letsgosuns wrote:Three things come to my mind when building a champion. First is having a top ten defense at the minimum, preferably top five or better. Second is having an offensive player that absolutely cannot be stopped. Every champion has that. Whether it is the league MVP or an MVP caliber player. The only team I can think of that ever won a champion without one of those completely unstoppable offensive players is the 2004 Pistons.
The third thing that I think of is basketball IQ. No way can you win a championship with stupid players. Unfortunately the Suns have been riddled with low IQ players for the past several seasons and still have a few.
I do like Watson playing Len and Chandler together and think that can be a winning formula. I would never recommend following Golden State's blueprint. That offense works because they have the greatest shooting backcourt in league history. It is not even close. No point in trying to duplicate what they do if Curry is not on your team. Winning a championship with a dominant big man is a proven way to go and that is what the Suns are trying to do now imo.
Personally, I do not believe that playing Len and Chandler together will lead the Suns anywhere over the long haul. Even when the league was much bigger and taller, in the eighties and nineties (Tim Duncan, Rasheed Wallace, and Kevin Garnett often served as starting small forwards in '97-'98), Len and Chandler would have constituted a clunky combination. Ultimately, you need a greater level of offensive skill and fluidity.
Also, while Len is looking more and more like a guy who could be a good, above-average starting center (in today's weak era of centers), the notion that he will be a "dominant big man" capable of leading a club to a championship is quite a leap. There is very little reason to believe that he will ever be remotely tantamount to Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Moses Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Shaquille O'Neal, or Tim Duncan—the kinds of "dominant big men" that teams have won championships with.
The last several champions (Dallas in 2011, Miami in 2012 and 2013, San Antonio in 2014, and Golden State in 2015) have all featured perimeter-oriented offensive attacks and have often utilized (and sometimes started) smaller lineups. The league's rules and concepts are now oriented in that direction, and while one may not be able to replicate Golden State's formula in terms of shooting so many threes, championship offenses that are continually triggered from the perimeter as opposed to the post have become the norm.
One could argue that the 1979 Sonics, who won the championship, also lacked a "completely unstoppable offensive player," although Jack Sikma was a highly skilled offensive center and Guz "The Wizard" Williams constituted one of the quickest and most dynamic point guards around. Even the back-to-back champion "Bad Boys" Pistons proved questionable according to your criteria. Isiah Thomas could be "completely unstoppable" in streaks, and to some extent the same was true of fellow guards Joe Dumars and Vinnie "The Microwave" Johnson, but he was not all that efficient. When Detroit won its first title in 1989, Thomas led the Pistons in scoring in the playoffs (and the regular season), but in the postseason, he shot just .412 from the field, .430 on two-point field goal attempts, .167 on three-point field goal attempts, and .740 from the free throw line, good for an awful (over a relatively large sample, 17 playoff games) .481 True Shooting Percentage.
One could argue, too, that the 2014 Spurs lacked that "completely unstoppable offensive player." Sure, they featured Tim Duncan, but at thirty-eight, he was not usually that kind of player any longer. Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili might have been that guy here and there, but in their thirties with a lot of mileage on their bodies, they were not necessarily as explosive as they had been.
(I will not even bother going back to the first half of the 1970s and beyond, when highly regarded stars often posted mediocre-to-low field goal percentages.)
Ideally, you want that kind of player, but a big mistake that people make is to imagine that a scorer like Carmelo Anthony, Vince Carter, Allen Iverson, or Tracy McGrady is vital. Someone with explosive scoring ability who can take over a game, but one who is not especially efficient and who settles for or creates a lot of difficult one-on-one shots in addition to holding the ball or over-dribbling in a limited radius, does not represent the core of a championship formula. (Even Kobe Bryant was lucky to have played so much of his career with an outstanding big man, either Shaquille O'Neal or Pau Gasol.) In that scenario, you would be better off with the 2004 Pistons, the 1979 Sonics, the 1989 Pistons, or—better yet —the 2014 Spurs. There is a reason why Lenny Wilkens, who coached Seattle to the title in 1979, traded Dominique Wilkins in Atlanta in 1994 ...
Michael Jordan and LeBron James represent the exception, not the rule.
I will also note that historically, offensive efficiency has been as important to winning championships as defensive efficiency. In fact, Phoenix has ranked in the top four in defensive efficiency seven times in its history (1977, 1978, 1981, 1982, 1983, 2000, 2001), including two first-place finishes and one virtual tie for first place, yet failed to even reach the Western Conference Finals in any of those seven seasons. A championship formula generally demands an Offensive Rating (points scored per possession) and a Defensive Rating (points allowed per possession) that both rank in the top ten—with the top five or top six in both realms being ideal. For the record, the Suns last ranked in the top ten in both areas in 1993 and last finished in the top six in both in 1990. Phoenix placed in the top nine in both areas for five straight seasons from 1989-1993 and has not come close to doing so since.
The Suns last ranked in the top twelve in both categories in 1998.
