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7:45pm January 7th 2008

Marcus Banks finally became a "player" for the Suns.

Dunno how big his role will be, but he's finally in the mix to stay ...I think.

Yea! Clearly, this is good news

Yeah, great! but lets see, once he had one bad game he might lose his playing time again?

But for this game, just by seeing Banks on a 9 man rotation, maybe Dantoni deserves an applause but please resolve the offensive rebounding problem..

Banks is a very pesky and quick defender, so his scoring is a bonus.

Fantastic game tonight!

I'd bet quite a bit of money he sees no playing time in the playoffs.


Meh, at least he's trimming off some minutes from our big 6 (I kicked Diaw out of this a while ago)

Hopefully if Banks keeps getting some quality minutes (I think it's going to happen) he takes minutes from the feathery Barbosa and not Raja Bell. If Bell loses minutes to Banks the Suns are no further along in getting stronger and tougher.

Here's to Marcus pushing Barbosa down the bench to the 7th or 8th spot. Make Leandro fight for his spot!

NapoleonII wrote:I'd bet quite a bit of money he sees no playing time in the playoffs.


Meh, at least he's trimming off some minutes from our big 6 (I kicked Diaw out of this a while ago)

If he keeps chuckin up tres like he did Sat. night and tonight, I'm willing to put money on him seeing pt during the playoffs.

NapoleonII wrote:I'd bet quite a bit of money he sees no playing time in the playoffs.


Meh, at least he's trimming off some minutes from our big 6 (I kicked Diaw out of this a while ago)

ditto

if we were down a game or two in the playoffs, no way dantoni trusts his bench to do some work.

He runs like a tank, almost looks like he should be playing football

Saying that, he had a smooth stroke going tonight

banks is perfect for what we need

fact is, if he was playing for a bad team now, and that team had him on the block we would want him, just like the ridnours, cassells etc

he is worth a shot, his defense on the ball is awesome and good for our rivals who have players he can match up on

he needs minutes consistently, if he shoots 0-9 next game, dantoni cant use that as an excuse to stop playing him, he needs consistent minutes to produce consistent play.

he has already shown he can give us something we dearly need

unfortunately i get this feeling he is being showcased for a trade and if we do dump him, it will backfire on us

After seeing all his treys he definitely was just in the zone today. Great that we took advantage of that but I will temper that by saying, I hope he doesn't think he can make those 3s consistently. ie. I hope he doesn't go into the next game chucking up shots and gets dragged after 5mins.

At the start he took his open jumpers and made them which is great. By the end of it he was just taking the pee. Dan Majerle range 3s and shooting it in ppl's faces.

KJ7 wrote:After seeing all his treys he definitely was just in the zone today. Great that we took advantage of that but I will temper that by saying, I hope he doesn't think he can make those 3s consistently. ie. I hope he doesn't go into the next game chucking up shots and gets dragged after 5mins.

At the start he took his open jumpers and made them which is great. By the end of it he was just taking the pee. Dan Majerle range 3s and shooting it in ppl's faces.

he is now 21 of 40 for the season tho and does deserve a longer leash to take more shots

it takes alot of nuts to take the shots he was taking knowing that he is only JUST out of the doghouse and dantoni is just itching to bench him long term again

each shot was a possible career breaker for banks, but he showed the balls to take them

hopefully the leash loosens and he can still take 3-5 threes a game making 2-3 and be allowed the leeway to make mistakes and learn to become a valuable part to our team

on defense, he is already worth minutes alone

lmao, heres dantoni on banks

"What he needs to do, and he's doing it, is learn how not to foul in crucial times, how not to turn it over, how not to jack one up and be a real team guy," D'Antoni said, "and he's trying."

he could well be talking about barbosa!!! man, how come barbs gets such a long leash and banks such a short one when they both seem to have similar flaws?

I think the leash is loosened a little when you have the type of season LB did last season. And lets face it that's why it's loose for Bell too.

The fact is if he missed one of those shots he's still 5 from 7 or whatever so it still looks good at the end of the day. I bet if he clanked a few he wouldve stopped taking them espec if his avg when below 50% from 3.

That's all I'm getting at. Warm up and hit your open jumpers and *then* start taking some more ambitious/low % shots if we can afford it.

Don't you remember when LB was getting the same treatment (ie. leading into the play-offs 05-06 when he got cut from the rotation and barely played even when JoeJ went down). Have to earn your stripes with D'Antoni.

^ agree with everything you said

i think banks can definately stay committed and play within himself

i just hope 1 bad game doesnt put him straight back in the doghouse, the same way 1 good game shouldnt get him straight out of it

-SDU- wrote:banks is perfect for what we need

fact is, if he was playing for a bad team now, and that team had him on the block we would want him, just like the ridnours, cassells etc

he is worth a shot, his defense on the ball is awesome and good for our rivals who have players he can match up on

he needs minutes consistently, if he shoots 0-9 next game, dantoni cant use that as an excuse to stop playing him, he needs consistent minutes to produce consistent play.

he has already shown he can give us something we dearly need

unfortunately i get this feeling he is being showcased for a trade and if we do dump him, it will backfire on us

yes, yes and again, yes---
he played d on iverson, hit his jumpers....
he can play pg and sg, he can get minutes off bell, so bell dont have to play this much minutes, he is exactly what we need.
i like the comment bout banks on another team,. everyone in this forum than would love to have him in here....
great post..

I'm stoked with Banks TBH and I truely hope this can last

I agreed SDU I still think deep down if we trade Banks we will eventually regret it. Atleast he's finally getting another shot this time as mainly a 2 guard where he looks far better

http://realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=748042

Here's some talk about Banks from the Celtics board.

Da is stubborn, and I know it is eating him up to see banks play so well. He used to say he can;t shoot, well, thats not true now. In his post game interview, you can tell he was trying to not get excited, said some dumb things about ask raja if he is happy that he only got 24 mins. what a dumb a**, same with the quote sdu shared. What I have seen is the coaching staff hand wash barbs jock and let the leash go a few years back. I don

yea that Raja comment I thought was a bit dumb

I mean heckRaja has been playing to many mintues the last two seasons if we could cut his minutes down slightly It would be great.

I think sometimes everybody just over analyzes everything. Mike said Banks had earned playing time and he was going to continue to play him. I don't see what's wrong with that? Everything he said after that was trying to cover his ass so that if Banks starts to suck again after playing for a few months and he has to bench him again, he won't look bad. Remember, this is the same guy that had a stretch of games last year where it looked like he was getting it together, then when he got more time he went back to sucking eggs again.

The coaches are human too. Mike said opinions are hard to change and I agree. Last night he was great, everything went in and he didn't went out of control even when he's hot, I like that. But I've seen too many times that he just pound the ball for 8 seconds before he pass it out or make a move. He is a half-court player with average handle who's inconsistent with his jumper, how can you trust him with the ball? Mike already lost his faith in him last year with his horrible performance which is pretty understandable. It's not easy to change his opinion in just a stretch of good games.

This year we try to take the ball out of his hand and make him a scorer, he obviously has improved his jumper over the summer and it pays off. We need to see more of that, and Mike said right now he can trust him more. I don't know what else he could say. He sure can be more encouraging but he probably just trying to not get too excited about it like most fans do. It's just like when Amare didn't come to practice and everybody was going off on what Mike and Kerr said in the media which was basically nothing, but there was a lot of reading between the lines and speculation. Take it for what it is. Mike said he was happy with the way Banks played and he was going to continue to play him. That's all we have to know. Will Mike continue to keep him on a short leash? We don't know. But I'm sure the leash is loosened a little and that's a good first step.