Game 60: Houston Rockets (25-34) @ Phoenix Suns (35-24) | Saturday | 7:00PM

[bullsaficianado]

Hopefully with Booker it's nothing serious and Ryce to. Nurk should be ok it's just neck spasms.

This team needs a f**king point guard. Been watching them all season and when they turn the ball over like that we usually get our ass whooped. Having a smart point guard would help eliminate some turnovers. I don't care if KD and Booker think they can do it all. Sure you can but look at those silly turnovers. The Beal trade isn't looking good at all for the Suns right now.

[MrMiyagi]

Big 3: 14-9
Book/KD: 12-8
Book/Beal: 3-1
Beal/KD: 2-2
KD: 2-4
Book: 2-1
Beal: 0-0

Total: 35-25

[Ghost of Kleine]

It's certainly the most sunsy thing ever to have two satarters taken out by their own teammates in a loss to a terrible road team in a very important key game that'll likely affect our seeding when everything is tallied up! The next couple of games are going to be really interesting, and Beal and Durant are gonna have to play out of their minds to keep us afloat if at all possible?

FINGERS CROSSED!!! that we don't fold like wet tiolet paper and skid for 4-5 games. Beal will now have a huge opportunity to show his value to us and validate the trade!....................................................................


Or not??

[sunsbg]

But but we have three superstars. There is no chance Suns end in the lottery. Trade all those useless picks.

Beal's constant injuries **** up the season from the start. Nothing that unexpected. With the upcoming schedule I was thinking it would be impressive if they made the playoffs without going thru the play in. Now with the injuries it'd be impressive to just make them. Let's be positive, maybe we get a contributor for next season and beyond from the draft like Mavs did. Get a good practice out of this season as I said a few games ago.

[Revived]

Read on Twitter

KD’s so used to Beal not being available on game days, he didn’t even notice lol.

[sunsbg]

Read on Twitter

KD’s so used to Beal not being available on game days, he didn’t even notice lol.

Just confirms KD is high during games.

[mikea7]

So. We just saw this team play the same opponent 3 times in a week, with 2 of those games at home. Remind anyone of a circumstance we're hoping to see in a couple months?

How'd we do? Did we stay healthy? Play well? Put it all together? Compete for 48 minutes each night?

Let's get real about this group. They are what they are--and what they AREN'T is "serious people."

[Bogyo]

2024 Phoenix Suns: we'll happily middy our season away, becouse we are so cool - while also being injured.

dumb fng ******

[Iceman36]

Just finished. Sh*t game from start to finish. No effort, no shooting touch and 2 injured starters. Book looked serious on replay.

[Puff]

The good news is that this means and early exit from the playoffs, if we make the playoff and if we make the play in.

Why is it good news. Vogel and Jones will be fired as soon as the season ends.

This undoubtedly is the worst Suns team to watch other than that decade after 2010.

Beal was really quite a bargain. We are Fooked

[garrick]

JO should be benched next game for taking out two of our starters.

This team is still so undersized and teams can just bully ball and have their way with us. At this rate we might not make the play in but maybe the bright side of that is we get a fringe lottery pick to shore up one of our glaring weaknesses.

[Puff]

If this is Vogel Ball that we are playing - He has to leave town sooner than later.

If this is not Vogel Ball than he has to grow a pair or get fired.

Mike D may not have been perfect but, his teams were sure fun to watch.

Did Mike D play anyone 35 or older 40 minutes a night?

[Calvin Klein]

Just another game showing the mess ownership/FO managed to create in just a couple of months. Not even fun to watch anymore.

[garrick]

Just another game showing the mess ownership/FO managed to create in just a couple of months. Not even fun to watch anymore.

Watch on YouTube

After a lot of optimism to begin the season I think pretty much everyone is ruling out a finals run for this squad.

Mat Ishbia better own up to this because this roster is entirely one of his making. JJ sucks but the trade for KD and subsequent trades were all Ishbia moves.

[Fo-Real]

Need a better emergency PG than Saban Lee!!!

[Maze]

KD's a magician.He can look disinterested most of the game, but you look at the stat sheet and see 30 points on 12-19 shooting.

[Ghost of Kleine]

JO should be benched next game for taking out two of our starters.

This team is still so undersized and teams can just bully ball and have their way with us. At this rate we might not make the play in but maybe the bright side of that is we get a fringe lottery pick to shore up one of our glaring weaknesses.

Not the end of the world, But still unfortunately fairly predictable as our team often repeats former unlearned lessons about playing with urgency, professionalism, grit, physicality and dominance. This game was an example of our team once again arrogantly looking past a premised lesser team thinking just based on our talent of the big three, Blindly thinking we could casually coast through to a win without much effort. It's always one of our numerous unaddressed roster weaknesses or personal lack of objective analysis in our approach or just general lack of urgency, professionalism and focus that we randomly cycle through and exhibit each season resulting in calamatous but predictable collapses. Our most commonly (repeated surprisingly random..........NOT REALLY...... ) issues being:

- Not addressing our positional weaknesses such as our continuing lack of size, athleticism, physicality, bench depth either cost effectively through the draft or free agency and the trade deadline. It's always our GM intentionally bypassing it or doing the absolute minimum and then acting like no one could've of seen these issues resulting in our downfall during the postseason despite though a large portion of the fanbase repeatedly voicing these concerns vehemently. Not to mention they're the same issues that are perennially being exploited over and over again after repeatedly going unaddressed!

- Our starters lacking focus, professionalism and any semblance of urgency every single season even after continually getting embarassed by lesser teams. We just keep giving up games to teams we should easily beat, acting as if we're guaranteed a top postseason spot just by virtue of having specific players on our roster or because we've convinced ourselves that we're better than we really are before ever really proving anything! Currently, we're more high priced pretenders than actual contenders. Our front orifice has just creatively found another way to achieve our slow burn into treadmilling obscurity over the next decade.

-The front "orifice" perennially making bumbling roster decisions, underutilizing/ understaffing our critical infrastructure personnel departments such as our scouting and talent evaluation departments, resulting in overpaying significantly in trade frameworks , player acquisitions, and contractual negotiations for mid level players as well as very poor talent identification for bench depth considerations and construction. The most recent and glaringly depressing example being constructing a bench of low end/ low usage timid offensive players with no legitimate defensive acumen after intentionally hiring a DEFENSIVE COACH and giving him the inverse of what type of personnel he'd need to excel.

- The very biggest would be our GMs' openly stated aversion to the draft over the last number of years to the effect of being literally devoid of any sustainable young talent outside of maybe BOL BOL that we had to give up oiur backup guard to sign, and then didn't even do anything with that players' 6.5 million TPE this deadline just opting to let it expire in yet another of many of our perennial wasted opportunities whilst our GM just sits on his hands and watches other teams sign outlier talent options. This becomes an exponentially critical issue now reflected by our top heavy roster with no real flexibility and a clear imbalanced roster both in terms of young cost controlled sustainable talent to support our aging/injury riddled core. And a clear lack of diverse salary balance options for purpose of trade matching. We've intentionally ignored all available avenues of prudent sustainability over these past years while other teams have stocked up on young talent that's now entering their primes and passed us by already taking higher outcome power psitions as we fade into obscurity. The hairbrain gimmicky stategies and low scale cost cutting stategies have come back to bite us big time!



Then after our season ends early, we always say that these are lessons learned that'll make us better and we'll elevate ourselves from the experience. ONLY............................we never truly learn from our past mistakes, we for whatever reason just randomly keep repeating them over and over again as if we're drawing them from a hat or raffle drawing or something and the only real surprise is WHICH of our many issues will we embody this next season that'll be our undoing!! ..............................................

RINSE................REPEAT!!

Essentially our team is the coyote from the looney tunes cartoons finding endlessly new creative ways to self destruct, while the rest of the league has played the role of the roadrunner taunting and laughing at us as we come up with our next self destructive clown show strategy to try and "buck the trend" only to fall short with a puzzled look on our faces. ?Rinse .......Repeat as if we're treadmilling on an infinitly repeating loop.

The good news is that we can still right the ship aqs long as we begin addressing all of the issues that we've intentionally ignored for multiple seasons and utilize our available options responsibly and cleverly!

[Biff]

My tune hasn't changed all season. I called out the KD trade and I called out the Beal trade. I knew this **** would end with disaster and I was right. Sucks to be right sometimes. Maybe I'll have a team worth cheering for again sometime before I croak. That'll take Ishbia learning that buying a championship rarely works. Hopefully he's a quick study and learns from his mistakes.

[sunsbg]

My tune hasn't changed all season. I called out the KD trade and I called out the Beal trade. I knew this **** would end with disaster and I was right. Sucks to be right sometimes. Maybe I'll have a team worth cheering for again sometime before I croak. That'll take Ishbia learning that buying a championship rarely works. Hopefully he's a quick study and learns from his mistakes.

I was about to post something similar before seeing this post. I still see Ishbia as a positive for this franchise and hope he'll learn quickly from this experience that overpaying for players who are past their prime will not bring a championship.

[Ghost of Kleine]

All is not lost yet!.................Although we're currently entering....................................................



First, This summer We need to reflect upon our postseason outcome and we have to OBJECTIVELY AND HONESTLY DETERMINE if we're actually a legit contender or if we even have a pathway to become that in our very limited window of the next 2 years. IF NOT, Then the steps we need to follow to get ourselves out of this mess and get ourselves back onto the right path again quickly are pretty clear!

Spoiler:

1-Identify our core pieces going forward:
Which players are critically important for us to keep or are "irreplaceable" to us over the next couple of years? Everyone else, is ABSOLUTELY on the table for trade in return for young promising players/ cost controlled talent or draft assets, etc.

2- Drastically and aggressively upgrade our scouting staff, GM position
In hiring an actual established and reputable GM not afraid or averse to the draft or free agency), upgrade our talent/personnel evaluators (so we don't keep overpaying in trades/ or for contractual negotiations for mediocre players or generally players who are rarely ever healthy and available. and upgrade our player development program while filling out our G league affiliate with diverse outlier talent swings that we might capitalize off of as ascending value trade assets or potential exchangable impact contributors we'd consider.

3- Hire the best shooting coaches, defensive specialists and strength and conditioning coaches
In doing this, we'd establish ELITE competitive and professional habits and behavioral traits currently lacking throughout our team and front office. We'd also ensure better physical strength, durability and athletic attributes to help sustain our talents' overall health, durability, and optimize their physical and competitive trajectory.

4- Dump the gimmicky "5 by 5" wing only positionless scheme
We MUST properly identify the roster construction and positional/ talent strategies of ELITE franchises that are actually established perrenial title contenders with proven successful outcomes.

5- Hire the best available coaches and asst coaches that CORRECTLY COMPLIMENT our roster/ talent composition!!
Or if you hire a specific coach first, you give him the proper personnel to execute his designs and schemes. Not the exact opposite or bargain basement minimal impact alternative options with not established corrsponding skillset and ask them to be different players than what they are! But hire a LEGIT STRONG, DOMINANT, RESPECTED COACH that actually demands accountability and excellence from his players.

Basically the summarized steps are:
1- Identify our imminent tradable assets and then Optimize the draft to add cost controlled talent/depth and trade market for asset replenishment/ sustainable depth.
2- Upgrade our front office/scouting depts/ Talent evaluators (consultants).
3- Hire the very best player dvelopment staff/ health/ dietary/strength and conditioning personnel possible.
4- Scrap the idiotic 5X5 positionless gimmick strategies and build our roster based upon positional need, depth, skillset/ positional dominance to create mismatch leverage opportunities.
5- Hire the very best established and dominant ( elite reputation) high end coaches/ asst coaches, etc to ensure accountability, focus, and consistent professionalism.