RealGM

Worth a read - I tend to agree with this.

http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=11299

Load of crap, IMO. All of those seem to be manifestations of poor coaching.

rsavaj wrote:Load of crap, IMO. All of those seem to be manifestations of poor coaching.

Exactly, the players play hard for a coach they respect. If they aren't putting effort into it, it means they don't believe in what the coach is preaching.

they don't believe in what the coach is preaching

and ... ahhh... that would be fundamental defense ?


Interesting points this guy makes.... lets just agree this isn't ALL Porter's fault.

Its only a matter of time before the internal grumblings will be heard by all. And then, well just ask Raja what happens next......

Yeah, so our defense sucks, duh!

Players' fault and not Kerr/Porter's, LMAO. That article is (Please Use More Appropriate Word).
It's not the players' fault that they don't play D, it's the dumbass GM's fault that he traded away all of the defensive players we had and assembled a bunch of stars and former stars who for the most part obviously don't play D, expecting em to hold the fort.

Anybody who has even a slight clue about the game of basketball knows that if u trade away Marion/Kurt Thomas/James Jones/Diaw/Raja, keep Amare/Nash/Barbosa, and add on J-Rich/Shaq/Hill/Barnes/Lou, your defense is gonna go to trash and you'll win less games. Team balance is fundamental.

Steve Kerr doesn't know shiyt on how to build a basketball team if this is the final roster we're gonna be grinding out with, and poor draft decisions and replacing D'Antoni with an incompetant coach doesn't help either. The mess is mostly on Steve "I am an idiot" Kerr.

Unless his plan is to stack up cash made on "star" player jersey sales over next couple years, not give an ish bout how many games we Win/Lose, then rebuild around Amare/J-Rich in 2010 of course, if that's the case then he's doing a pretty good job!

Don't bring Lou into this, I got his back

I blame Courtney Sims for all of our issues this season.....

Get Nashty wrote:I blame Courtney Sims for all of our issues this season.....

I blame Rasho.

you guys are getting pathetic at this whole blaming thing. rsavaj i usually almost always agree with you because you make good points but this is honestly pathetic. yes players respond to a coach they respect but how is a coach suppose to earn the respect if the players dont live up to their potential? im not saying that Porter is right he has made some serious mistakes but our players are even worse than he is. we have the damn pieces, the other teams that are having issues are because they dont have the missing piece that they need. we have them yet our oldest guys are the ones playing hard even in a blow out...

the main issue is our Mentality, we have given up. thats it. you cant tell me there is coaching mistakes and all when we have a 15 point lead and then blow it... thats on the players not the coach.

the duty of a team is 50-50 contribution between the players and the coaches, speaking out soooo much from nash and stat and bell earlier in the season didnt help anything.

idk the exact scenario but there was sooo much speculation with boston when KG came in and how it was going to be handled but they made it work didnt they? all i remember boston always saying is how driven they are at a goal. same with the lakers. what the EFF is our goal right now? where is the mental drive? THAT IS THE BIGGEST ISSUE not the coaches.

you cant tell me amare can drop 40 earlier in the season and now he sucks because of coaching mistakes. yes we do give shaq a lot of looks and not enough for amare but when amare does get those looks he misses them... so whats a coach to do? keep feeding the guy thats missing? Shaq fights for each rebound... amare gets fouls called.

barnes and LB cant decide to show up on one game outta the whole week. we need consistency from the bench which we dont have.

im done venting and the only reason i say all this is because we are blaming the wrong people, because you cant blame one person or 2 people in this problem we blame the team. THE TEAM

harshey1388 wrote:you guys are getting pathetic at this whole blaming thing. rsavaj i usually almost always agree with you because you make good points but this is honestly pathetic. yes players respond to a coach they respect but how is a coach suppose to earn the respect if the players dont live up to their potential? im not saying that Porter is right he has made some serious mistakes but our players are even worse than he is. we have the damn pieces, the other teams that are having issues are because they dont have the missing piece that they need. we have them yet our oldest guys are the ones playing hard even in a blow out...

the main issue is our Mentality, we have given up. thats it. you cant tell me there is coaching mistakes and all when we have a 15 point lead and then blow it... thats on the players not the coach.

the duty of a team is 50-50 contribution between the players and the coaches, speaking out soooo much from nash and stat and bell earlier in the season didnt help anything.

idk the exact scenario but there was sooo much speculation with boston when KG came in and how it was going to be handled but they made it work didnt they? all i remember boston always saying is how driven they are at a goal. same with the lakers. what the EFF is our goal right now? where is the mental drive? THAT IS THE BIGGEST ISSUE not the coaches.

you cant tell me amare can drop 40 earlier in the season and now he sucks because of coaching mistakes. yes we do give shaq a lot of looks and not enough for amare but when amare does get those looks he misses them... so whats a coach to do? keep feeding the guy thats missing? Shaq fights for each rebound... amare gets fouls called.

barnes and LB cant decide to show up on one game outta the whole week. we need consistency from the bench which we dont have.

im done venting and the only reason i say all this is because we are blaming the wrong people, because you cant blame one person or 2 people in this problem we blame the team. THE TEAM

The team has quit b/c they don't believe in their idiot coach. You have a BETTER roster than last year, but all of a sudden we're a terrible team....what's changed? The coaching staff. That's what's changed.

Not all the blame falls on him, b/c the players HAVE quit, but there's a reason they've quit...

rsavaj wrote:

harshey1388 wrote:

The team has quit b/c they don't believe in their idiot coach. You have a BETTER roster than last year, but all of a sudden we're a terrible team....what's changed? The coaching staff. That's what's changed.

Not all the blame falls on him, b/c the players HAVE quit, but there's a reason they've quit...

true but when did they give the coaching change a single chance? since porter was hired it was "we're excited and blah blah" a week later nash, and bell are on the press talking bout the problems they have with a coach... a week? whats that like 3 games maybe 4. what i see is a ten year old deciding he wants to play the guitar and gives it 2 weeks gets a couple blisters from the stings and then says... NAH I WANT A DRUM SET.

The mess is mostly on Steve "I am an idiot" Kerr.

a wiseman speaketh




and I'll quote another "another fine mess you've gotten us into"





our front orfice hard at work

Fire PORTER!!!!


Hire Eddie Jordan!!!!

Lets RUN again!!!

The main person that came in after we were successful and suddenly got bad was Terry Porter.

He has not improved this team in any of the areas that Kerr basically ran MikeD out of town for. Well, I guess the practice is longer, but that's it. When you look at New York's team on paper, there's no way we should be struggling to get a win against this roster. Even then, you look at Boston's team on paper, are they that much better than we are? In the starting lineup they had an advantage at PF and SF, we had an advantage at PG and a major one at C and SG is pretty even. On the bench, guys like House and Powe and Big Baby are decent players, but completely replaceable. So you wonder why did we get blown out the way we did? Becuase they had a game plan, we didn't.

On both offense and defense, Boston has a plan and you can tell from the start of the game what it was. On offense they went at Nash and Shaq with the screen and roll, set multiple picks to throw off our defense, kept the floor spaced and ran every time they made a stop. Porter didn't response and adjust to any of these in the slightest throughout the game. I wonder what he was drawing on that clipboard of his. On defense they crowded the paint, making it tough for Shaq and Amare to operated, and rotated really well on our 3 point shooters. Essentially they gave us the mid-range game. They also limited us to one shot each time down. Again, we didn't adjust to any of this. Shaq and Amare is always stepping on each other foot, Porter still hasn't figure out how to have these two play well together. After training camp, preseason, and almost half the season gone, he still hasn't got it figured out. MikeD adjusted and twisted his system to fit Shaq in the offense after a month he arrived in Phoenix.

And what was our game plan in the Boston game and the New York game? Nothing. It's still dumping the ball to Shaq and let him work. If it didn't work we play 1-on-5 basketball. This isn't NBA ball, this is street ball. This is BS. He isn't using the offensive talent of this team outside of Shaq, a guy who can't even play b2b or 4 games in 5 nights.

And let's not forget the reason Kerr kicked MikeD out - defense, bench play and accountability of the players. Porter has done none of them. Let's not talk about the defense first. But motivation, pride and accountability needs to come from the coaches. Some coaches motivate their players with fear (Skiles, Sloan) others by respect (Mike Brown, Rivers, D'Antoni). Porter gets neither from this team, and it shows. They know he's dumb and they don't respect him in anyway. They know his style sucks and isn't working so they don't give effort. They don't fight for him and they don't fear him when they dog it. I'll acknowledge that he's made some strides on the offensive side of the ball, but without the players respect he can only take us so far.

We still aren't using our bench, do we even have a bench? Porter sub pattern is still the worst the league. I don't know what his deal is with his rotations but they kill the flow of this team more often then not. There's just no balance. His thinking is elementary: Let me play Nash the entire 3rd and get the lead up and then sit him til the 5 minute mark of the 4th when the game is tied. He also played Shaq too much each game. On shorter rest, Shaq should've been a role player but instead we're relying on him for consistent offense, and so every time in the 4th he's tired and can't get a shot off. Porter just doesn't seem to know his personnel this far into the season. I haven't seen one switch to try and post JRich on smaller player to get him going. We're basically treating him as an athletic Raja Bell with less D - spot up long range bomber. He isn't giving LB enough deserved PT as well. Porter really is wasting the offensive talent this team has.

And the reason we don't play good defense is because the players that fill this roster don't play good defense at all. Never have and never will. Not even Pop can make Shaq defend the pick and roll. Trying to make this team a half-court, walk the ball down and pound it into the post, then play defense is just not going to happen; square peg, round hole. Kerr wants this team to play like the Spurs do and play good defense, but the players he had traded away (KT, Shawn, Raja, Boris) are all good defenders. Those are the guys that made us a respectable defensive team under MikeD. But Kerr either dumped them for cash or for more offensive minded players.

I also have to wonder what Kerr is thinking right now. Porter wasn't a desperation hiring, there's no excuse. Kerr had him in mind all along. He said he didn't want a retread, meaning coaches that have been around the league for years switching teams. But we've been saying all along that Porter is fine for a young team, but for a veteran team we need a tested coach with legit experience. Saunders was available and he would've been the best candidate. But he would've cost us and of course, Porter was cheaper and was already Kerr's buddy. Its a hierarchy. Kerr wants a guy he can control, and he can control Porter moreso than MikeD, Saunders or some other big name high paid coach.

Correction, i blame harshey1388

[quote="JohnVancouver"]Worth a read - I tend to agree with this.

--- What I meant was that I agree it's not ALL Porter. Yes, we traded away the best defensive players we have but there have been times our lack of effort on D has been embarassing. Amare has been waving people through the lane like a damned matador.
I had really thought Porter would bring in some defense schemes that limited the exposure of our most vulnerable defensive players, such as Nash, so I don't absolve him adn i hold him accountable for most everything else, such as no rotation that makes sense, poor end of game coaching and etc and so on.

But the guys on the team have to bear some of the weight for how they're actually playing, no?

Get Nashty wrote:Correction, i blame harshey1388

great suns input bro, you're using your membership/account well.

i do not know how to argue with that awesome point you are making. BOW to your knowledge.

The blame goes to Porter, Kerr, & Sarver. The players are employees playing to their talent (cept Amare).

3 HUGE MISTAKES HAVE COST THE SUNS...

Sarver refused to extend Joe Johnson
Kerr hiring Porter
Suns giving up picks for cash. Rudy, Sergio Rodriquez, Deng, Nate Robinson, ect.

Only one player deserves blame and that is Amare. Not for all the team's struggles, but for his lack of effort and huge ego which is costing him greatness.

Nash turning the ball over a million times doesn't help as well.

Nash is still playing as hard. His TO isn't due to his effort, the spacing is off, and our offense is too predictable thus there's not enough room for Nash to operate.

Lets just get this straight.. The Suns players are VERY high maintenance. They require someone of exceptional leadership to lead them [coachwise]. And Porter has not fulfilled this, whereas Mike D'Antoni did a resonable job at this.

We all wanted D'Antoni's head, and we now know we were wrong. In some sorts we are partially to blame as the fans also contribute to media hype, which in turn lead to D'Antoni's internal pressure and his decision to leave.


I dunno how the Suns will resolve their problems without major trades or without a coaching change (whether it be the coach itself or the coaching philosophy).