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Hey guys,

Johnny Ludden of Yahoo! Sports wrote a great column today regarding D'Antoni's departure from Phoenix and it contains some pretty interesting information which includes quotes from un-named Suns players.

Here is part of the article followed by the link:

Among some of these Suns, D’Antoni was gone before he left. His deteriorating relationship with the team’s general manager, Steve Kerr, had consumed him, drained him of his spirit. After the Suns lost the first three games of their opening-round playoff series with the San Antonio Spurs, the loathed rival they could never get past, D’Antoni gathered the team for what could be its final practice.

“Well, guys,” D’Antoni said, according to a witness, “we basically need a miracle.”

Some of the players were stunned. This is how he prepared them for an elimination game? A miracle? Even D’Antoni had stopped believing. Deep down, he knew these Suns had become a mirage in the desert.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AsHUi2Jm4kU1l12yKhieG4m8vLYF?slug=jy-sunsdantoni121608&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Your thoughts on the article?

past is past. move on.

I wouldn't say to move on, just yet. Eventually, yes, but it would be nice to get everybody's thoughts on this article because it contains some pretty interesting information.

Sad article. I'm really glad that they took some time to let the fans applaud; I was shocked and disappointed that they didn't do the same for Marion, who gave his all for almost 9 years here.

If only Tim Duncan didn't hit that 3 pointer and Hill hadn't gotten injured...the Suns had a great chance to beat the Spurs last season and got screwed by bad luck.

If they won the series, D'Antoni would probably still be coaching the team and we wouldn't be stuck with a moron like Porter.

D'Antoni just got EXTREMELY unlucky each time the Suns played the Spurs.

- Joe Johnson's injury

- Suspensions

- Hill's injury/Tim Duncan 3 pointer

I STILL can't get over that Game 1 loss to the Spurs!

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/132563

Sarver's an a-hole, who knew

And why on earth did the front office tell D'Antoni to wait until after the playoffs ended to get his contract extended?

They should have extended his contract the second he wanted to extend it.

The man is a brilliant coach and a million times better than Terry Porter.

I mean, consider the following:

- Nash became a 2 time MVP under him

- Barbosa became 6th man of the year under him.

- Diaw became Most Improved Player under him

- He took the team to the Conference Finals TWICE and got screwed by bad luck each time.

- The team would have won the Championship in 2007 if Amare and Boris had just stayed on the bench after Horry's foul on Nash

- The team finished last season winning 15 of their last 20 games with Shaq and were a Tim Duncan 3 pointer away from winning Game 1 and a Grant Hill injury away from potentially winning the series.

Remember, the Suns beat the Spurs 3 out of 4 times in the regular season last year and were the better team for the majority of Game 1.

Hill's injury was a HUGE blow because nobody could defend Tony Parker.

Now the Suns are stuck with a horrible coach in Porter and SEVERAL players are unhappy.

The worst part about all of this? The media will blame Shaq for this mess even though he's been the team's best player this year and is playing better than Marion.

Nobody's blamed Shaq for anything this season, so I think that's a non-issue at this point.

Nobody's blamed Shaq for anything this season, so I think that's a non-issue at this point.

It's just a matter of time...

The Diesel wrote:And why on earth did the front office tell D'Antoni to wait until after the playoffs ended to get his contract extended?

They should have extended his contract the second he wanted to extend it.

The man is a brilliant coach and a million times better than Terry Porter.

I mean, consider the following:

- Nash became a 2 time MVP under him

- Barbosa became 6th man of the year under him.

- Diaw became Most Improved Player under him

- He took the team to the Conference Finals TWICE and got screwed by bad luck each time.

- The team would have won the Championship in 2007 if Amare and Boris had just stayed on the bench after Horry's foul on Nash

- The team finished last season winning 15 of their last 20 games with Shaq and were a Tim Duncan 3 pointer away from winning Game 1 and a Grant Hill injury away from potentially winning the series.

Remember, the Suns beat the Spurs 3 out of 4 times in the regular season last year and were the better team for the majority of Game 1.

Hill's injury was a HUGE blow because nobody could defend Tony Parker.

Now the Suns are stuck with a horrible coach in Porter and SEVERAL players are unhappy.

The worst part about all of this? The media will blame Shaq for this mess even though he's been the team's best player this year and is playing better than Marion.

I'm sorry but the grass is always greener on the other side, and people tend to have short memories about things like D'Antoni's flaws.

Granted he had some unlucky things happen, we all understand that. But that was not the problem.

The problem was that D'Antoni is NOT a play-off coach. Look at the Spurs, who do not have the dynamic pieces that the Suns have, don't win as many regular season games, and yet manage to out-compete the Suns in EVERY playoff series. It's not just a suspension here or a player injury there, it's that D'Antoni just couldn't match the mental competition of superior coaches like Popovich.

D'Antoni was far too stubborn to try to improve in those areas that were deficient like a sore thumb, and far too dumb to make in-game adjustments during the play-offs, instead choosing to let Nash coach the team in the key games, and refusing to adjust even when Nash was out of the game.

With D'Antoni we had good entertainment, but would never have won a championship. I'm sorry but D'Antoni is history, and good riddance. Thanks for the good times, but if you can't even make some minor changes to your coaching style during the playoffs, and too dumb to compete against superior coaches, you gotta go.

Porter's making adjustments and finally seeing the light, so the man can change his ways. That's something you could never say about D'Antoni.

Suns_fan_2007 wrote:The problem was that D'Antoni is NOT a play-off coach. Look at the Spurs, who do not have the dynamic pieces that the Suns have, don't win as many regular season games, and yet manage to out-compete the Suns in EVERY playoff series. It's not just a suspension here or a player injury there, it's that D'Antoni just couldn't match the mental competition of superior coaches like Popovich.

That's BS. D'Antoni has a +50% record in the PO, which is something few coaches can say. Not to mention he beat Phil "I got 9 f*****g rings" Jackson TWICE. Guess he's not a Playoff coach.

As for why the Suns lost always against the Spurs. You wanna know the real reason? Because their two best players on offense go against our two worse players on D. I'm talking about Duncan-Parker and Amare-Nash. This mismatch produces a domino effect that forces us to put sombody like Marion, Hill, Diaw, Barnes on Parker and change our whole defense. Against Duncan instead, we have NOTHING to counter since putting Shaq was a failure too.

Basket is a matchup game and the 06/07 Suns could've beaten ANYONE. Not the Spurs, because of this mismatch (and i'm not gonna start with the suspensions, I believe we could've beaten them without the suspensions...anyway).

D'Antoni was an excellent coach and with the right players his system is just as effective as any other. I can't wait for LeBron to go to NY and prove anybody wrong. I guess when that will happen and Mike will have a ring somebody will say: "Well it was cause of LeBron not the 7SOL".

A little objectivity wouldn't be bad. Mike wasn't perfect and surely made mistakes. But in NO WAY he isn't a "playoff coach" that's just BS.

nashill wrote:past is past. move on.

QFT.


For sure D'Antoni got unlucky almost every year. But every "what if" never happened, so it's a painful waste of time briging that back every time.

That Duncan 3 normally would have gone out, but it went in at the end. That's the reality and it's better to learn living with it.

It's better remember all the good things (way way way more good things that bad) that Suns brought to us and all NBA fans this past years.

To me, making it to WCF with that depleted roster in '06 was unbielevable, truly out o mind!

[OT] Hey Gali Sun! Eres de España? [/OT]

[OT] Pues sí, de Vigo. Estamos formando una pequeña colonia aqui, jeje.Un saludo! [/OT]

GaliSun wrote:[OT] Pues sí, de Vigo. Estamos formando una pequeña colonia aqui, jeje.Un saludo! [/OT]

I want to be a part of this. I'm not from Spain, but I am brown; that should count for something, right?

Aren't the exclamation marks and question marks supposed to go upside down at the start too?

"Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal"

^^If u aren't Spanish and you can pronounce that properly, ur a genius!

rsavaj wrote:I want to be a part of this. I'm not from Spain, but I am brown; that should count for something, right?

Of course you can. We were onle greeting. Not too much spaniard outside Pau,Calderon,Rudy fans right here!

b-ball forever wrote:Aren't the exclamation marks and question marks supposed to go upside down at the start too?

"Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal"

^^If u aren't Spanish and you can pronounce that properly, ur a genius!

You're right m8! I should've put them both. I went a bit spanglish

And I'm sure pronouncing that sentence must be hell for a foreigner, it's even hard for me after a couple of beers!

rsavaj wrote:http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/132563

Sarver's an a-hole, who knew

Sarver = no class. Fans can be fans and boo or not give him the acknowledgment he deserved, but Sarver is a grown man. A man in his position needs to rise above, especially after Nash spoke out before the game in the morning and fans are giving him a nice standing O. Be a man, acknowledge what he did while you were a newbie owner and didn't know sh*t and screwed everything up. Be thankful and hope that Porter has half the success MikeD had and that Kerr is as good as you think he is.

The fans showed more class than he did, and they were cut off accordingly.

And there's report came out that said Sarver told the reporters to not point camera at MikeD during the introduction? Yeah, great idea from a mature man. Childish.

What an @ss. He should show some class and recognize the coach who made his team lots of money with their popularity and style. And if he were smart business man, he would've pumped up the game positively through local media to sell tickets rather than not allowing them to film MikeD. Maybe in 5-10 years when the feelings fade he'll acknowledge what MikeD did here.

rsavaj wrote:

GaliSun wrote:[OT] Pues sí, de Vigo. Estamos formando una pequeña colonia aqui, jeje.Un saludo! [/OT]

I want to be a part of this. I'm not from Spain, but I am brown; that should count for something, right?

Unless u speak spanish u can't be part of our club...