Run and Gun or Balanced?

[mrorng]

President of Basketball Operations Lon Babby described the Suns
as a “team in transition” Saturday evening and one that “maybe beginning (the transition) a little more quickly than we would have liked.” Babby spoke about how over the past 15 years 25 of the 30 NBA teams have missed the playoffs at least three consecutive years in a row but five teams. Those five teams being, Detroit (who he said is headed that direction right now), San Antonio, Los Angeles, Miami and Phoenix. He said, “We have been successful for a long, long time in avoiding the inevitable cycle that I think is upon us now.” Babby spoke a lot about how he and the front office plan on moving forward. He focused
heavily on the draft and free agency, but also discussed the impact of trades. He was
very candid when he said that the organization has typically done very poorly in the draft
and rarely held onto their draft picks. Babby stated that besides the Phoenix Suns,
who only have two of their original draft choices, there are only two other teams in the
league that have only two of their draft choices. He committed to Suns fans that moving
forward and starting with Markieff Morris, the emphasis with drafting was going to
change. He spoke a lot about free agency and some of the behind the scenes changes that
they have worked on to make Phoenix even stronger with regards to landing free agents.
He spoke about the designs in the tunnels and locker rooms, the benefits for the player’s
families and the ways in which they take care of the players with meals and hospitality.

There have been mistakes made with regards to some of the deals that have taken place and Babby was quick to admit them, but also stated that he was not responsible for most of
them. When the example of the money spent on Hakim Warrick and Josh Childress
being too much, Babby said, “I could not agree with you more.”
Will the Phoenix Suns of the future look like the Suns of old or the Suns of late
with a much more balanced attack? Babby addressed this as well. He said, “For 38 years
we have played a certain way with an offensive orientation, but it is in our judgment that
we have to be able to win games on the defensive end. If we are going to build an elite
team and a team that can compete every year, than we have to improve on the defensive
end.” Babby stated that the Suns have made strides on the defensive end with the
addition of Turner, but disputed the premise that to get better defensively, you have to
suffer offensively. He stated that the intent coming into this season was to focus on
improved defense, but continue an up tempo offense, but admitted that they have not
done that as good as they should have. Babby then described the current situation
stating, “To some extent our defensive improvement is a little bit of fools gold, because if
you reduce the amount of possessions, the stats look better but you are not necessarily
playing better, but I think we are fundamentally playing better defense.”

Babby spoke about the Suns of the future focusing on defense and being a team of “balance.” “We need to have balance between offense and defense. We need to have balance between youth and experience. We need to have finesse players and athletic players. So we need balance in every phase of what we are doing. I think the balance between offense and defense has been out of whack here, but we do not have it figured out yet, but I think it is the right path to have sustainable success going forward.” In the words of Babby, that is what the new look Suns of the future will entail.

I was talking with a friend following Saturday night’s game and he compared our play to that of the Spurs. He did that speaking about the style of play. We shot 36% from the field on the game and won. This is not the Suns of old. It is not as exciting to watch as a fan and something that Phoenix Suns fans are going to have to get used to. We are yet to win a championship and are in our 44th season. I pose this. Would we rather watch that super exciting style of play without every winning a title or play a little less exciting and win a few championships? I will take the later.

[SUN]

For a man who paints himself orange, you're pretty well educated.

[Cutter]

I would support a more defensive oriented team....more balancd. Babby is correct that the Run and Gun days of Mike D'Antoni were offense on steroids and a shriveled defense. Things are not working out well this year, with our offense definitely taking a step backward.

I just don't think we have the right players on the team to be better both offensively and defensively.

[SideSwipe]

Are you the real Mr. Orange? Cool if you are...if not, well met anyway, sir.

I have had this question in my mind for the past 5 years. For me it is not an easy answer. At the end of the day the NBA is entertainment, and should be entertaining, so the question is really, what is more entertaining, watching a fun ball club for 82 games plus 2-3 rounds of playoffs, or watching a dull ball club for 82 games plus the hope of 4-5 rounds of playoffs every few years. There is never a guarantee that any team or system can be built formulaically. Building teams is all about being the best you can be as long as you can and working hard and putting in the effort to help bring out the chemistry, hard-work, desire and heart. What I have noticed is while we have not won the championship ever, we have had a lot of fun, and have garnered at least half of this board to be populated with Aussies and Kiwi's. There is something to be said for that. We have focused of having high-character guys deliver a tremendous product on the floor, even if that product has never been closer than 2 rounds from the finals. There is something to be said for that.

I think for now I am on the side of having a fun, with introducing more defense, but if the option is becoming the Pistons, or Chicago of 4 years ago, I am simply not interested. Those teams neither win nor are exciting, and that is the risk we run if we go too deeply down this defensive path without figuring it out. I say all of this as a guy who values defense and played as a defensive specialist.

[mrorng]

Thanks, Sun.

Cutter- exactly. That is what he said he is committed to changing and working on going forward. Check out my latest post for how he plans to do that too.

[mrorng]

Sideswipe. Yes, I am the Mr.ORNG that is at the home games and some away games. Nice to "meet" you as well.

I totally understand where you are coming from. That is what my friend and I were discussing last night after the game. He said that it was not as exciting to watch and I agreed. What I think is important is that we still have a more up tempo offense when compared with most teams in the league but with an improved defense. That is totally the goal, but Lon and Alvin admitted that it is not balanced right now and the offense has suffered greatly.

I too hope they improve the defense, but do not lose the excitement completely from the old offense, but there is definitely going to be a transition period and when Steve does decide to move on or retire, it will slow down a bit more because he is a once in a generation type of player that is instrumental in that style of play.

[Frank Lee]

For a man who paints himself orange, you're pretty well educated.

I believe he went to the navel academy

[mrorng]

Two time Arizona State Alum. Bachelors and MBA.

[Cutter]

For a man who paints himself orange, you're pretty well educated.

I believe he went to the navel academy

[Sunsdeuce]

This team is a mess. A miss match bunch of coaches on the suns bench who do not compliment each other. Babby likes to talk a lot about nice stuff and he is a nice guy and all but has no clue what he is doing. So u have coaches and gm's on the suns organization that are totally confused calminating in what you see each game from the suns.

Jared dudley likes to say" we need to play phx suns basketball"
My question is..... What exactly is suns basketball... I don't have a clue.
The only thing I know is that the suns are decent in the first quarter, in quarters 2 and 3 they couldnt beat the north canyon high school basketball team. And in the 4th they are very average.
That's what I know about the 2011-2012 team.

[NiGhtWiSh]

1. Suns must master D first then they can balance it with offense. There is no room in the elite for the teams playing run&gun, with minimalised D. Rock solid D & extremaly efficient, not complicated offense. That's the way. Great D gives everything. You can score 80 pts and still win.

2. People will love bad boys, playing a hell of defense. There is nothing more exciting than a team fighting like for life, abusing opponents, dominating with power & scream Shooting is for babies. Basketball is fun, but only for the winners If you want to win, you must "kill" your opponent. Suns like Chuck Daly's Pistons with Laimbeer, VJohnson, Mahorn, Rodman?? Hell yeah, in any moment.

[alldayeveryday]

Mr. ORNG -

What is your take on Robert $arver? As an owner and even as a person? Please be honest and if you cannot discuss anything regarding our incumbent owner then I understand.

Thank you.

[Calvin Klein]

I could care less if we have to change our style as long as we can contend.

[_Nashoholic_]

Mr.ORNG actually knows what he is talking about. Understands the Suns well.

Anyway, if Babby means what he says about draft picks, then keeping Nash is not the way to go. The odds of us getting a franchise player in the draft as long as we have Nash keeping us in the bottom end of the lottery are very bad. We need a top 4 pick, and it looks like we won't be getting that this year. Look what the Thunder got out of high draft picks. We need that too!

[DRK]

I think the real quesiton I want to ask Babby, is nto about the Childress/Warrick signings. But the absolute joke of a trade including Aaron Brooks.

He stated he wants to "focus on the draft," but yet he trades away Orlando's 1st Round pick. He said that "we are a team in transition," but yet last year we trade away basically our future point guard in Goran Dragic, who PROVED he can perform in the playoffs.

I dont care when he did with the Childress and Warrick signings, this is the quesion I want to ask our F.O. Now we lose AB for nothing.

What an absolute joke.

[RunDogGun]

I think the real quesiton I want to ask Babby, is nto about the Childress/Warrick signings. But the absolute joke of a trade including Aaron Brooks.

He stated he wants to "focus on the draft," but yet he trades away Orlando's 1st Round pick. He said that "we are a team in transition," but yet last year we trade away basically our future point guard in Goran Dragic, who PROVED he can perform in the playoffs.

I dont care when he did with the Childress and Warrick signings, this is the quesion I want to ask our F.O. Now we lose AB for nothing.

What an absolute joke.

I agree that adding that draft pick, without a future pick in return was stupid, but let's not kid ourselves about Goran. He has one playoff expierence and averaged 7.6 points and 2.8 assists. Not exactly a proven playoff. He had one amazing quarter against th Spurs with 23 points, but the other fifteen quarters against them weren't all that good.

The thing I really didn't like about the Warrick and Chilldress signings was us giving up second round picks in both deals. The way things are going this year, our second will be a nice pick. Add to that the length of the contracts, the amounts, and the way we use(d) them, and they were crappy signings.

[mybloodisorange]

I think for casual fans high scoring is always more entertaining but for hardcore fans who understand the game and business of basketball there is nothing more exciting than winning a championship which the Suns have never done and that takes defense.

Most defensive players have some semblance of an offensive game (there are always exceptions like Ben Wallace and Rodman) but there are many more offensive players without any defensive skill or desire in this league. I personally think it is exciting to see your team smother and choke the life out of the other teams offense-and great defense leads to turnovers which leads to fast breaks so in a way defense creates some offense in and of itself whereas the opposite is not true.

[lilfishi22]

Nice to meet you MR.ORNG.

What I want to see is us putting a serious effort into developing our (only) youth Markieff. I hate seeing us burn out our older guys trying to grind out a meaningless win. We're sucking right now but I want us to come out with something positive at least.

@DRK: B&B suck, they are a terrible front office duo and basically dismantled the "youth movement" Kerr had left. Posters here can hate on Kerr all they want about the KT trade, Shaq trade and wanting to keep Amare, but in the short time B&B have been around, they have undoubtedly been worse. At least Kerr left us with some decent young pieces going forward, Dragic, EC, Lopez and picks.

What's worse is that Kerr knew where he wanted us to go and had something to show for it. B&B are all talk, have nothing to show for it but bad contracts and don't seem they actually have any idea how and where we're going.

[RunDogGun]

@DRK: B&B suck, they are a terrible front office duo and basically dismantled the "youth movement" Kerr had left. Posters here can hate on Kerr all they want about the KT trade, Shaq trade and wanting to keep Amare, but in the short time B&B have been around, they have undoubtedly been worse. At least Kerr left us with some decent young pieces going forward, Dragic, EC, and picks.

You are excluding the two picks he threw in with the KT deal, the two second rounders he threw in with Goran deal, the first rounder he threw in with the Jones deal, right? Kerr had his fair share of draft day fumbles. Over paying for Goran, passing up guys like Hibbert and Jordan for Lopez, and EC can barely get off the bench in ORL.

I don't really care for B&B either but they were all better than D'Antoni.

[mrorng]

Just to respond mostly to DRK. Actually, each of those exact points were discussed. So here was his take on each of those.

Babby on the Orlando Pick- "The draft choice that we traded was one that we acquired. So it was at least neutral in that respect. The difference between where we are this year and last year is we were still trying to be a playoff team. I am not saying that we are not this year. But we are not going to make the decisions to try and capture that at the expense of the future. Last year I think our vision and goal was a little cloudier and we made our first year here."

Dragic- Babby said, "Dragic was not playing well. There was a tremendous fallout every time Steve would come out of the game."

Brooks- Babby said "Aaron Brooks is a quality player. Although we couldn't anticipate that he was going to choose to sign in China. He still a strong asset and you know, hold your judgement on that until we see how it plays out." The opinion of Brooks in the content of this question was not favorable and Babby then said, "You may turn out to be right. My opinion of this job is this is a human en devour and if we make fewer mistakes than everybody else then we are doing great, but we are not going to get it right. The only way you can get every trade right is to make one."

Hope that helps address those points that you would have liked to have asked.