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What has been more important to the suns recent success these past few years, having a defensive stopper in raja bell, or having a 3rd star/scoring option in shawn marion?

Both of them had huge roles for the team. Marion was important, because he allowed us to play smaller and faster lineups, without sacrificing rebounding. He was also a help defender, and a guy we missed when it came to defending wing players and guards that were bothered by length.

On the other hand, during crunch time, I actually think Bell might have been a more reliable shooter. Pre-injury, Bell was huge for us. He would take on the toughest defensive assignments, because he could defend better man-to-man. He would also make smart plays to keep us in games that often gets overlooked.

I went with Marion, mainly because we sorely needed his rebounding. Even with a bigger lineup of Amare and Shaq, we were getting hurt with second/third/ sometimes fourth chance opportunities. It's easy to say Marion right now, because Raja has been struggling since his injury, but he was equally important to us for the past few years.

Marion was obviously the better player. Not just on offense, he was also easily the better defender of the two guys post-2006 playoffs.

Raja was more valuable when u factor in contracts tho. He was a massive upgrade over Q in 2006 with his top notch defense and elite 3 point shooting, all on a cheap contract

what "success" ?

phungk wrote:what "success" ?

Yeah you are right. We sucked big time in the past 4 years, lottery time.

Go7enKs wrote:-= original quote snipped =-


Yeah you are right. We sucked big time in the past 4 years, lottery time.

Dude, at this point the freakin' Mavs are more successful than us. At least they made an appearance in the Finals, which is something that our so called "successful" team has yet to do since 1993.

Define this... "successful"

phungk is right we had some good times, some good seasons but lets be greedy and get to the promised land and take the holy grail.

Kobe aside, Marion usually drew the opposition's best offensive player. And D'Antoni usually switched Marion on to Kobe in the 4th as it was. So who was the defensive stopper?