Game 65: Phoenix Suns(33-31)@Utah Jazz(34-30)

[RunDogGun]

No, I need you here to help our misguided fans.

I have a lot of work to do, so it will actually be good to get away from basketball for a while. Time to jump full on into my illustration work. WEEEEEEEEEEE! Have fun with the "build through the draft" lamebrains.

Another artist, nice! You and John should get together for a book/book illustration thing.

[bwgood77]

People think that building through the draft is a good idea. Have any of you seen what kind of draft picks the Suns make? (Outside of Stoudemire and Marion in the past however many years, none have been players to build around) What makes you think the Suns can successfully build through the draft? This argument will be even more annoying now. Another reason I'll be MIA for the next few months.

No, I need you here to help our misguided fans.

I certainly agree with you guys. However, Blanks has done well in the draft with late picks, so I trust him. He was the lead scout in San Antonio when they drafted Tony Parker and Luis Scola both at 28.

If Blanks has a strength, it is in scouting and making good draft picks. He has really only made one for us, Morris, which I think was a pretty decent one.

[nash2amare]

So you are saying that a front office that has said they want to be elite, is going to trade all their players for draft picks and rebuild through that? Maybe you don't know our FO, or have read ANYTHING they have said throughout this year.

Some of you guys really need to take a step back, and think about how this team has opporated over the length of Sarver's tenure.

Last two seasons show that we need that 1st option guy to be an elite.

There is not a plausible way in this fa for us to get that guy.
Then Nash will probably leave.
Signing decent FAs like Dragic or Mayo isnt gonna make us "elite"

So really for Phoenix, the draft is only way to get a franchise player.

And getting another pick would really help our chance of drafting that player

[DirtyDez]

People think that building through the draft is a good idea. Have any of you seen what kind of draft picks the Suns make? (Outside of Stoudemire and Marion in the past however many years, none have been players to build around) What makes you think the Suns can successfully build through the draft? This argument will be even more annoying now. Another reason I'll be MIA for the next few months.

What did Amare and Marion have in common? Both were top 10 picks... You can't judge a team drafting in the teens every year like we do. The fans who want to stay mediocre every year are the lamebrains. If we weren't terrible in 01' we would've never got Amare in the first place and our run never would've happened.

[RunDogGun]

Last two seasons show that we need that 1st option guy to be an elite.

There is not a plausible way in this fa for us to get that guy.
Then Nash will probably leave.
Signing decent FAs like Dragic or Mayo isnt gonna make us "elite"

So really for Phoenix, the draft is only way to get a franchise player.

And getting another pick would really help our chance of drafting that player

I completely disagree. If we had grabbed either Scola or DLee, when we lost Amare, instead of rushing out to get Warrick and Chilldress, we would have done just fine without a so-called elite player.

Either way, this FO is not going to go the route you suggest. Maybe you should ask GS how having all their draft picks has gone for them over the past seventeen years.

[Kerrsed]

Eric Gordon has much better options than us. We need to trade Gortat for one of Portland's picks and build from the ground up. Leave Steve, go win a ring with Dallas or Miami, you deserve one.

Eh... i'd rather try to trade Gortat to MIL for Jennings/Sanders/1st.

We then KEEP Milwaukees pick and trade OUR pick to Boston for their 2 late 1sts.

Ellis/????/Mbah a Moute/Ilyasova/Gortat

Jennings/DRAFT/DRAFT/Morris/Sanders

Phoenix needs lottery pick players who can be new cores for the team

I would rather move up with the 2 late lottery picks or just use them.

http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1146952&p=31507750#p31507750

[bwgood77]

People think that building through the draft is a good idea. Have any of you seen what kind of draft picks the Suns make? (Outside of Stoudemire and Marion in the past however many years, none have been players to build around) What makes you think the Suns can successfully build through the draft? This argument will be even more annoying now. Another reason I'll be MIA for the next few months.

What did Amare and Marion have in common? Both were top 10 picks... You can't judge a team drafting in the teens every year like we do. The fans who want to stay mediocre every year are the lamebrains. If we weren't terrible in 01' we would've never got Amare in the first place and our run never would've happened.

Yeah, but that Amare pick was just an AWESOME pick (despite the people who think otherwise). Look at the rest of the players taken in the lottery that year outside of Yao...Nene has become decent, but it took him a lot longer than it did Amare...

http://nbadraft.net/nba_draft_history/2002.html

[RunDogGun]

People think that building through the draft is a good idea. Have any of you seen what kind of draft picks the Suns make? (Outside of Stoudemire and Marion in the past however many years, none have been players to build around) What makes you think the Suns can successfully build through the draft? This argument will be even more annoying now. Another reason I'll be MIA for the next few months.

What did Amare and Marion have in common? Both were top 10 picks... You can't judge a team drafting in the teens every year like we do. The fans who want to stay mediocre every year are the lamebrains. If we weren't terrible in 01' we would've never got Amare in the first place and our run never would've happened.

Haven't the Spurs done pretty well with their late draft picks? With the Amare pick, we traded it away. We were just lucky that it happened to come back to us through another trade, and that many teams passed on him.

[nash2amare]

http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1146952&p=31507750#p31507750

I see that there were lot of good players drafted late in 1st.

But really the franchise players are all from top10 (Rose, Westbrook, Love, Gordon)

[nash2amare]

I completely disagree. If we had grabbed either Scola or DLee, when we lost Amare, instead of rushing out to get Warrick and Chilldress, we would have done just fine without a so-called elite player.

Either way, this FO is not going to go the route you suggest. Maybe you should ask GS how having all their draft picks has gone for them over the past seventeen years.

So what r u suggesting that our front office gonna do??

Do u think there are enough options for us to improve enough to keep Nash and seriously contend??

And u cant really compare our situation to Spurs'.
They had Duncan so just had to add other pieces, not come up with the main piece.

[DirtyDez]

People think that building through the draft is a good idea. Have any of you seen what kind of draft picks the Suns make? (Outside of Stoudemire and Marion in the past however many years, none have been players to build around) What makes you think the Suns can successfully build through the draft? This argument will be even more annoying now. Another reason I'll be MIA for the next few months.

What did Amare and Marion have in common? Both were top 10 picks... You can't judge a team drafting in the teens every year like we do. The fans who want to stay mediocre every year are the lamebrains. If we weren't terrible in 01' we would've never got Amare in the first place and our run never would've happened.

Haven't the Spurs done pretty well with their late draft picks? With the Amare pick, we traded it away. We were just lucky that it happened to come back to us through another trade, and that many teams passed on him.

You're still missing the point. The higher you pick the better chances you have at getting a great prospect. Yes the Spurs do a good job drafting, good thing they were horrible in 1997.

[impulsenine]

Haven't the Spurs done pretty well with their late draft picks?

All I know is that two years ago we sent them packing in 4 games in the playoffs, and now we're not even in the playoffs, and they have the #1 seed. They had just as many top-ten picks as we did. Zero. In fact, their highest pick was #20, and we had 2 (Morris @ 13, Clark @ 14) in the top-20.

Phoenix management did something terribly wrong and SA did things right, and that makes me a bit angry. Frankly, it should also make Steve Nash and Grant Hill angry.

[bwgood77]

Haven't the Spurs done pretty well with their late draft picks?

All I know is that two years ago we sent them packing in 4 games in the playoffs, and now we're not even in the playoffs, and they have the #1 seed. They had just as many top-ten picks as we did. Zero. In fact, their highest pick was #20, and we had 2 (Morris @ 13, Clark @ 14) in the top-20.

Phoenix management did something terribly wrong and SA did things right, and that makes me a bit angry. Frankly, it should also make Steve Nash and Grant Hill angry.

I think they are....personally I was hoping they signed David West in the offseason but instead they inked Hill and Brown.

We were quite strapped though because of Sarver's bad decisions he made the summer we didn't have a gm when he signed Childress, Warrick, Frye (to more money than they deserved) and traded for Turk.

[RunDogGun]

There is also a chance of drafting a Thabeet, a Darko, and a bunch of other none elite guys that went number two or number one. I like Marc Gasol, and he was a middle second rounder. Gortat was a number fifty-seven. Imagine if we had kept him.

My suggestion has always been to beef up our scouting and find guys that are great. Heck some of those guys aren't even drafted. Lin did a decent job of showing how some guys get overlooked. And I suggested that line of scouting for the past two years. I suggested that we picked up Lighty and a couple of other high prospects that didn't get drafted. We also gave up on Lawal, way too early. Instead we picked up Redd. Redd took too long to somewhat come around with his shot, when we could have been using this year to develope our future.

[harshey1388]

Anyone going to the game tomorrow to possibly catch Nash play his last game as a Sun? I personally believe he is gone this offseason unless we somehow pull something outta our @$$ to get big names to sign here.