2022-23 Season Discussion and Review - the Blockbuster trade and playoff downfall

[Saberestar]

“It’s a high standard set every night, for each player, and I want to reach that every day.”

Kevin Durant, T.J. Warren & Darius Bazley check out their new home away from home: the Verizon 5G Performance Center, on the latest episode of Courtside, brought to you by Verizon.

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[WeekapaugGroove]

Payne is not better than CP3 on defense.

We couldn't play Cam Payne in that series against the Mavs because Doncic and Brunson took advantage of him all the time. Payne's size is gonna be always a disadvantage.

It will be better to go big against the Mavs and play some minutes with Book at PG.

True, Cam is not better than CP3 as defender in general, but youth and energy is still on his side. The lineup with him I mentioned should be pretty good in up tempo game. It's good to be able to throw different looks at the opponent. All this applies if he regains form and actually looks good, otherwise Booker or Okogie at PG is only option if Mavs or any other team start exploiting CP3 on D.

I wish I could agree with you about being able to throw different looks at an opponent. I really like Monty as a coach but his strength is also his weakness. That is, he never diverts from his game plan, which stays the same no matter what happens in the game. He doesn't throw curveballs. It's the same pitch every time.

That's what really killed us against Dallas. Dallas adjusted and we either refused or simply couldn't. They pressured Paul 94 feet and doubled Booker immediately, because Paul can't blow by anyone and Booker can't not shoot and isn't lanky enough to escape a double team. They pressured Ayton and shoved his midsection on every shot in the paint because they knew he wouldn't get the whistle, pass it out and lose the rhythm he needs to shoot the mid-range. They pushed Bridges off the corners and gave him the wings. All to invite shots from an exhausted Paul, Bridges on the move, and Jae Crowder.

They sucked the confidence right out of us and fed off it. Brilliant coaching by Kidd.

TBH it's hard to know whether it was possible for Monty to do anything different. The whole year we'd been relying on Paul and Book. If DA could iso reliably and with confidence, or if Bridges could score regularly off the dribble, that might have made all the difference. Payne was our Plan C after Paul and Book, and he was toast before the series started. We were just extraordinarily vulnerable for a team that won 64 games.

Durant changes everything.

Yeah Durant really really helps with the no so secret opponent strategy of blitzing the **** out of Booker.

You're spot on, CP and Payne just couldn't do enough to punish Dallas for this.

Now I do think the Suns tried different things defensively that series. Luka and some hot shooting just made all the different **** they tried fail.

When Dallas gets going offensively they are a really tough riddle to solve, you really just need to outscore them.

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[WeekapaugGroove]

The lesson that should have been learned from the Mavs series is to take care of business early in a series because if you let it go to a game 7 anything can happen.

There's a make/miss aspect to NBA basketball that determines a decent percentage of games. Basically you'll have nights where either the opponent makes everything or you miss everything and no other aspect of the game matters that night. Avoid putting yourself in situations where this can bite you.

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Something that stays on my mind when I talk to friends who say we blew the 2-0 lead against the Bucks.
Game 2, I felt we were outplayed, but the Suns shot I think 20-40 or something, from 3.
While the Suns still could have won the series as it was close in games 4-6, had the game 2 explosion not occurred, it may have ended in 5 and nobody would be thinking the Suns should have won. That series reminded me a lot of the OKC/Miami finals a decade ago.

Maybe I'm biased because the Bucks are my other favorite team but I felt like that series was way more the Bucks winning than anything the suns did to lose. Of course you can always find little things they could have done but really this was about Giannis having a legendary performance.

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[King4Day]

The lesson that should have been learned from the Mavs series is to take care of business early in a series because if you let it go to a game 7 anything can happen.

There's a make/miss aspect to NBA basketball that determines a decent percentage of games. Basically you'll have nights where either the opponent makes everything or you miss everything and no other aspect of the game matters that night. Avoid putting yourself in situations where this can bite you.

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Something that stays on my mind when I talk to friends who say we blew the 2-0 lead against the Bucks.
Game 2, I felt we were outplayed, but the Suns shot I think 20-40 or something, from 3.
While the Suns still could have won the series as it was close in games 4-6, had the game 2 explosion not occurred, it may have ended in 5 and nobody would be thinking the Suns should have won. That series reminded me a lot of the OKC/Miami finals a decade ago.

Maybe I'm biased because the Bucks are my other favorite team but I felt like that series was way more the Bucks winning than anything the suns did to lose. Of course you can always find little things they could have done but really this was about Giannis having a legendary performance.

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Right. After game 1, it never felt like the Suns had control of the series completely. The win in game 2 overshadowed the fact we weren't looking great. I'd be lying to say I thought we'd flame out the way we did but it didn't surprise me. Our guys had chances but made mistakes at key times that the Bucks role players took advantage of. I really think experience was a huge part of it....and that Giannis guy

[King4Day]

I was intrigued by possibly going after him. Glad we didn't. Unfortunate for a talented player.

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[spanishninja]

“It’s a high standard set every night, for each player, and I want to reach that every day.”

Kevin Durant, T.J. Warren & Darius Bazley check out their new home away from home: the Verizon 5G Performance Center, on the latest episode of Courtside, brought to you by Verizon.

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TJ is like "if we had this **** last time I was with the team, maybe I wouldn't have been injured so much"

[lilfishi22]

I was intrigued by possibly going after him. Glad we didn't. Unfortunate for a talented player.

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$48m over 4 seasons and only 45 games played. That's over $1m per game played. I just never understood the willingness to give up anything for the guy

[Hitachi77]

Strongly disagree with your guys Suns vs Bucks thoughts. We were up 9 in the 4th quarter in game 4, that close to putting a stranglehold on the series. If the Bucks were “in control” they wouldn’t be in that position, needing a 4th quarter comeback to tie the series.

You can’t cherry pick one stat category to say we got lucky etc. Maybe we ran good shooting threes, but we could have run bad with twos, or turnovers etc. Gotta look at everything.

Did we blow the series? Depends on how you look at it. We def blew game 4 to a significant degree, and with a 3-1 lead would have been overwhelming favorites. Bucks were great from games 3 onward, but we def played a part in blowing it.

[Bogyo]

Strongly disagree with your guys Suns vs Bucks thoughts. We were up 9 in the 4th quarter in game 4, that close to putting a stranglehold on the series. If the Bucks were “in control” they wouldn’t be in that position, needing a 4th quarter comeback to tie the series.

You can’t cherry pick one stat category to say we got lucky etc. Maybe we ran good shooting threes, but we could have run bad with twos, or turnovers etc. Gotta look at everything.

Did we blow the series? Depends on how you look at it. We def blew game 4 to a significant degree, and with a 3-1 lead would have been overwhelming favorites. Bucks were great from games 3 onward, but we def played a part in blowing it.

And don't even get me started on the reffing...

[bwgood77]

Strongly disagree with your guys Suns vs Bucks thoughts. We were up 9 in the 4th quarter in game 4, that close to putting a stranglehold on the series. If the Bucks were “in control” they wouldn’t be in that position, needing a 4th quarter comeback to tie the series.

You can’t cherry pick one stat category to say we got lucky etc. Maybe we ran good shooting threes, but we could have run bad with twos, or turnovers etc. Gotta look at everything.

Did we blow the series? Depends on how you look at it. We def blew game 4 to a significant degree, and with a 3-1 lead would have been overwhelming favorites. Bucks were great from games 3 onward, but we def played a part in blowing it.

Yeah, Bucks could have definitely gone either way and we never probably talk about a major trade of our young core if that happens. **** happens in the playoffs to all teams, and they don't always just blow it up, especially with a young team.

[MrMiyagi]

Well, the Grizzlies seem to be imploding. Maybe we can grab a 2nd or 3rd seed?

[spanishninja]

Well, the Grizzlies seem to be imploding. Maybe we can grab a 2nd or 3rd seed?

that would be nice. i have no interest in the warriors in round 1 and it looks like they are most likely to get to 5th seedor better

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[starbosa10]

I just want at least 1 round of home court

[WeekapaugGroove]

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Hired to run the business side

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[carey]

Well, the Grizzlies seem to be imploding. Maybe we can grab a 2nd or 3rd seed?

I really don't know how that will happen. We are 4 games behind the Grizz with 18 to play. Let's say we go a very optimistic 13-5. That would put us at 48-34. We'd need to finish one win ahead I think because of tie breaker losses. They'd have to go 9-11 the rest of the way & I just do not see that. I think right now we should focus on playing the best basketball we can while holding on to the #4 spot so that when we play Golden State we have home court.

[Frank Lee]

Good take Carey
Glad to see you lurking about. Havent been over to your other site in a while. Thats a dedicated bunch. Really enjoy some of the slants, especially in the political arena. Hope things are good with you

[Hitachi77]

This wolves kings game is pretty big. Wolves win and it both raises their chance at getting the 6 seed, and our chances of getting the 3. That would be a dream 3/6 matchup. Wolves randomly playing well with other teams imploding.

I think we would have the tiebreaker over the Grizz if we somehow end up tied with them, with 2-2 season series and conf record close, so we’d very likely have the better conf record if we catch them.

That being said, gotta be careful what we wish for, a lot of us wanted the Mavs matchup last year. Facing the Warriors round 1 would almost certainly be worse case scenario to me, but I’ll take anything else.

[Slim Charless]

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He's also Mark Bartelstein's son-who is one of the league's most preeminent agents, currently ranked as 3rd most powerful agent in the NBA.

Decent list of clients:

https://hoopshype.com/reps/mark-bartelstein/

[oddity]

So Mikal currently has 19 points of 9-9 shooting in the first half against Charlotte tn.

[lilfishi22]

It's worth pointing out we're currently 3-0 with KD playing and that's awesome but we haven't played any upper echelon teams yet and with 17 games left, it cannot be smooth sailing all the way into the playoffs.

So I just want fans to be cognizant that it won't be smooth sailing and when we win, do cheer for the team but whether we win or lose (inevitably we will lose at some point), let's try and be conscious that it's a learning experience and that this team is still a work in progress. Let's not decide from a handful of these last 17 games whether this team is/isn't a contender or can/can't beat any particular team. When we lose, the sky isn't falling. When we win, it's not a championship. Let's keep things into perspective.

The playoff is a different beast and so is playoff KD. Let's give this team the leeway to make mistakes and try to correct them in the final stretch run.