Game 31: Phoenix Suns (15-15) @ Golden State Warriors (15-15) | Dec 28 | 6:30PM

[bwgood77]

This reminds me of the Hakeem, Barkley and Pippen super team all over again.

At the end of the day all three stars were well past their prime and an assortment of injuries just derailed their chances although they were a John Stockton jumper away from going to the finals that one year but we are arguably worse than that Rockets team.

Or the old Nets with Deron Williams, KG, Joe Johnson, etc. We made our bed with the huge trade, At least Book and Beal are not that old. KD still playing well, but those young teams are loaded with a lot of assets to even get more loaded. We likely traded two stars for KD (our draft picks in 27 and 29 and swap in 28) along with Bridges, Cam and Jae. Like when Boston got Tatum and Brown for trading for an old KG and Pierce to add to Deron Wiliams, Lopez and Joe Johnson.

[bwgood77]

I'd much rather have Chris Paul's old ass leading this team and putting some structure on the offensive end than whatever Beal does. He is certainly helping the Spurs now.
You need clear roles in the team. Beal is redundant with Booker, and his huge salary makes it more difficult to just bench him. He's not just another guy, he's supposed to be featured.

Tyus Jones does what Chris Paul does but is far better at this point. Of course you don't want to bench Beal. He is our best guard defender, and him and Book thrive at different things and are staggered much of the time. We need 2 go to guys on the floor at all time and to be covered when one of the 3 primary guys are injured. Beal has been playing great over the last 6 games aside from 1 of them, shooting over 50% from overall (or like 58% from 2 and around 40% from 3, while hustling, playing great D, getting steals, blocks, etc).

I know many don't watch games and just want to complain about Beal while not having seen him in games, but he's playing a lot better than many assume.

[Puff]

Tyus Jones does not do what Chris Paul does.

There is a reason we got this guy for the minimum. He is not a winner. He does not lead this team. KD, Booker and Beal lead this team They make all the key passes and shots at crunch time. Tyus just wanders around the court trying to find an open spot to get a shot off after he passes to one of the BIG 3 while clearing the half court line. I know they are unwatchable, but you need to see more than what you want to see in regards to Tyus. He is NO Chris Paul.

Quite frankly our problems really do not fall on Tyus in my book though. I am more disappointed in Coach Bud. He is worse than either Monty or Vogel at this point. He has no control over the Big3 and there seems to be absolutely no team unity. I don't think they really like each other.

We got Tyus and guaranteed him a starting job as our point guard. How dumb is that. We now field the smallest starting 5 in the NBA. We needed to get bigger, not smaller. Defense and rebounding matters.

Now we got Beal for $200,000,000 with a no trade clause and 15% trade kicker that is hurt every other week and Tyus that is guaranteed a starting role no matter what he does. This fall on our owner and GM.

I would rather have Sarver who made no decisions than the decisions that have been made since Ish bought this team.

[sunsbg]

Beal is a talented player. It's not your money or my money. He isn't worth as much as his contract, but that goes for a lot of players. We were in a worse position after we traded KD and had Shamet and a useless Chris Paul. Had we let them expire we would have nothing. We were unlikely to be able to trade them for anything better. Paul later got traded for Jordan Poole. I would not rather have Jordan Poole than Beal.

I know if you do not understand the cap it's easy to whine and complain, but we were screwed prior to that when we traded 4 firsts and 3 of our top 6 rotation players for an old injury prone KD. That left us with nothing to make any more moves. We have been lucky to be able to get other players for the minimum. The 2030 swap could be bad, and maybe the 2028 one, but Washington is unlikely to be very good very soon so they will likely keep their pick. The seconds we gave up our the worst part of it.

But I don't know why people worry about the contract so much when we wouldn't have cap space even if we could just cut him and his salary. It's not like we have great assets to bundle in a trade where the difference in return is better than whatever we send out + Beal.

It's probably just a difference of opinion. There isn't a wrong or right, but had we kept Paul and Shamet, and tried to do something else with them or just let them expire, I seriously doubt we'd be in a better position. Sure, Ishbia would be spending less money, if that's your concern. It's just not mine.

Interestingly this useless player looks like ironman compared to Beal and beats him in a lot of advanced metrics this season while costing 5 times less. Not that comparing player to player is all that matters. A reminder it's a team sport and Booker/KD combo looked great in a series with CP3 running the team and the concerns that Booker and Beal are more or less the same player so they won't work well together has a lot of evidence by now.

Paul is not that good. Tyus Jones provides what he does for much cheaper and has the better ast/to ratio and is a far better shooter. Paul has some nice leadership, but like Ayton, KD and Book didn't want to play with him anymore. His defense is non existent.

Pointless argument. Beal can play great, people will still hate him though.

Paul had a great run with Phx. He was clutch. Beal is the superior player now and we need guys who can take over games.

The only complaint I have with Beal, is I don't know why he doesn't get to the line more. He doesn't flop as much, but he drives to the rim and has averaged up to 8 FTA per game in the past (more than Book ever has), and is usually a lot higher. His assists are down with Jones and Book doing the ballhandling, but they stick him in the corner often.

A game like last night is not a bad loss at all. Missing Book, Grayson, Nurk and Royce (who went 0-3 from 3 when he was in the game) for much of the game against GS IN GS with their young guys playing well, and losing by 4, is not bad at all.

When Book returns will we look better, in large part because we have a fairly easy Jan schedule with Washington and Charlotte each twice, along with some other easier teams, and then Portland twice in early Feb. We need our 3 pt shooters healthy though. Between those guys being out and our C player, those are what are hurting us.

Not Beal. He's been one of the guys keeping us in games. Heck, if KD only had 4 turnovers in this game instead of 8, we win. Beal had zero.

And you'd love him despite being injury-prone, which has led to two bad starts of seasons, which broke team spirit, bad fit with rest of Big 3, anchor contract, comparable advanced stats to useless CP3 though you've been big on advanced stats in the past.

[sunsbg]

Tyus Jones does not do what Chris Paul does.

There is a reason we got this guy for the minimum. He is not a winner. He does not lead this team. KD, Booker and Beal lead this team They make all the key passes and shots at crunch time. Tyus just wanders around the court trying to find an open spot to get a shot off after he passes to one of the BIG 3 while clearing the half court line. I know they are unwatchable, but you need to see more than what you want to see in regards to Tyus. He is NO Chris Paul.

Quite frankly our problems really do not fall on Tyus in my book though. I am more disappointed in Coach Bud. He is worse than either Monty or Vogel at this point. He has no control over the Big3 and there seems to be absolutely no team unity. I don't think they really like each other.

We got Tyus and guaranteed him a starting job as our point guard. How dumb is that. We now field the smallest starting 5 in the NBA. We needed to get bigger, not smaller. Defense and rebounding matters.

Now we got Beal for $200,000,000 with a no trade clause and 15% trade kicker that is hurt every other week and Tyus that is guaranteed a starting role no matter what he does. This fall on our owner and GM.

I would rather have Sarver who made no decisions than the decisions that have been made since Ish bought this team.

No idea why he even brought Jones, like he was on the miserably failed team last year, is not a temporary signing out of nowhere gone after this season.

[bwgood77]

Interestingly this useless player looks like ironman compared to Beal and beats him in a lot of advanced metrics this season while costing 5 times less. Not that comparing player to player is all that matters. A reminder it's a team sport and Booker/KD combo looked great in a series with CP3 running the team and the concerns that Booker and Beal are more or less the same player so they won't work well together has a lot of evidence by now.

Paul is not that good. Tyus Jones provides what he does for much cheaper and has the better ast/to ratio and is a far better shooter. Paul has some nice leadership, but like Ayton, KD and Book didn't want to play with him anymore. His defense is non existent.

Pointless argument. Beal can play great, people will still hate him though.

Paul had a great run with Phx. He was clutch. Beal is the superior player now and we need guys who can take over games.

The only complaint I have with Beal, is I don't know why he doesn't get to the line more. He doesn't flop as much, but he drives to the rim and has averaged up to 8 FTA per game in the past (more than Book ever has), and is usually a lot higher. His assists are down with Jones and Book doing the ballhandling, but they stick him in the corner often.

A game like last night is not a bad loss at all. Missing Book, Grayson, Nurk and Royce (who went 0-3 from 3 when he was in the game) for much of the game against GS IN GS with their young guys playing well, and losing by 4, is not bad at all.

When Book returns will we look better, in large part because we have a fairly easy Jan schedule with Washington and Charlotte each twice, along with some other easier teams, and then Portland twice in early Feb. We need our 3 pt shooters healthy though. Between those guys being out and our C player, those are what are hurting us.

Not Beal. He's been one of the guys keeping us in games. Heck, if KD only had 4 turnovers in this game instead of 8, we win. Beal had zero.

And you'd love him despite being injury-prone, which has led to two bad starts of seasons, which broke team spirit, bad fit with rest of Big 3, anchor contract, comparable advanced stats to useless CP3 though you've been big on advanced stats in the past.

I seriously doubt we'd be better with Paul and Shamet than with Jones and Beal. Paul is shooting better than last year, at least from 2, but he's also only scoring 9ppg the last two years and he can't defend. Beal is a lot better at most things and Jones is better than Paul at this point.

Do you really think we'd be in a good situation right now with Paul? I mean, I do like Beal and he makes mistakes, but there isn't that much difference between him and Book in talent. Up until Paul came to the Suns, Beal was considered the better player. And this year Beal is the more efficient scorer and defender while Book is the better passer and is better at getting to the line. Book may be better overall, and he's younger, but he's not that much. And they excel at different things really and are staggered much of the time.

Paul is 39. If you watched him his last year here, he was visibly done being a top tier player. He could not take over games like he used to. Puff mentioned we won all those 4th quarters and were clutch. Paul was super clutch. I liked him more than I like Beal, but I will admit that he went downhill fast after 2 games in the Dallas series and the following year. Beal is injury prone and that's frustrating, but that goes for half our team.

Everyone assumes if we made slightly different moves or simply didn't have Beal and used the MLE or something, it would make some sort of huge difference. I seriously doubt that''s the case. We have solid role players. Jones, Royce, Allen and Dunn are solid.

Our big problem is C and trading for Nurkic. He was a better fit for the regular season at first, mainly because Book didn't hate him, and he could move the ball and set screens, but his defense is exposed in the playoffs and he can't finish to save his life. He turns it over a ton too. It's funny, Ayton had far more touches and was called brick hands but Nurkic turns it over a lot more. Then people complained about Ayton not dunking it and Nurkic never dunks and can't even make a layup.

Not that I want Ayton but if we had his finishing skills we would probably have a few more wins, since we have a lot of close losses.

But back to Beal, he certainly wasn't the problem in this game. He's been our best player as of late (like the last 6 games aside from 1). Our problems were all the injuries and 8 turnovers from KD.

[garrick]

Paul is not that good. Tyus Jones provides what he does for much cheaper and has the better ast/to ratio and is a far better shooter. Paul has some nice leadership, but like Ayton, KD and Book didn't want to play with him anymore. His defense is non existent.

Pointless argument. Beal can play great, people will still hate him though.

Paul had a great run with Phx. He was clutch. Beal is the superior player now and we need guys who can take over games.

The only complaint I have with Beal, is I don't know why he doesn't get to the line more. He doesn't flop as much, but he drives to the rim and has averaged up to 8 FTA per game in the past (more than Book ever has), and is usually a lot higher. His assists are down with Jones and Book doing the ballhandling, but they stick him in the corner often.

A game like last night is not a bad loss at all. Missing Book, Grayson, Nurk and Royce (who went 0-3 from 3 when he was in the game) for much of the game against GS IN GS with their young guys playing well, and losing by 4, is not bad at all.

When Book returns will we look better, in large part because we have a fairly easy Jan schedule with Washington and Charlotte each twice, along with some other easier teams, and then Portland twice in early Feb. We need our 3 pt shooters healthy though. Between those guys being out and our C player, those are what are hurting us.

Not Beal. He's been one of the guys keeping us in games. Heck, if KD only had 4 turnovers in this game instead of 8, we win. Beal had zero.

And you'd love him despite being injury-prone, which has led to two bad starts of seasons, which broke team spirit, bad fit with rest of Big 3, anchor contract, comparable advanced stats to useless CP3 though you've been big on advanced stats in the past.

I seriously doubt we'd be better with Paul and Shamet than with Jones and Beal. Paul is shooting better than last year, at least from 2, but he's also only scoring 9ppg the last two years and he can't defend. Beal is a lot better at most things and Jones is better than Paul at this point.

Do you really think we'd be in a good situation right now with Paul? I mean, I do like Beal and he makes mistakes, but there isn't that much difference between him and Book in talent. Up until Paul came to the Suns, Beal was considered the better player. And this year Beal is the more efficient scorer and defender while Book is the better passer and is better at getting to the line. Book may be better overall, and he's younger, but he's not that much. And they excel at different things really and are staggered much of the time.

Paul is 39. If you watched him his last year here, he was visibly done being a top tier player. He could not take over games like he used to. Puff mentioned we won all those 4th quarters and were clutch. Paul was super clutch. I liked him more than I like Beal, but I will admit that he went downhill fast after 2 games in the Dallas series and the following year. Beal is injury prone and that's frustrating, but that goes for half our team.

Everyone assumes if we made slightly different moves or simply didn't have Beal and used the MLE or something, it would make some sort of huge difference. I seriously doubt that''s the case. We have solid role players. Jones, Royce, Allen and Dunn are solid.

Our big problem is C and trading for Nurkic. He was a better fit for the regular season at first, mainly because Book didn't hate him, and he could move the ball and set screens, but his defense is exposed in the playoffs and he can't finish to save his life. He turns it over a ton too. It's funny, Ayton had far more touches and was called brick hands but Nurkic turns it over a lot more. Then people complained about Ayton not dunking it and Nurkic never dunks and can't even make a layup.

Not that I want Ayton but if we had his finishing skills we would probably have a few more wins, since we have a lot of close losses.

But back to Beal, he certainly wasn't the problem in this game. He's been our best player as of late (like the last 6 games aside from 1). Our problems were all the injuries and 8 turnovers from KD.

If Book and KD were leaders they would have made it work with Ayton but we've seen Book cuss out teammates for blown plays and not hold himself accountable for his glaring mistakes on defense.

With Grayson regressing and Nurkic being back to his injury prone self I can't say we made the best possible trade for Ayton.

Should have waited until a better deal materialized or you tell Book and KD to suck it up and make it work with Ayton.

[bwgood77]

And you'd love him despite being injury-prone, which has led to two bad starts of seasons, which broke team spirit, bad fit with rest of Big 3, anchor contract, comparable advanced stats to useless CP3 though you've been big on advanced stats in the past.

I seriously doubt we'd be better with Paul and Shamet than with Jones and Beal. Paul is shooting better than last year, at least from 2, but he's also only scoring 9ppg the last two years and he can't defend. Beal is a lot better at most things and Jones is better than Paul at this point.

Do you really think we'd be in a good situation right now with Paul? I mean, I do like Beal and he makes mistakes, but there isn't that much difference between him and Book in talent. Up until Paul came to the Suns, Beal was considered the better player. And this year Beal is the more efficient scorer and defender while Book is the better passer and is better at getting to the line. Book may be better overall, and he's younger, but he's not that much. And they excel at different things really and are staggered much of the time.

Paul is 39. If you watched him his last year here, he was visibly done being a top tier player. He could not take over games like he used to. Puff mentioned we won all those 4th quarters and were clutch. Paul was super clutch. I liked him more than I like Beal, but I will admit that he went downhill fast after 2 games in the Dallas series and the following year. Beal is injury prone and that's frustrating, but that goes for half our team.

Everyone assumes if we made slightly different moves or simply didn't have Beal and used the MLE or something, it would make some sort of huge difference. I seriously doubt that''s the case. We have solid role players. Jones, Royce, Allen and Dunn are solid.

Our big problem is C and trading for Nurkic. He was a better fit for the regular season at first, mainly because Book didn't hate him, and he could move the ball and set screens, but his defense is exposed in the playoffs and he can't finish to save his life. He turns it over a ton too. It's funny, Ayton had far more touches and was called brick hands but Nurkic turns it over a lot more. Then people complained about Ayton not dunking it and Nurkic never dunks and can't even make a layup.

Not that I want Ayton but if we had his finishing skills we would probably have a few more wins, since we have a lot of close losses.

But back to Beal, he certainly wasn't the problem in this game. He's been our best player as of late (like the last 6 games aside from 1). Our problems were all the injuries and 8 turnovers from KD.

If Book and KD were leaders they would have made it work with Ayton but we've seen Book cuss out teammates for blown plays and not hold himself accountable for his glaring mistakes on defense.

With Grayson regressing and Nurkic being back to his injury prone self I can't say we made the best possible trade for Ayton.

Should have waited until a better deal materialized or you tell Book and KD to suck it up and make it work with Ayton.

Yeah, I would have waited. I also would have liked to see Vogel work with Ayton given he had Roy Hibbert playing great. It was probably past the point of no return for him. Also, he would have worked well in Bud's spread offense too....maybe not as much a stretch 5 but as a finisher.

But yes, mainly, we should have waited for a better trade. I assume they made the best trade they could but they were being too obvious about trading him. Should have acted like they were not going to and played him some more...gotten him some open shots. I also think had he played with Jones/Beal, he'd look a lot better. Beal always gets Nurkic nice little pocket passes and Nurkic screws something up. It's like, general consensus is get it to your big but it's pointless with Nurk. Jones is great with lobs and high passes too.