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I don't know what it is about McD or Hornacek (maybe its a Boston-Utah thing?) but these guys need to pay more attention to and give their lottery and 1st rd pick rookies (Len, Warren, Goodwin, Ennis) opportunities to develop.

IMO, winning some basketball games and then ending up with #9 seed in the West again isn't nearly as important as developing these guys to see what they have. Neither is the idea of maybe getting in as the #8 seed and getting ass kicked by the Spurs or Clippers in the first round.

Suns are in a great position where these young guys can learn from hard workers on the team like Dragic and Tucker but that doesn't mean these young guys need to stay glued to the bench to watch them. They could play with them and learn.

Hornacek seems to think that we are the Clippers or Rockets or something. No coach, we aren't competing for a title. Our roster isn't stacked with elite talent. We need to develop the guys, our priorities are different from priorities that contenders have. We're trying to find if we have a potential star in either Len, Warren, Goodwin or Ennis. Contenders already have multiple star players on their roster.

Now I'm not saying one season of playing time will give us all we need to know about em. However, the more experience they get the better.

For the sake of god, bench Plumlee and start Len. I don't care if Len blows 10 layups in a row, I'd rather watch him suck and learn from his mistakes than watch 26 year old Plumlee who has been in this league for 3 years and had 4 years college experience look like an idiot out there. Plumlee has already hit ceiling. Len has not.

Integrate Warren in also. If its as starter, great. If not, then still get him in there on a consistent basis. Same with Goodwin and Ennis.

Make trades if you have to.

Being mediocre or garbage while developing rookies and youngsters who have potential > being mediocre or garbage with a bunch of vets who have already hit their ceiling

SF88 wrote:I don't know what it is about McD or Hornacek (maybe its a Boston-Utah thing?) but these guys need to pay more attention to and give their lottery and 1st rd pick rookies (Len, Warren, Goodwin, Ennis) opportunities to develop.

IMO, winning some basketball games and then ending up with #9 seed in the West again isn't nearly as important as developing these guys to see what they have. Neither is the idea of maybe getting in as the #8 seed and getting ass kicked by the Spurs or Clippers in the first round.

Suns are in a great position where these young guys can learn from hard workers on the team like Dragic and Tucker but that doesn't mean these young guys need to stay glued to the bench to watch them. They could play with them and learn.

Hornacek seems to think that we are the Clippers or Rockets or something. No coach, we aren't competing for a title. Our roster isn't stacked with elite talent. We need to develop the guys, our priorities are different from priorities that contenders have. We're trying to find if we have a potential star in either Len, Warren, Goodwin or Ennis. Contenders already have multiple star players on their roster.

Now I'm not saying one season of playing time will give us all we need to know about em. However, the more experience they get the better.

For the sake of god, bench Plumlee and start Len. I don't care if Len blows 10 layups in a row, I'd rather watch him suck and learn from his mistakes than watch 26 year old Plumlee who has been in this league for 3 years and had 4 years college experience look like an idiot out there. Plumlee has already hit ceiling. Len has not.

Integrate Warren in also. If its as starter, great. If not, then still get him in there on a consistent basis. Same with Goodwin and Ennis.

Make trades if you have to.

Being mediocre or garbage while developing rookies and youngsters who have potential > being mediocre or garbage with a bunch of vets who have already hit their ceiling

Problem is your are way too early in the season to be thinking about putting all these young players on the floor. We've played 10 games against 6 teams who were in the playoffs last year. We won half those games (Spurs, Warriors, Nets). We were competing against the Grizz, Clips, and Hornets. We've had three back-to-backs in those ten games. We are playing .500 ball. Not great but we are certainly not at the Sixer, Laker, or Nugget level. We could easily go 8-1 over our next 9 games. Sitting at 13-6 would be a very respectable record.

It's obvious that Len will eventually move to the starting lineup. It may happen sooner than later. Probably by the all-star break. We really do lack scoring punch at a third position. The two guard spots are covered but neither PJ or Marcus really light it up on a regular basis at the SF position. With Warren putting up 40 and 32 in back-to-back games in the D-League I do think he will start getting some of Tolliver's time. He's also hitting the three at a decent clip (6-13 or 46%). It might be time for Marcus to shift to backup PF and let PJ start with Warren getting some SF minutes.

We have deepest bench in league. So we need to play full-speed tempo ENTIRE GAME and use substitutions more often so nobody on floor is too tired. Every player on floor must be maximal focused and play with full speed on both end of floor. I think that is problem with some players, they eventually start to play with less tempo. They need to know that they are replacable if they don't follow instructions. We need to give at least couple minutes to anyone on roster who is avaliable for game (exept for Toliver, he is useless) just to maintain full-speed tempo.

Hornacek shouldn't be afraid to play with one PG at once if necesarry. I think rotation is not good so far but give a time to a coach and team, maybe they will figure sonething that will work

Len needs 20-30 minutes a game. Period.

Archie needs to develop his shot before he gets consistent time. But until then he needs to remain on the roster so he can play in blow outs. He's dominated the D league. Nothing left for him to learn there.

TJ may be the real deal. We need a scoring 3 so bad that maybe we let him crack the rotation. Toliver sucks so gI ing TJ his minutes should be the least we do.

Ennis can hang out in Bakersfield and work on his shot. But I don't dare trade him. I think he could be really good.

I give up on Len as a starter. If the Suns want to win now and go deep into the playoffs, they must have a star caliber player down low. But they don grow on trees or are easy to find.

I'm with you on Len, but not because of the "develop the young guys" philosophy. Just because I think he gives us a better chance to win games (now) than Plumlee.

I'm never sure what to think about this argument. I know it was brought out endlessly during last season. I tend to think the D-league is a fine way to let players develop (I know it isn't the same as an NBA game). Players that are going to be great generally show it pretty early (centers would be the exception) and earn time in the first or second season, even on good teams.

To go along with the argument, I'd need a good handful of concrete examples of players that weren't earning playing time, but were allowed essentially undeserved minutes by the coach, in turn possibly losing games that could have been won in order to secure the future.

Without those, I'm not on board, and I'll continue to believe the cream will rise and earn playing time and the busts won't.

This is still a year of finding out who should be on the team long term and who shouldn't. Its too early to give up and throw all the rookies in and call it a season and blow it up.

The team does need to change up the rotations but you ride it out with who you have this year unless a great deal comes to the table or things go really really bad to the point where a player is destroying the locker room.

I think you're overreacting a little bit. None of our youngsters outside of Len have earned their minutes, let alone shown they are capable given consistent minutes. There's a reason why Warren and Ennis are going to the D-League.

The other issue with saying, we have the deepest bench in the league so we should just be running for 48 minutes is that we don't have the personnel for that. We have the guards to run the plays but not enough competent bigs to be running for 48min.

As blackification mentioned, it's WAY too early in the season (we're 10 games in ffs) to give up now and throw the rookies in just to "develop our youth."

Enough with this "Its too early" to come to conclusions crap. The team is already 10 games into the season. Well I guess it too early to draw the conclusion that the Lakers are horrible?! When is it not too early?.....40-50 games into the season? The preseason is there to help evaluate too. SF88 has good points and non-homer ones at that. It was clear from pre-season this team has roster flaws. It has strength too it as well but the flaws are a little overwhelming to make up for. This is the NBA and size matters which we completely lack. Over strengthed at the PG position which is causing problems. Players can't get definited roles especially when you have three starting caliber PGs on the roster. Each wants to run the offense and it hurts the offensive flow. The suns have no back-up PF (Tolliver is playing the Stretch 4 playing as the worse player in the league). I could go on and on but we all know the weaknesses. This team is not a playoff team. Let the young guys get some burn.

BTW there is only a few teams who can say, "its too early to draw conclusions" from and it isnt the suns.
They are the Spurs, Rockets, Cavs, heat, and Clippers (Maybe GS). Everyone else is they are who they are.

Fricken Harry met Lloyd in here.

/\ Munsoned in here.

Sunsdeuce wrote:Enough with this "Its too early" to come to conclusions crap. The team is already 10 games into the season. Well I guess it too early to draw the conclusion that the Lakers are horrible?! When is it not too early?.....40-50 games into the season? The preseason is there to help evaluate too. SF88 has good points and non-homer ones at that. It was clear from pre-season this team has roster flaws. It has strength too it as well but the flaws are a little overwhelming to make up for. This is the NBA and size matters which we completely lack. Over strengthed at the PG position which is causing problems. Players can't get definited roles especially when you have three starting caliber PGs on the roster. Each wants to run the offense and it hurts the offensive flow. The suns have no back-up PF (Tolliver is playing the Stretch 4 playing as the worse player in the league). I could go on and on but we all know the weaknesses. This team is not a playoff team. Let the young guys get some burn.

BTW there is only a few teams who can say, "its too early to draw conclusions" from and it isnt the suns.
They are the Spurs, Rockets, Cavs, heat, and Clippers (Maybe GS). Everyone else is they are who they are.

We're barely 10% of the way through the season and you're already calling it? It was clear we had roster flaws last season too but we got it together. We're trialling something new here with a 3 star PG system which have seen some success (Spurs, Warriors, Nets), we just need some consistency.

I'm not saying we have THE team to compete but it's way too early to call it a failure.

fwiw, we were only 5 games above .500, 40 games into last season.

lilfishi22 wrote:I think you're overreacting a little bit. None of our youngsters outside of Len have earned their minutes, let alone shown they are capable given consistent minutes. There's a reason why Warren and Ennis are going to the D-League.

The other issue with saying, we have the deepest bench in the league so we should just be running for 48 minutes is that we don't have the personnel for that. We have the guards to run the plays but not enough competent bigs to be running for 48min.

As blackification mentioned, it's WAY too early in the season (we're 10 games in ffs) to give up now and throw the rookies in just to "develop our youth."

Alex Len didn't really earn his minutes. He got his opportunity because we lack front court depth and has made the most of it so far. Before the season started, many on here were down on Len and wanted to ship him off for peanuts. Had we brought in a veteran starting 5 like many had wanted, Len would never have gotten a chance and you would be saying he needs to "earn" his minutes just like Goodwin and Warren.

Archie Goodwin and TJ Warren have a glut of veterans that stand in their way, how can they really "earn" their minutes? Len was our only backup 5, he was going to get minutes regardless. Its not the same with Warren, Goodwin, and Ennis.

Do you really think our 20 year old youngsters are going to outplay all the veteran talent standing in their way when they are only given a few minutes a night, sporadically throughout the season? At some point you have to give them some limited consistent playing time to see what you have. You cant expect them to just to figure everything out in practice, and then pull them every time they make a mistake in a game because we happen to have mediocre role players that are more polished at this point in their careers.

Go look up Archie Goodwin's stats when he was given a decent amount of minutes last year. They are not half bad for a raw 19 year old rookie. Why should Goodwin, who Hornacek says it the hardest worker on the entire team, never see the face of the court? Because he, at age 20, cannot outplay Goran Dragic and Gerald Green at this point? Yes, that is a great excuse to let him rot on the bench. Or maybe its because he isn't a strong outside shooter yet? Yup, the kid isn't Ray Allen, so he should never see the court. Its not like he doesn't do other things well and cant contribute in other ways besides chucking up 3's.

The Suns seem perfectly content to waste away another one of Goodwin's seasons and deny him any meaningful playing time, all in hopes of being 8th seed fodder. Maybe the Suns will realize sooner than later, they need to finish rebuilding and develop their own talent. Watching them bring in endless roll players to continue their quest to be the ultimate treadmill team is getting old.

For me, Alex Len has been the only bright spot to this season. He is proving to be a mobile and skilled big man, who seems to be a good rebounder and my biggest concern with him is simply staying healthy. Why do we have Alex Len again? Oh yeah, for some odd reason, despite the Suns best efforts to be mediocre in 2013, we ended up with the #5 pick in the draft. Heaven forbid that happens again, and the Suns land a top 5 pick, netting another young player with star potential. Who would want that when we can try for the 8th seed with all our veteran role players?

Scutt wrote:Alex Len didn't really earn his minutes. He got his opportunity because we lack front court depth and has made the most of it so far. Before the season started, many on here were down on Len and wanted to ship him off for peanuts. Had we brought in a veteran starting 5 like many had wanted, Len would never have gotten a chance and you would be saying he needs to "earn" his minutes just like Goodwin and Warren.

Archie Goodwin and TJ Warren have a glut of veterans that stand in their way, how can they really "earn" their minutes? Len was our only backup 5, he was going to get minutes regardless. Its not the same with Warren, Goodwin, and Ennis.

Do you really think our 20 year old youngers are going to outplay all the veteran talent standing in their way when they are only given a few minutes a night, sporadically throughout the season? At some point you have to give them some limited consistent playing time to see what you have. You cant expect them to just to figure everything out in practice, and then pull them every time they make a mistake in a game because we happen to have mediocre role players that are more polished at this point in their careers.

Go look up Archie Goodwin's stats when he was given a decent amount of minutes last year. They are not half bad for a raw 19 year old rookie. Why should Goodwin, who Hornacek says it the hardest worker on the entire team, never see the face of the court? Because he, at age 20, cannot outplay Goran Dragic and Gerald Green at this point? Yes, that is a great excuse to let him rot on the bench. Or maybe its because he isn't a strong outside shooter yet? Yup, the kid isn't Ray Allen, so he should never see the court. Its not like he doesn't do other things well and cant contribute in other ways besides chucking up 3's.

The Suns seem perfectly content to waste away another one of Goodwin's seasons and deny him any meaningful playing time, all in hopes of being 8th seed fodder. Maybe the Suns will realize sooner than later, they need to finish rebuilding and develop their own talent. Watching them bring in endless roll players to continue their quest to be the ultimate treadmill team is getting old.

For me, Alex Len has been the only bright spot to this season. He is proving to be a mobile and skilled big man, who seems to be a good rebounder and my biggest concern with him is simply staying healthy. Why do we have Alex Len again? Oh yeah, for some odd reason, despite the Suns best efforts to be mediocre in 2013, we ended up with the #5 pick in the draft. Heaven forbid that happens again, and the Suns land a top 5 pick, netting another young player with star potential. Who would want that when we can try for the 8th seed with all our veteran role players?

Yeah, Len is lucky not having much depth a the C sport but I think him playing relatively well in limited but consistent minutes shows he's bringing some of the stuff from practice onto the NBA court. He's "earned" his minutes by proving he can produce rather than earning his minutes in practice.

But that's fairly common around the league. Guys who clearly shouldn't be starting are starting our of necessity and very good players aren't getting consistent minutes because they play behind solid depth.

Sunsdeuce wrote:/\ Munsoned in here.

You don't even know the meaning of that one either. However, it makes my comment funnier than I thought.

Anyway, looks like Len did very well tonight, and TJ got some productive minutes. So this thread can die now. We develop our youth, it just may be that either one doesn't see it, or one doesn't understand it.

Warren would have got a total of 0 minutes if Tucker played.

Here's the way I see it.

Green won't be wearing a Suns uniform next year because he will be looking for a good contract like Frye did after displaying his skills here. Before rushing to throw money at him remember that Dragic also needs to get paid so I doubt the Suns will even attempt to resign him if we can't trade him by the deadline. As dynamic as Green is we have Warren who will not only surpass Green eventually but also gives us a couple years on a cheap rookie deal that doesn't kill our cap.

I predict the Suns will attempt to protect/keep the Dragic & Morri bros, Len and Warren but anyone else is expendable if the right deal comes along.

Don't forget Ennis either....he may be the playmaking backup point guard we've been looking for.

mybloodisorange wrote:Here's the way I see it.

Green won't be wearing a Suns uniform next year because he will be looking for a good contract like Frye did after displaying his skills here. Before rushing to throw money at him remember that Dragic also needs to get paid so I doubt the Suns will even attempt to resign him if we can't trade him by the deadline. As dynamic as Green is we have Warren who will not only surpass Green eventually but also gives us a couple years on a cheap rookie deal that doesn't kill our cap.

I predict the Suns will attempt to protect/keep the Dragic & Morri bros, Len and Warren but anyone else is expendable if the right deal comes along.

Don't forget Ennis either....he may be the playmaking backup point guard we've been looking for.

I love what Green brings when he's on. He's super athletic, exciting and he can shoot our team back into a game. But at the same time, when it's a 1-3 possession game, we really can't have Green taking those quick jumpers when we should be looking to get inside and draw fouls or get easy shots at the basket. He's not only a streaky scorer, he's also a streaky player and I mean that in the sense that when he's scoring efficiently, it usually means he's doing it smart but on the other hand, when he's not scoring well, he's making seriously dumb decisions on the court.

A player like that is a fine on a cheap contract when we're not contending but I don't want to make a long term commitment to him, especially when we are looking at building a championship-calibre team going forward.

Sunsdeuce wrote:BTW there is only a few teams who can say, "its too early to draw conclusions" from and it isnt the suns.
They are the Spurs, Rockets, Cavs, heat, and Clippers (Maybe GS). Everyone else is they are who they are.

Bullcrap ... last year Portland came out firing on all cylinders and were one of the best teams for the first half of the season. Meanwhile the Grizz sucked most of the first half. By the end of the season Portland wasn't even looking like a playoff team and the Grizz were looking like one of the best. So it is too early to draw conclusions on the Suns.

RunDogGun wrote:

Sunsdeuce wrote:/\ Munsoned in here.

You don't even know the meaning of that one either. However, it makes my comment funnier than I thought.

Anyway, looks like Len did very well tonight, and TJ got some productive minutes. So this thread can die now. We develop our youth, it just may be that either one doesn't see it, or one doesn't understand it.

It's funny how you want to attack people on here all the time and try to do it in a sly way yet it never works (example your lack of understanding of munsoned). Btw for something to be funny more than just you has to find it funny.

Have a nice day, try to be less hateful.

And sf88 was proven right with last nights game. Warren showed he has a lot to offer.

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