Start Frye at the 4

[sunsfever68]

Who are guys we could realistically get that would help us at the 4 spot?

Jason Thompson and Troy Murphy come to mind for me. David West is too short to compete with the likes of Gasol, Duncan, Garnett, Bosh, Amare etc.


I don't think the Kings would give up Thompson without serious prodding and good compensation.

If he could be had he'd be worth taking a look at acquiring.


For the record, I wanted us to snag Al Jefferson even though he doesn't "fit" our style of play. Guy has a back to the basket game, rebounds, is tough blocks shots. In the playoffs when you get into half court possessions he would've been huge for us.

[rsavaj]

I really don't see how you could make a strong case for taking Hill out of the starting 5...saying so indicates that you're looking at individual players' strengths or stats or something, and not at 5-man units. We rarely play Frye and Lopez together and when we do, our +/- and win % is ugly. It's not just about Hill performing better as a starter is what I'm saying, it's about how he affects the other guys on the floor.

Not only that but while Frye is good for spacing the floor, it's absolutely no different than Turk at PF - except Turk is more versatile. Frye is one-dimensional and we bring him in solely because of his shooting and how it spreads the floor. Hill, who you replace by sliding Turk down and putting Frye in, is also much more versatile than Frye.

Conclusion: you're going with a lineup that doesn't perform well on the floor, and you're replacing a jack-of-all-trades with a chucker. Pass.

+33.

Seriously, everyone is acting like Hill is a black hole on offense. I honestly haven't seen the guy take one shot that I thought was a bad one. In addition, he is arguably our best defender. Sure, Dudley can play up on PG-SF's, but Hill can even guard PF's in spot minutes, and he does a decent job. Plus, Hill is by far our best player in the open court in terms of actually going at the rim as opposed to running to a corner to jack up a trey.

Finally, and after this you'll wonder why you forgot this, Hill is our first starter out of the game when Gentry decides to sub in Dudley. It's not like he's commanding 36+ a night and we're suffering because of it.

Gentry is a good coach and Hill is the consumate professional. If either felt the rotation wasn't working, it would change.

But it's working. So... why change?

Word.

Frye on our 2nd unit allows us to completely change the complexion of the game when we put in our 2nd unit. And Hill deserves to start a heck of a lot more than Turkey-Glue...

[WTFsunsFTW]

I love how people claim Hill is the one thing in the way of greatness for the team.

Did you guys even watch last season????????

[Frank Lee]

Here... I was holding back... but I can see some of you are troubled with this 'minute' thing.

Its child's play, if you can get 'out of the box'.

Lopez 24 Frye 24
Nash 24 Dragic 24
JRich 24 JChill 24
GHill 24 Dudley 24
TGlue 24 Warrick 16 Clark 8 Jones DNP
(all + or - 4 mins)

Lawai, Janning, and Siler alternate D-league and practice squad.

We run a true hockey line substitution pattern. 5 in 5 out. If you have the hot hand, you will run more. Whose going to complain ? We get Clark minutes to certify his value either to us or as a trade asset. Jones is an insurance policy, much like Collins last yr. Hill takes back to backs off. Everybody is happy if/when the W's come. The opposition will have to prepare 2 game plans. Each unit becomes very cohesive and develops its own style, with a strong emphasis on a high tempo game. We will exhaust teams. If you build it, they will come Ray.

Sorry to spoil the surprise.

[DBrimstone]

Here... I was holding back... but I can see some of you are troubled with this 'minute' thing.

Its child's play, if you can get 'out of the box'.

Lopez 24 Frye 24
Nash 24 Dragic 24
JRich 24 JChill 24
GHill 24 Dudley 24
TGlue 24 Warrick 16 Clark 8 Jones DNP
(all + or - 4 mins)

Lawai, Janning, and Siler alternate D-league and practice squad.

We run a true hockey line substitution pattern. 5 in 5 out. If you have the hot hand, you will run more. Whose going to complain ? We get Clark minutes to certify his value either to us or as a trade asset. Jones is an insurance policy, much like Collins last yr. Hill takes back to backs off. Everybody is happy if/when the W's come. The opposition will have to prepare 2 game plans. Each unit becomes very cohesive and develops its own style, with a strong emphasis on a high tempo game. We will exhaust teams. If you build it, they will come Ray.

Sorry to spoil the surprise.

I'd have to assume the starting line would get about 4-ish minutes more but it worked last year, don't see why it wouldn't again. Especially when our second unit is better than it was last year, and they were difference makers pretty often last year. Goran and Dudley are better, I assume Frye is, Childress is a big upgrade over LB, and Warrick/Clark can probably produce what Lou did (Warrick will score as much as he allows that Lou wouldn't have allowed but also wouldn't have scored. I hope)...

On another note, I watched Clarks training camp interviewed. Sounds like his English is getting more standard and less Jersey. Also noticed that he actually stood out to Coro along with Childress in the live scrimmaging because he was actually playing well. I'm just hoping it's not all crap and he really does come out and make Warrick work for his minutes, or even beat him out of the rotation

Why did we pick up Warrick anyways? That still irritates me. I understand Turkoglu and Childress, but why do we need another tweener?!

[th3matrix1]

Who are guys we could realistically get that would help us at the 4 spot?

Jason Thompson and Troy Murphy come to mind for me. David West is too short to compete with the likes of Gasol, Duncan, Garnett, Bosh, Amare etc.

+1

If you think about it there aren't many legit PF in the the West that dominated the way the cwebb, kg, duncan, Amare used to do. Let's look at the west and the PF will see.

L.A. Lakers- pau or odom, the only team with legit threats at the PF position

Dallas- Nowitzki, great player but not a banging PF

Phoenix- the issue at hand, in opinion over versatility is what makes our starting five dangerous.

Denver- K-mart, too many injuries and not as effective. Nene, good PF but can be neutralized

Utah- Al Jefferson, threat but injury concerns

Portland- LA- Soft jumpshooting PF

San Antonio- TDucan- Legit threat but aging

Oklahoma City- Jeff green- SF!

Houston- Luis Scola- good PF

Memphis- Zach Randolph- threat and great inside presence.

New Orleans- David West- good, but too much stuff going on with the team

L.A. Clippers- Blake Griffin- ????

Golden State- David Lee- Undersized PF

Sacramento- Jason Thompson- too soft

Minnesota- Kevin Love- good rebounder


In the end Lakers, Utah, and Spurs would probably be the teams who i would be afraid of, but that would be the case even if amare was still around.

[JMac1]

Blah Blah Blah. Cant play Hill off the bench even though Turk is a better SF than Hill. Dudley off the bench >>>> Hill off the bench. Hill is the one messing it up for everyone. Turk should have an ego coming off the bench for hill, as Turk is a better player.

Im just tired of hearing about how we cant have Hill come off the bench, because if we do, he sucks. That just plain sucks. It should be:

Nash/Jrich/Turk/Frye/Lopez

with a bench group of:

Dragic/Childress/Hill/Warrick/Jones

^^^^^^^
What she said!!

[JohnVancouver]

Who are guys we could realistically get that would help us at the 4 spot?

Jason Thompson and Troy Murphy come to mind for me. David West is too short to compete with the likes of Gasol, Duncan, Garnett, Bosh, Amare etc.


I don't think the Kings would give up Thompson without serious prodding and good compensation.

If he could be had he'd be worth taking a look at acquiring.


For the record, I wanted us to snag Al Jefferson even though he doesn't "fit" our style of play. Guy has a back to the basket game, rebounds, is tough blocks shots. In the playoffs when you get into half court possessions he would've been huge for us.

The other Wolf who apparently can be had, is Kevin Love. Now there's a guy who could fuel the break - best outlet passer I've seen since Wes Unseld

[sunsfever68]

Kevin Love would be a good addition to this team with his rebounding.

We'd have to give up something of solid value though...I guess like in any trade haha

[Wannabe MEP]

I really think we should stop thinking in terms of filling out a traditional roster: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The Suns don't have to match up evenly. They'd have to completely revamp their roster if they planned to beat good teams in the league by matching up well at each position.

Rule 1: Zone.
Rule 2: Four three point shooters on the court.
Rule 3: Enough length, hustle, and teamwork to defend.

Why the heck do we need a traditional power forward?? Remember when we came back from down 3-1 to beat the Lakers in the playoffs in 2006? We were starting 6-8 players at both PF and Center.

This is a list of our units last year, ranked by adj +/-. The top 13 units have positive adj +/-.
http://basketballvalue.com/teamunits.php?year=2009-2010&sortnumber=17&sortorder=DESC&team=PHX
Only two of those 13 units have a traditional power forward and center playing together.

[Frank Lee]

Careful with the statistics.... DarthWorm is lurking about. I feel his ... presence.

[Wannabe MEP]

Careful with the statistics.... DarthWorm is lurking about. I feel his ... presence.

Huh?

[lilfishi22]

I really don't see the point of starting Frye at the 4. He doesn't rebound enough nor is he versatile enough to warrant moving Hedo to an already very strong bench unit. I've mentioned this a few months back but I'll say it again, what we lost this off-season is strength in our starting unit, our bench unit on the other hand is actually stronger than last season. Hedo may not be able to replace Amare's scoring, rebounding or his inside presence but he adds a new offensive dimension to the starting unit that we've been missing since JJ bolted, a secondary play/shot maker.
We *need* Hedo in the starting line up not because he's getting paid almost $10m a year nor is it because of any ego issues, it's because without Hedo, our starting unit just isn't good enough to compete. We need Hedo's versatility to make our system work otherwise Nash is going to be working harder than ever before since he's lost his best offensive weapon, Amare. Amare took so much pressure off Nash with his presence and with him gone, team's are going to put single coverage on our starters and Nash is going to have to work much harder to create for the team. Hedo takes pressure off Nash in a different way to Amare and that's by being an offensive threat with the ball himself. Frye also plays better when he doesn't have to do too much other than to shoot 3's and grab rebounds, so he is much better suited coming off the bench as a gunner. Centers in the league right now are probably at an all-time low in terms of quality and that quality drops off exponentially when looking at back up C's. Frye will cause enough headaches for most team's back up C's that his offensive will outweigh him being any sort of liability defensively.

Also, I think Hedo is a better defender against bigger players than he is against quick wings since he doesn't have the lateral quickness to keep up with them. Putting in/near the post will allow him to use his smarts to funnel the offensive into Rolo or into the help defense. Without a superior defensive anchor in the post (Lopez isn't ready yet), we need better perimeter defense to compensate, which means we need Hill on the floor.

I think that's more than enough reason to keep Hill and Hedo in the starting lineup while keeping Frye on the bench.

[danielektropunk]

If we're not going to trade for a power forward, we should start Channing Frye.

Here's the reason why.


1. He can grab more boards than Hedo and he can play better post D than Hedo.

In the Lakers series I saw him play solid post D on Gasol and Duncan, not great, but not bad either. All we asked channing to do last year was shoot 3's. He can do more than that. I think Channing could even score off pick and rolls, pick and roll and score in the post. He did that in New York. I still like him shooting 3's but I feel confident Channing can add more to his repertoire offensively and defensively.

2. Moving Turkoglu to the bench makes the bench even stronger

Having a bench of Dragic childress dudley turkoglu and warrick makes our bench the strongest in the league probably and would wear our other teams benches. We'd have multiple ball handlers, multiple shooters, solid perimeter D and we could run and gun.

Turk could be a focus of the offense with Dragic in the 2nd unit and he and Dragic could play off themselves.

3. We put a more traditional lineup out there than with Hedo for our starting 5.

I'd rather have the unconventional lineup be off the bench as opposed to in the starting lineup. Hedo as a power forward off the bench seems more palpable than Hedo as a starting power forward. I realize Frye sacrifices some of his advantages being the starting power forward but I think this makes the most sense for us to compete and become a better team.

Have Frye focus on grabbing 8 boards a game or so, play solid post D, expand his offensive game. I'm ok sacrificing his offense, believe me we're fine on offense.




What do you guys think??

all your points are valid

[RocPHX]

Meh, I'd rather start warrick.