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Do you guys think we need Barbosa to be successful in the playoffs or is he just hurting the team? IMO he is more of a luxury at this point but would still like to see him in the regular rotation minutes. He should be getting 16-20 minutes still. If he gets it going come playoff time, the Suns will be very dangerous for any team (as long as Lopez is back).

Here's my rotation
Nash-32 Dragic-16
Richardson-32 Barbosa-16
Hill-28 Dudley-20
Amare-38 Amundson-10
Lopez-28 Frye-20

Of course this is with Lopez being healthy.

LB is an interesting issue right now. He's always been so integral in our rotation and yet, this season he underperformed a bit and was given fewer minutes - then comes the injury. He falls out of what actually becomes a very winning rotation and he's back now.

This happens all the time - look at Kevin Martin in Sacramento. Started the season with some 30, 50 point games then got injured for a few months. He comes back only to find ROY-candidate Tyreke Evans having taken his job. Martin puts up 10, 12 points a game and is traded to Houston.

I love Barbs with all my heart (no homo) but you do have to wonder how he fits going forward. Do we anticipate losing/shedding JRich and wanting to give big minutes to LB? Or do we decide he isn't worth the money at the minutes he's playing, and use him as a trade chip?

So I guess I don't have answers, but I have questions

He's been doing well ever since he came back IMO. With Barbs and Lopez healthy we are 10 deep...that kind of depth is vital for the playoffs.

I'd used Barbosa as 9th man, Frye, Dudley and Dragic then Barbs. Amundson would come in last but for more than 10 minutes though, atleast 15 imo.

i love barbosa but as far as him doing "well", he's only had 2 decent games since his return ( Min & NY). i know he's still got rust and he's missed most the season, but i just hope he pulls his **** together for the post season.

I still think he's adjusting to the team. He's just realizing that this isn't a Mike D'Antoni team anymore.

I think it's nice to have Barbosa around this year, but I do agree with him being a 9th man.

I anticipate that he will be traded this offseason in an attempt for the Suns to land a 1st rounder before the draft.

It might just be me but I don't think any mid-first round player will be better than Barbo is.

Yeah no way. But he is getting paid a hefty sum amount of money. Maybe, if anything, trade him for cap relief and a mid-late first round pick just so Sarver can sign Amare. Other than that I would like to keep LB because after his contract expires I expect his new one to be a lot lower.

Since his return he is a turnover machine and a jacking machine. He flat out sucks. However, he has always been inconsistent it was just that his good games outweighed his bad games, now it is the other way around. When we gave up that lead in Minny he jacked like 5 shots in a row, all bricks of course. i would not mind if he was 11 or 12 in rotation.

thapharcyd wrote:Since his return he is a turnover machine and a jacking machine. He flat out sucks. However, he has always been inconsistent it was just that his good games outweighed his bad games, now it is the other way around. When we gave up that lead in Minny he jacked like 5 shots in a row, all bricks of course. i would not mind if he was 11 or 12 in rotation.

He's always been that I don't really like Barbosa's IQ of the game. The only time I wanna see Barbosa in the game is if Nash is in, because Barbosa is only good for open buckets.

Barbosa running point is like Shaq running point.

thapharcyd wrote:Since his return he is a turnover machine and a jacking machine. He flat out sucks. However, he has always been inconsistent it was just that his good games outweighed his bad games, now it is the other way around. When we gave up that lead in Minny he jacked like 5 shots in a row, all bricks of course. i would not mind if he was 11 or 12 in rotation.

So that game negates the 10-0 run that secured the lead for us in the previous game?

Barbososo is a wrecking ball that swings both ways

Jdiddy701 wrote:

thapharcyd wrote:Since his return he is a turnover machine and a jacking machine. He flat out sucks. However, he has always been inconsistent it was just that his good games outweighed his bad games, now it is the other way around. When we gave up that lead in Minny he jacked like 5 shots in a row, all bricks of course. i would not mind if he was 11 or 12 in rotation.

He's always been that I don't really like Barbosa's IQ of the game. The only time I wanna see Barbosa in the game is if Nash is in, because Barbosa is only good for open buckets.

Barbosa running point is like Shaq running point.

Yeah at least Shaq could pass

Saw what you want about our bench playing great even without Barbosa, but Barbosa has to be a big part of our offense if we want to win in the playoffs. It's often been said that depth in the playoffs does not have as big of an effect as depth during the regular season since teams want to have their best 5 on the court for longer as each game is much more important. So while we get by during the regular season with good overall scoring off the bench, in the playoffs we will not be playing our 8th-9th man like 14mpg and we'll need more scoring from guys who will get a lot of playing time.

Which is why Barbosa has to play well if we want to go deep. Barbosa is the only scorer on our bench who doesn't need Nash to score and in the playoffs, teams are going to be covering Nash hard and without Nash getting easy baskets for our bench guys and finding the open man, offensive production from guys like Dudley, Frye, Dragic and Lopez will drop. Which is why Barbosa is so important to this team even though we seem to have gotten by quite well without him in the lineup. Barbosa is a proven 6th man (when playing well) and no playoff team has had success without a proven scorer off the bench, that's just a fact.

So to answer your question, yes, we absolutely need Barbosa to play well if we want to go deep.

I'd like to see Barbosa more involved in the rotation, so far he hasnt really been given a consistent amount of playing time since his return. But then again we need him to step up and play like he did a few years ago when he won the sixth man of the year award.

omg he just got his arm torn open and had a cyst removed. Let him get back into rhythm before we sell him to whoever is silly enough to give us a first rounder...