Why did Wayman Tisdale start at PF during the Suns' 97 playoff run?

[SelakStreet]

The '97 Suns were without Charles Barkley for the first time since '92 as they shipped him off to Houston for Sam Cassell, Robert Horry, Chucky Brown and Mark Bryant, and by the time the season ended, only Bryant remained on the Suns roster as Cassell was swapped for Jason Kidd, Tony Dumas and Loren Meyer, and Horry was sent to the Lakers in exchange for the returning Cedric Ceballos. Furthermore, the Suns became Kevin Johnson's team again, as they made the playoffs.

Their opponent during the 1st round of the '97 playoffs was the Seattle SuperSonics, who had fielded a starting lineup of Gary Payton, Hersey Hawkins, Detlef Schrempf, Shawn Kemp and prized free agent acquisition Jim McIlvaine (previously with the Washington Bullets) throughout the regular season, but lack of production from McIlvaine meant that Seattle benched McIlvaine in favor of shuffling Kemp to center, and inserting Terry Cummings into the starting lineup at PF.

In response, the Suns fielded a starting lineup of Jason Kidd, Kevin Johnson, Rex Chapman, Wayman Tisdale and Hot Rod Williams, even though Tisdale was never considered a true productive starter (and hadn't been one) since leaving the Sacramento Kings in 1994 to join up with the Suns, and only got the starting job for size and decoy purposes, because small ball at the time wasn't seen as viable as it would be many years later, and the Suns didn't trust Manning enough to be a starter.

Despite his starting role at PF, Tisdale averaged 3.0 points, 1.8 boards and a whopping 3 personal fouls in just 9 minutes per game for four games before getting benched in favor of Wesley Person at PF, and so by Game 5 vs. Seattle, Tisdale got the DNP-CD for his poor performance as a starting PF in 80% of the Suns' games, even though Cummings himself was past his prime and not the same star he used to be since tearing his ACL with the Spurs back in '92, so if Tisdale was truly given the chance to produce as a true starter, he probably would've outperformed Cummings instead of being used as mere size decoy.

What are your thoughts on this tidbit of a guy who hadn't been considered a true productive starter since leaving Sacramento and after three regular seasons and two playoff runs of mere backup duties with Phoenix, is now suddenly given the chance to be a starter for the Suns' playoff run in '97?

[Texas Chuck]

Lots of teams to this day start a big who plays the first 4-6 of a half and never sees the court again. I don't know that Tisdale is that unique in that regard, is he?

[gavran]

Because he was a great bass player.