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Man our offense stinks this season.

Sure we've had some nice wins and the 3pt shooting against LA was incredible but overall we look terrible on offense. Nash is trying so hard to make things happen and everyone is just standing around. When Warrick and Nash have played together it seems like there is a bit more motion to the offense but most of the time Nash is on the bench when Warrick is on the floor. Nash and Warrick could become the poor man's version of Nash/Amare but instead we have a jump shooter in our starting PF spot who gives Nash nothing to work with...not to mention with Rolo out we have a jump shooter at C who also gives Nash nothing.

On that subject, I think playing Frye & Hedo together is a disaster.
What's the point of having a PF and C who would rather spend the whole game camping on the perimeter than, you know actually playing inside like PF and C's are supposed to??

Ok so Hedo isn't actually a PF but if Gentry is going to put him there then his instructions should be to play inside and if he can't do that then he needs to come off the bench and Warrick needs to start. Now Frye...sure he is a 3pt shooter and when we had an inside game with Amare and the deadly Nash/Amare p 'n r, then it made sense to have Frye dragging the opposing C out of the lane. Without Amare and with no one (apart from Warrick on the odd occasion) rolling off picks for Nash anymore, Frye needs to play inside as well and only take the occasional 3 cos we need his size inside to help battle for rebounds or get easy layups.
In other words, when Frye & Hedo are on the court together, at least one of them has to give us an inside scoring option.

This team will never be great defensively so they need to go with the SSOL menatality of outscoring the opponents and everyone standing around shooting 3's and long 2's all day is just not gonna work for a whole season. I don't know if it's just laziness or bad coaching but we have guys who are more than capable of cutting inside and getting high percentage opportunities (not to mention we have a PG who will get them the ball on a silver platter!) and instead they are settling for crappy contested 3's or outside shots with no rebounders in the paint.

The offense didnt start to look stagnent untill the 3rd and 4th games, in 5 five days, all against great teams and Nash was obviously hurting during the 3rd and out in the 4th. The team had nothing after the wins over the Lakers and Nuggets. I think it was the exception not the rule. When Nash is anywhere near 100% and the guys arent exausted, it looks better. I also hope that the new guy Earl will look better with a couple days of practice time with the guys. With him here, Siler should not see the floor EVERRRRRRRRR!!!!! We go from being happy satisfied fans with the Laker, and Nuggets wins to a complete give up after the Florida trip. Still a work in progress, remember that coming into the week of the laker game, Steve was still talking about still needing to get a feel for each other. 500 with our early schedule is pretty damn good.

1) The Heat defended us extremely well. I don't know if I've ever seen a team defend us that well.
2) We played Orlando without Nash.
3) Fact: Those two teams are the two best defensive teams in the NBA.
4) Both games were on the road.
5) Our schedule has not given a chance to breathe yet. Easily toughest schedule in the NBA thus far.
6) Before those two games, we had the second best offense in the NBA.
7) After those two games, we have the fifth best offense in the NBA. Again, with the toughest schedule.

In conclusion: we'll be fine offensively if we have a healthy Nash. We'll probably have the best offense in the NBA once the schedules even out.

The problem is defense.

But I agree: I think Warrick should play with Nash. And Childress and Dudley actually (but I think that's just me).

studying the units a bit: http://basketballvalue.com/teamunits.ph ... order=DESC
out of 11 Suns units that have played at least 10 minutes together, four are outscoring the other team. (That's the goal, right?) The players who appear on those units, and how often they appear:
Warrick - 4
Nash - 3
Frye - 3
JRich - 3
Childress - 2
Dudley - 2
Turk - 1
Clark - 1
Barron - 1

Notice anyone missing?? GRANT HILL: PUT HIM ON THE BENCH.
I believe, very strongly, that this is our best group:
Nash, Warrick, Frye
with 2 of JRich, Childress, Dudley. The other is sixth man.

Turk, Dragic, and Hill give us creative variety off the bench, but Hill should be buried pretty deep. Barron gives us 10, with Clark and Siler if needed.

We've tried playing Grant off the bench before, and it hsn't worked. Grant does his best work early in the game as a starter, and is terrible off the bench.

I'll never get the bury grant hill argument. At times he's the only person on our team playing hard. He's better than Hedo. He's the only guy on our team besides dragic and childress who drives to the damn basket aggressively. He's probably our best rebounder(sadly).

Da_Reel_Kboy wrote:Grant ... is terrible off the bench.

Grant is terrible as a starter.

RocPHX wrote:I'll never get the bury grant hill argument. At times he's the only person on our team playing hard. He's better than Hedo. He's the only guy on our team besides dragic and childress who drives to the damn basket aggressively. He's probably our best rebounder(sadly).

I really don't know why this is so complicated for everyone. This has been proven repeatedly, not by the box score, but by more advanced statistics. The team is simply better when he isn't playing. All last year during the regular season, throughout the playoffs, and now again this year. It's incredibly consistent.

So far this year, the team has an awful rating of -6.94 when he is on the court, and a very good rating of 3.64 without him.

With Nash, the team's rating is 1.03, and -8.76 when he's off.

Thing is, Nash plays a ton of his minutes with Hill. So if Hill wasn't destroying so many of Nash's minutes...

Los Soles wrote:

Da_Reel_Kboy wrote:Grant ... is terrible off the bench.

Grant is terrible as a starter.

Uh...how do you figure?

EDIT I see your answer above but where's the proof that Hill is "destroying Nash's minutes"...advanced statistics are more "in-depth" than regular stats but if you're gonna discredit box score from talking about a player you can't only allow your own stats.

Uh...I just gave two arguments for that.
1) He's not on any of our good units.
2) his rating differential is awful (the team sucks when he's on the court, and is good when he isn't)

Also, his adjusted plus-minus is the worst on the team.

Why is this so hard to understand? Do you want me to explain what it is about his play that makes the Suns suck when he is on the court, or do you need more proof that the Suns suck when he is on the court?

Los Soles wrote:Uh...I just gave two arguments for that.
1) He's not on any of our good units.
2) his rating differential is awful (the team sucks when he's on the court, and is good when he isn't)

Also, his adjusted plus-minus is the worst on the team.

Why is this so hard to understand? Do you want me to explain what it is about his play that makes the Suns suck when he is on the court, or do you need more proof that the Suns suck when he is on the court?

I already stated above that if you refuse to look at his conventional stats then I refuse to look at his advanced. They are stats, they don't account for chemistry, creating hustle etc. So your perspective would be an easy one to take without watching every Suns game for seasons...but then once you see how the lineup affects Grant and much more importantly, how he affects the early-game flow.

And by the way if you're going to look at individual or 5-man +/- you may want to a) wait for more than 12 games and b) take into account that our team as a whole is scoring less points than our opponents, so it's our non-starting units that are performing the best, since they're playing less minutes (less effect per game, plus less minutes to base stats on this early) and performing better in general. Are you telling me we should start Nash/Rich/Chill/Hakim/Frye because they performed really well...in 15 total minutes played so far?

I'm not trying to sound like a dick either apologize if I do, just debatin'

Miklo wrote:I'm not trying to sound like a dick either apologize if I do, just debatin'

No, this is a legit debate. Obviously, this isn't clear either way, and it has huge implications for the success of this team. I think this is interesting.

Throw out the last two games "trash games" and I suspect Hill's +/- numbers don't look anywhere close to as bad. Grant had a -30 for the Magic game and he was the only bright spot when the Suns were down 20, 25, 30 points.

A vote here for the current use of Hill to continue.

Miklo wrote:I already stated above that if you refuse to look at his conventional stats then I refuse to look at his advanced.

I don't refuse to look at conventional stats, but I don't think they're near as valuable. For example, you can look at points, but that's not valuable without considering FG%, but True Shooting % is much more valuable still, right? Why would we talk about FG% when we can discuss True Shooting %?

So...what conventional stats do you find so interesting and so valuable?

Miklo wrote:And by the way if you're going to look at individual or 5-man +/- you may want to a) wait for more than 12 games and b) take into account that our team as a whole is scoring less points than our opponents, so it's our non-starting units that are performing the best, since they're playing less minutes (less effect per game, plus less minutes to base stats on this early) and performing better in general.

I'll address b) first. We're 6-6; we're not 3-9. Plus, looking at: 5-man adjusted plus-minus, adjusted plus-minus, top units, etc., Nash has very, very good numbers. Yet you suggest that it should only be our second unit with good numbers. False.

Actually, Hill is the only starter with horrible numbers according to these measures except perhaps Lopez, but it's pretty easy to explain that one, isn't it?

As to a), you're absolutely right, no question. 12 games is not enough. But according to these measures, Hill was the worst player on the team last year. According to last year combined with the playoffs combined with what we have from this season thus far, he is again, the worst player on our team. We have very clear evidence that we were much worse with Hill on the court last year, and all evidence points to the exact same thing this year.

Miklo wrote:Are you telling me we should start Nash/Rich/Chill/Hakim/Frye because they performed really well...in 15 total minutes played so far?

Absolutely not. Although that unit makes a ton of sense to me, for a thousand reasons. But all these players are consistently part of our best units.

If you base it on more than 12 games, (last year) then I would definitely put Dudley in that mix, but what we don't have is enough data on the new guys. From what little we have, though, Warrick and Childress should play. A lot.

Plus/Minus stats aside, the player I'm disappointed with the most is Goran Dragic when thinking of stagnant offense.

Far too often Goran is closer to being a "pointless" guard. He'll brings the ball into the frontcourt, briefly examine the scene and then dish the ball to someone else above the 3pt line. Maybe after the ball comes back to him he'll force the issue and employ his ability to drive, but too often the 24 is running out at that point.

Sometimes I think Dragic is trying to be too "Nashlike" when he's better suited to be more of a "KJ". Channel your inner KJ Goran. He should be driving to the hoop, taking his defender on 1 on 1. Trying to breaking down the defense via penetration....more like Kevin Johnson did for years and years. Drive and dish or take it all the way to the rack. Well? At least more often than he is so far this season.

visions wrote:Man our offense stinks this season.

Sure we've had some nice wins and the 3pt shooting against LA was incredible but overall we look terrible on offense. Nash is trying so hard to make things happen and everyone is just standing around. When Warrick and Nash have played together it seems like there is a bit more motion to the offense but most of the time Nash is on the bench when Warrick is on the floor. Nash and Warrick could become the poor man's version of Nash/Amare but instead we have a jump shooter in our starting PF spot who gives Nash nothing to work with...not to mention with Rolo out we have a jump shooter at C who also gives Nash nothing.

On that subject, I think playing Frye & Hedo together is a disaster.
What's the point of having a PF and C who would rather spend the whole game camping on the perimeter than, you know actually playing inside like PF and C's are supposed to??

Ok so Hedo isn't actually a PF but if Gentry is going to put him there then his instructions should be to play inside and if he can't do that then he needs to come off the bench and Warrick needs to start. Now Frye...sure he is a 3pt shooter and when we had an inside game with Amare and the deadly Nash/Amare p 'n r, then it made sense to have Frye dragging the opposing C out of the lane. Without Amare and with no one (apart from Warrick on the odd occasion) rolling off picks for Nash anymore, Frye needs to play inside as well and only take the occasional 3 cos we need his size inside to help battle for rebounds or get easy layups.
In other words, when Frye & Hedo are on the court together, at least one of them has to give us an inside scoring option.

This team will never be great defensively so they need to go with the SSOL menatality of outscoring the opponents and everyone standing around shooting 3's and long 2's all day is just not gonna work for a whole season. I don't know if it's just laziness or bad coaching but we have guys who are more than capable of cutting inside and getting high percentage opportunities (not to mention we have a PG who will get them the ball on a silver platter!) and instead they are settling for crappy contested 3's or outside shots with no rebounders in the paint.

Nice post -


I don't see Hedo playing inside though, it really takes him away from his strengths. Nice to see Channing driving to the hoop though, isn't it?
If he can play inside at times, that really helps us

Fancy stats aside...These are some facts

Grant Hill is...
1) The Teams best defender
2) One of the only players capable of creating own shot
3) An absolute force running the wings with Nash
4) Probably the most consistent player
5) Arguably our best rebounder

...and there are probably some more that I'm too lazy to think of. Also if you're looking at stats, you have to consider that Grant Hill played much worse coming of the bench. Childress is limited offensively and Dudley hasn't really been playing very well this season, so while those stats are something to look at, I just don't see how benching him can be justified.

Moochiefried wrote:Fancy stats aside...These are some facts

Grant Hill is...
1) The Teams best defender
2) One of the only players capable of creating own shot
3) An absolute force running the wings with Nash
4) Probably the most consistent player
5) Arguably our best rebounder

These are facts, are they? Yes, your hyperbolic bs is so much more factual than actual statistics. Wow. Clever.

If they're true, then why were we SO much better when Dudley played in Hill's spot last year?

Los Soles wrote:

Moochiefried wrote:Fancy stats aside...These are some facts

Grant Hill is...
1) The Teams best defender
2) One of the only players capable of creating own shot
3) An absolute force running the wings with Nash
4) Probably the most consistent player
5) Arguably our best rebounder

These are facts, are they? Yes, your hyperbolic bs is so much more factual than actual statistics. Wow. Clever.

If they're true, then why were we SO much better when Dudley played in Hill's spot last year?

Haha, how is any of that hyperbolic? please try to disprove any of those. i even put probably and arguably for the ones that weren't crystal clear. and how many minutes did the exact starting lineup of minus hill and plus dudley even play? i'm guessing not much since dudley was always playing with the second unit, with random additions of starting unit players.