (or Atlanta this year maybe) - and chemistry + talent = success. The Suns got the first part of the equation right last year but killed it in the offseason aiming for the second part of the equation.

And about the 50 / 50 comment - if someone fails do you think he's more likely to succeed the next time around? It's hard to say but I know that i'd prefer to bet on the guy who succeeded first time round.

 

[3rdside]

Anyway, seeing as I did some research, here's the summary of Blanks's tenure with the Suns (noting I sort of tuned out of the Suns after Amare left and only tuned back in when we started doing better last year, so it’s all open to comment and suggestion).

Summary

The Home Runs
1. Steve Nash for 2 Lakers’ 1sts.


The Good
1. Drafting Markieff Morris (Vucevic, Kawhi Leonard, Tobias Harris all still on the board)
2. Dragic for 4yrs / $30m from Houston but this is largely to do with Dragic wanting to come back to Phoenix rather than Blanks’ ability.
3. Making amends for the Turkoglu, Warrick, Childress acquisition – Gortat was a decent piece although we didn’t get a whole lot out of him. Hard to say that a makeup move is a Good move as the Bad move should never have happened in the first place. That’s assuming Blanks was at least partly responsible for the Turkoglu trade. See below for more detail.


The Bad
1. Drafting Kendall Marshall (weak draft but Sullinger, Terence Jones, Fournier all still on the board)


The Ugly
1. Acquiring Turkoglu, Warrick and Childress – 3 appalling contracts: Turkoglu (4 years left of a 5yr / $53m contract), Childress (5yr / $33.5m) and Warrick (4yrs / $16m). Ugh. The question here is whether Blanks was responsible for this as they were acquired 9 days before Blanks was hired. If he wasn’t largely responsible then I think it’s a fair assumption he was at least partly responsible as Turkoglu was his client. Either he screwed the Suns by passing off trash to the club or he’s a fool for acquiring such an awful contract is one way of looking at it.
2. Dragic and a protected 1st rd pick for Aaron Brooks.
3. Signing Michael Beasley for $18m / 3 yrs.
4. Under Blanks the team won 98 and lost 133, a winning record of 42.6%. Excluding Blanks’ record, the Suns have won 56.0% of their games on average (won 1992 / lost 1560 since 1968).*
5. The 25 – 57 record, Blanks’ last in charge, was the second worst single season record of all time, the worst being the Suns’ inaugural season.*


*The way I see it in the Suns organisation, a coach can be held responsible for any one season, the GM for 1 – 3 seasons, and the Head of Operations for 3+ seasons. It’s a vague way to define it but the point I’m trying to make is that Blanks can’t be entirely responsible for the Suns’ poor performance during his three years as GM i.e. it could be down to Gentry and Lindsey Hunter as well. But in Gentry’s defence, he lead the team to the WCF with Amare the year before Blanks arrived so he could probably coach. Or maybe he just rode the amare / Nash coat tails. The rosters that Blanks assembled aren't in question however (I don't think) – they were awful (noting that Frye was out for the whole of Blanks’ final year for whatever that's worth).

 

[Phrazbit]

Blanks didn't want Dragic, he was trying to sign Raymond Felton... which would have been astronomically bad. Sarver went through the back door to sign Dragic.

 

[slinslin]

1. Blanks did not sign Turkoglu, Warrick or Childress.

2. Dragic and a protected first for Aaron Brooks.

This is revisionist history at its finest. At the time of the trade Brooks was the reigning MIP and Goran was TRAGIC one of the worst guards in the league.

 

[3rdside]

1. Blanks did not sign Turkoglu, Warrick or Childress.

2. Dragic and a protected first for Aaron Brooks.

This is revisionist history at its finest. At the time of the trade Brooks was the reigning MIP and Goran was TRAGIC one of the worst guards in the league.

Did you miss the part where I said it's all open to comments and suggestion? I don't exactly know what went on, I just pieced it together from Wikipedia and filled in the blanks (!) where I could. And Blanks may not have signed those three but he must have known it was going to happen because, as I said, it happened 9 days before he was appointed GM, pretty sure he would have had a job offer well before that anyway, and Turkoglu was already a client. There's enough to suggest some of his finger prints are on it.

 

[AzStevenCal]

Did you miss the part where I said it's all open to comments and suggestion? I don't exactly know what went on, I just pieced it together from Wikipedia and filled in the blanks (!) where I could. And Blanks may not have signed those three but he must have known it was going to happen because, as I said, it happened 9 days before he was appointed GM, pretty sure he would have had a job offer well before that anyway, and Turkoglu was already a client. There's enough to suggest some of his finger prints are on it.

Maybe I'm reading you wrong but I think you might be morphing Babby and Blanks into one person. Some of that probably is on Babby but really, all of it is on Sarver. He hired the wrong people. Babby without a good basketball mind next to him is the wrong person. With McDonough, I think we're lucky to have Lon.

Steve

 

[3rdside]

Maybe I'm reading you wrong but I think you might be morphing Babby and Blanks into one person. Some of that probably is on Babby but really, all of it is on Sarver. He hired the wrong people. Babby without a good basketball mind next to him is the wrong person. With McDonough, I think we're lucky to have Lon.

Steve

No I think i've got a handle on the distinction between Blanks and Babby but correct me if I'm wrong: The latter is Head of Operations (HOO) who hires and fires the GM (Blanks) and coach. Generally speaking, you would probably fire the coach more quickly than you would the GM, but if they both fail then the owner (Sarver) would probably fire the HOO (Babby).

The timing of the Turkoglu etc trade happened on July 11th 2010 and Babby was hired the day after on the 12th, Blanks then hired on July 20th. Kerr had already left by then (June 30th) so it must have been one, or some, combination of all three + Sarver that got the trade to happen. Knowing Sarver isn't a trades guy (I don't think) and nor is Babby who was a player agent and, in his own words said at the time of his hiring:

"I'm going to play to my strengths. I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm not good at," Babby said. "I've never told anybody I was Red Auerbach. I have no expectation of taking the lead on those kind of talent evaluation questions. My first order of priority is to bring somebody in here who is a basketball genius."

Then unless it was someone else in the organisation, the fingers point to Blanks being the main culprit, backed up by the above and the fact that Turkoglu was his client at the time.

 

[Phrazbit]

1. Blanks did not sign Turkoglu, Warrick or Childress.

2. Dragic and a protected first for Aaron Brooks.

This is revisionist history at its finest. At the time of the trade Brooks was the reigning MIP and Goran was TRAGIC one of the worst guards in the league.

Brooks was also one of the worst guards in the league that season and about to be a free agent AND he'd just been suspended by his team.

The Dragic/Brooks trade was an abysmal move.

 

[sunsfan88]

1. Blanks did not sign Turkoglu, Warrick or Childress.

2. Dragic and a protected first for Aaron Brooks.

This is revisionist history at its finest. At the time of the trade Brooks was the reigning MIP and Goran was TRAGIC one of the worst guards in the league.

Brooks was horrible that year and had major character issues, that's why Houston was so willing to trade the "reigning MIP".

No, that trade was awful then & it still is now.

 

[Errntknght]

The tragic thing that year was Gentry didn't figure out what was wrong with Goran. If you remember Goran had played well in leading the second unit the year before - they played a major role in us getting to the WC finals. The key thing is they were a fairly well defined unit so that Goran wasn't just being plugged into Nash's slot by himself. I'm sure everyone remembers that prior to that D'A and Gentry had tried plugging in seven different backups for Steve with horrible consequences every time. (Eddie House was far and away the most successful but D'A hated to play him so Nash was still worn down to a nub by playoff time.)
During the summer the FO let Amundson walk who was one of the energizers of that second unit. Amare also departed and the hideous trio - Warrick, Turk, Childress - was brought in. That doomed the team but what doomed Dragic was Gentry killing the idea of having a well defined second unit - he announced during training camp that he was going back to his normal substitution pattern. I remember I predicted immediately that Dragic would revert right back the blubbering mess he was before - I was slightly wrong as he was even worse. The second unit would have been crap anyway with Warrick replacing Amundson but that's a different story.

What I hated most about that whole episode was that that second unit was successful because of their defense - a first for the Phoenix Suns. A coach with half a brain would have realized that he'd stumbled onto a good thing - but to quote Mark Twain, Gentry "picked himself up, dusted himself off and went on as though nothing happened."

 

[3rdside]

"I'm going to play to my strengths. I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm not good at," Babby said. "I've never told anybody I was Red Auerbach. I have no expectation of taking the lead on those kind of talent evaluation questions. My first order of priority is to bring somebody in here who is a basketball genius."

And it's this quote that has me worried (for now) about the direction of the Suns: If Blanks was Babby's 'basketball genius' then he got that one horribly wrong as shown by the summary I put together above.

Therefore, considering Babby's initial failure on Blanks, and the 'unforeseen and uncomfortable' episode last week that is at least partly to do with RMcD, the signs are that Babby may (may) have tanked once again with RMcD. As I've said before, trashing chemistry the way RMcD enabled it to happen over the summer is pretty shocking IMO so I'm justified in having doubts about the guy (actually, that applies to both RMcD and Babby).

But, of course, I'm not writing him off just yet because of the subsequent moves he's made post the Dragic fallout; the drafting of Len which could be the making of this ball club; and the confidence with which he signed Bledsoe (which I initially thought was an overpay and a strange way to conduct a contract negotiation but, on the basis of his performance yesterday, may not be the case; we may have a franchise cornerstone on our hands. Damn that's a big turnaround statement considering I'd allocated some of last week's mess to Bledsoe).

Let's hope Knight doesn't walk this off season cause the negative RMcD slant I've touched on here will become justified. As a fan, of course I don't want that to happen.

 

[AZCrazy]

Our guards are good enough to win with. Our front court is made up of decent role players but have no star power. Markeiff and Len can be your 4/5 if you've got a superstar 3. We need a defender and outside shooter in the worst way. PJ can defend some, but still....

 

[AzStevenCal]

Our guards are good enough to win with. Our front court is made up of decent role players but have no star power. Markeiff and Len can be your 4/5 if you've got a superstar 3. We need a defender and outside shooter in the worst way. PJ can defend some, but still....

I think both of our guards are still a ways from peaking and our center has star potential IMO. We need a serious upgrade at one of the starting forward spots and then we just need to let these guys grow into their potential.

Steve

 

[sunsfan88]

This ultimately is our core because after we resign Knight and Wright this summer, we won't have much cap space left to sign any FAs from other teams.

https://twitter.com/ScottHoward42/status/568511197495951360

 

[KloD]

This ultimately is our core because after we resign Knight and Wright this summer, we won't have much cap space left to sign any FAs from other teams.

https://twitter.com/ScottHoward42/status/568511197495951360

First, that's not true. They are able to sign anyone or multiple contracts with all the cap space and than resign whoever. Second, they can trade anyone for a different piece if deemed necessary. Third, while I think it's a safe bet that Knight is a priority and they plan to sign, Wright is anything but. I highly doubt he is brought back.

Social media has many qualities. The fact that any ******* can put an opinion out there and others latch on with little to no critical thought before forwarding it is certainly not in the positive category.

 

[sunsfan88]

First, that's not true. They are able to sign anyone or multiple contracts with all the cap space and than resign whoever. Second, they can trade anyone for a different piece if deemed necessary. Third, while I think it's a safe bet that Knight is a priority and they plan to sign, Wright is anything but. I highly doubt he is brought back.

Social media has many qualities. The fact that any ******* can put an opinion out there and others latch on with little to no critical thought before forwarding it is certainly not in the positive category.

Considering they traded away two very high 2nd round picks for him, I doubt that they will let him walk. However, I'm not gonna care if we don't retain him.