Make our alltime 15 man roster

[Antoniov23]

RULES: Make your alltime 15 man roster, specify who your starters and your bench players are and what each players position would be. You can use any players ever. YOU ONLY CAN HAVE 3 PLAYERS AT EACH POSTION! Have fun!

[E-Buck]

Suns players only?

[ATTL]

C-Jake Tsakalidis/Chris Dudley/Haracio Llamas
PF-Pat Garrity/Alton Ford/Ruben Garces
SF-Jud Buechler/Zarko Cabarkapa/Dan Langhi
SG-Todd Day/Paul McPherson/Casey Jacobsen
PG-Howard Eisley/Randy Livingston(thanks for Googs)/Smush Parker

[E-Buck]

Nash/K.Johnson/Kidd
Westphal/Hornacek/Arsdale
Majerle/Marion/Davis
Barkley/Chambers/Hawkins
Stoudemire/Adams/Nance

[bigfoot]

PG - Kevin Johnson / Steve Nash / Jason Kidd
SG - Jeff Hornacek / Dan Majerle / Dick Van Arsdale
SF - Connie Hawkins / Walter Davis / Shawn Marion
PF - Charles Barkley / Amare Stoudemire / Tom Chambers (Honorable Mention: Larry Nance)
C - Alvin Adams / Neal Walk / Mark West

[DRK]

Seven Posts and 4 Threads. Is that some sort of record or something?

[b-ball forever]

KJ7/Steve Nash
Jason Kidd/Walter Davis/Westphal
Thunder Dan/Matrix/Van Arsdale
Chuck/Hawkins/Chambers/Larry Nance
Amare/Adams/Gortat


With Kidd sliding down to backup PG at times, and Hawkins sliding to backup SF at times.

That Gortat is in there says a lot about the center position. He's only there cuz we need a legit big guy to matchup with certain players, and he's the only one available. Don't say Oliver Miller...

[DRK]

Well we're using all current/past Suns players, assuming they're all in their prime?

Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons (2 PG Lineups!)

KJ7/Nash/Kidd
Penny Hardaway/Hornacek/Vince Carter
Marion/Hawkins/Grant Hill
Barkley/Amare/Chambers
Shaq/Adams/Ben Wallace*


*Technically was a Sun.

[Jdiddy701]

Nash
Jim Jackson
Marion
Barkley
Amare


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[Thegorillasrules]

DRK,

If we're talking about guys in their primes, your 3rd string lineup would beat your 2nd string lineup.

[Ryu]

I haven`t watched older guys like Westphal, Adams, Hawkins, Davis, Van Arsdale... so I`d put players who played for the Suns since `93 only.

Nash/KJ/Kidd
Majerle/Bell/Richardson
Marion/Hill/Ceballos
Barkley/Manning/Diaw
Stoudemire/Robinson/West

[Amen316]

Nash / KJ / Penny
J.Johnson / Westphal / Finley
Marion / W. Davis / Ceballos
Barkley / Chambers / Nance
Stoudemire / Shaq-tus / Adams

Should put together a list of the players we passed on in the draft or sold their rights for:
Rajon Rondo - Loul Deng - Mark Eaton - George Gervin - Nate Robinson - Byron Scott

Lost coin flip - Kareem Abdul Jabaar

[GMATCallahan]

I'm surprised to see multiple mentions of Anfernee Hardaway; he gave the Suns one good (hardly great) season and the rest of his time in Phoenix ranged from disappointment to disaster due to multiple Microfracture surgeries (in addition to the multiple knee surgeries, including a Microfracture procedure, that he'd already undergone in Orlando).

My opinion is that a guy's prime should only be considered if he was in his prime as a Phoenix Sun. To cite Shaquille O'Neal as a Sun, yet imagine his heyday from Orlando and Los Angeles, is feckless and misleading.

The Suns certainly constitute the best franchise ever in terms of point guards and possibly the best ever in terms of guards overall (although the Lakers would also offer an extremely strong argument). Unfortunately, they seem to rank among the weaker franchises in terms of centers; one could argue that Phoenix has never possessed a great center in his prime.

Still, in the one full season that Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, and Kevin Johnson played together ('97-'98), the Suns could have constituted the best team in the NBA. In regular season games where Johnson played at least 30 minutes that year, Phoenix went 15-2 (.882); in games where he played at least 28 minutes, the Suns went 18-4 (.818). Granted, K.J. missed 31 consecutive games that season due to arthroscopic right knee surgery to repair a torn lateral meniscus and to remove loose and degenerative cartilage (I'm not sure if the knee was the same one where he'd undergone perhaps the NBA's first known Microfracture procedure six and a half years earlier after the 1991 season). Yet the rest of the time, he proved healthy and fully available to play, only to see less than 28 minutes in more than half his games, even though Johnson had been the second-best guard in the NBA the previous season, behind only Michael Jordan. Had K.J. played the type of minutes and role that he should have played in '97-'98, Phoenix could have posted the best record in the NBA that season, or at least the Suns could have tied for the best record.

The problem was that even with those three point guards all on the roster and all playing significant roles (they each made at least 9 starts and each averaged at least 21.9 minutes in the games that they played), Phoenix ranked a modest twelfth in Offensive Rating (points scored per 100 possessions). Conversely, over the previous nine seasons, with K.J. playing a much larger role, Phoenix had never finished lower than seventh in Offensive Rating, always ranking in the top quarter of the league. With that kind of offensive efficiency again, Phoenix may have been the NBA's best club, for the Suns finished sixth in Defensive Rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) in '97-'98, benefiting from an array of versatile and effective front-court defenders: Antonio McDyess, Clifford Robinson, John "Hot Rod" Williams, Mark Bryant, and Danny Manning. And considering the offensive talent of some of those players, plus the presence of the most skilled unit of guards in the league (also including Rex Chapman), Phoenix should have proved at least as efficient offensively as it was defensively. But with K.J.’s role prematurely reduced, the Suns weren't as offensively efficient as they had been in the past, they failed to win as many games as they should have won (they posted 56 wins, but their tally should have been even higher), and they did not leverage their roster for the ultimate playoff seeding that they could have achieved.

So what’s my all-time Suns’ roster? I might just go with the entire ’97-’98 team, which featured a combination of offensive and defensive ability that the franchise has never come close to duplicating in the fifteen years since. Oh, there have been great offensive Suns’ teams since then (the Nash-led clubs prior to 2011, obviously), and there have been great defensive Suns’ team since then (from the years with Scott Skiles as head coach). But there has never been that combination since then, and that combination of high offensive and defensive efficiency is what's most liable to produce an NBA Finals berth. In Charles Barkley’s first season in Phoenix, ’92-’93, the Suns ranked first in Offensive Rating and ninth in Defensive Rating—and they reached the NBA Finals. Thereafter, they dropped precipitously in defensive efficiency, finishing twenty-third by Barkley’s fourth and final season in Phoenix, ’95-’96. And sure enough, after Barkley’s initial season in Phoenix, the Suns never even returned to the Western Conference Finals. Indeed, Kevin Johnson, Dan Majerle, Mark West, and Tom Chambers played in more Western Conference Finals in Phoenix before Barkley arrived than with him, primarily because the Suns were better defensively in those days. The irony about the ’97-’98 club is that it proved very efficient defensively, but despite featuring three of the best playmakers in NBA history, eleven other teams were more efficient offensively. And the reason was simple: head coach Danny Ainge foisted a prematurely truncated role upon Kevin Johnson, who the previous season had ranked third in the NBA—trailing only Karl Malone and Michael Jordan—in statistician Dean Oliver’s offensive efficiency metric Floor Percentage (among players who averaged at least 15.0 “possessions” per game; sixth overall without that restriction).

http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/stats97/blflpldrs.htm

Thus give me the ’97-’98 Suns with that Dream Team array of point guards and that contingent of versatile front-court defenders—only with, say, Cotton Fitzsimmons as coach instead of Danny Ainge. In that case, there may have been two Phoenix-Chicago NBA Finals in the 1990s—and Charles Barkley would have only played in one of them.

[GMATCallahan]

By the way, here's some trivia relevant to my previous post: in the history of the NBA, only three players have ranked in the top five in assists per game, three-point field goal percentage, and free throw percentage over the course of a season at some point in his career (not necessarily in the same season). Of those three players, two of them (Kevin Johnson and Steve Nash) played for the '97-'98 Suns, and the third—Scott Skiles—served as an assistant coach on that team.

[GMATCallahan]

Nash / KJ / Penny
J.Johnson / Westphal / Finley
Marion / W. Davis / Ceballos
Barkley / Chambers / Nance
Stoudemire / Shaq-tus / Adams

Should put together a list of the players we passed on in the draft or sold their rights for:
Rajon Rondo - Loul Deng - Mark Eaton - George Gervin - Nate Robinson - Byron Scott

Lost coin flip - Kareem Abdul Jabaar

Just because Byron Scott played at Arizona State doesn't mean that the Suns passed on him. The Clippers selected Scott with the fourth overall pick in the 1983 draft (long before Phoenix could have plucked him), and then traded him a few months later to the Lakers in exchange for Norm Nixon, one of the top point guards in the game.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/draft/NBA_1983.html

... unless you know something that I don't.

[GMATCallahan]

KJ7/Steve Nash
Jason Kidd/Walter Davis/Westphal
Thunder Dan/Matrix/Van Arsdale
Chuck/Hawkins/Chambers/Larry Nance
Amare/Adams/Gortat


With Kidd sliding down to backup PG at times, and Hawkins sliding to backup SF at times.

That Gortat is in there says a lot about the center position. He's only there cuz we need a legit big guy to matchup with certain players, and he's the only one available. Don't say Oliver Miller...

... who could have been the best had he been able to control his addiction to food. And in that case, the Suns may well have won a championship or two.

But just to speak practically for a moment, one could not play Stoudemire and Barkley together simultaneously for long stretches; the defense would have been a disaster, and the ball would have stopped too often. The situation would have been analogous to Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony playing together in New York, except that Barkley was a much better player than Carmelo Anthony.

[pidi]

kj - kidd - nash
chapman - penny
majerle - matrix
barkley - chambers - manning
shaq - john "hot rod" williams - stoudemire

[nevetsov]

Best rotational lineup (best team):

Nash, Dragic, Socks
Bell, Barbosa, Delk
Majerle, Ceballos, Manning
Marion, Rogers, Green
KThomas, Robinson, Amundson

Best players lineup:

Nash, KJ, Kidd
Westphal, Chapman, Bell
Majerle, Davis, Nance
Marion, Barkley, Chambers
Stoudemire, Adams, O'Neal

Personal favourite lineup:

Nash, KJ, Marbury
Chapman, Bell, Barbosa
Ceballos, Finley, GHill
Marion, Stoudemire, Diaw
KThomas, Amundson, Voskuhl


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[TASTIC]

I would have loved to have seen

Nash / Rondo
Iggy / Bell / Barbosa
JJ / Diaw
Marion / Frye / Amundson
Amare / Thomas

That team can throw out so many different lineups.

Ugh.

[YFZblu]

GMAT killing it as usual. 96 posts since January 2011 isn't nearly enough - Just saying!