NBA PLAYOFFS: GAME 1: (5) Los Angeles Clippers @ (4) Phoenix Suns l Sunday l 5:00 l TNT

[Jdiddy701]

He played an 11 man rotation after talking about tightening the rotation up. In that 11 man rotation, **** Landry Shamet got 24 minutes and TJ Warren got 0. Messing with the starting lineup was Monty's fault. That 100% threw off the team and contributed to their abysmal first quarter. He's not responsible for everything in the loss, but he's definitely the main culprit.

I disagree with that. The Suns have had a week to prepare. Torrey Craig played well and I know Kawhi absolutely killed is but Torrey played solid defense. With Payne out, it’s really no surprise he had to go to Shamet. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that’s watched the Suns. That’s a roster construction issue, not Monty. Who is our 3rd PG? Keep in mind that Saban Lee cannot play in the playoffs. Monty could play Ross and TJ Warren and we’ll still hear complaints about them, too.

The players that stepped foot on the court yesterday was enough to win the game. Period.


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It's the playoffs. You keep at least 2 of KD, Booker, Ayton, CP3 in the game at all times. Booker/KD are more than capable of playing the PG role. You MAAAAYBE go to 9 deep if you have to, probably preferable at an 8 man rotation. Shamet didn't handle the ball, didn't hit shots, sure he played slightly above average defense, but why play him when you have a better defender in Okogie just rotting on the bench? Craig played well, and I'm not slighting him, but it 100% threw off the small amount of chemistry the starting unit for the entire end of the season had. There is literally no excuse for playing Shamet and Wainright in the playoffs. In the regular season, fine, whatever... not in the fricking playoffs.

I agree he played way too many players. Monty made an adjustment and went to Landale in the 2nd half after Bizzy was getting hacked in the first half. Wainwright is a big body and not surprised he went to him to see how he does against Kawhi. It didn’t work out well but no way do I think those players cost the Suns the game. Did it help? No but ultimately our star players need to be better.

I agree that two of the big four should be in at all times. I’m not sure who/how they stagger them but I’m sure they’ll figure it out.


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[Jdiddy701]

Any time a team loses, the fault is always directed at rotations. I don’t know how many times I see complaints about some of the best coaches of all time. Go to the Warriors forum, bet you just about everyone was complaining about Kerr’s rotations in game 1. Matter of fact, go to any forum and peep when a team loses and see what fans say about their team. It’s always the coaches fault. I just find it funny.

Ultimately, our star players did not deliver the win for us yesterday.

Edit: just looked at the Bucks Game 1 loss to the Heat, they are also begging for Coach Bud to be fired lol fans are ridiculous.

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[Slim Charless]

I was just posting a clip because of you saying "this is the way"...

I don't see Presti leaving OKC at all. He has built up a great young team and has a boatload of picks. We have no assets. I imagine we are exactly the type of team he would want to avoid. There isn't much he can do here but go down within a couple years. With OKC, he is building and GMs love the draft and having the assets to make a big trade if need be.

I don't think I see Jones going anywhere. I don't really expect Monty either, but if we lose in the 1st round, there is probably a pretty good chance.

Not sure where we would go though. Not Ime. Probably not another guy who disappointed in the playoffs when Utah had the best record, losing to the Clips without Kawhi and then the first round last year vs Dallas. If he would have been our coach you would have called for his head too.

You guys have been loving you some Monty for the past year and I get called out all the time for bashing him. Alot of posters here have backed Monty. He's our Marc Jackson, like I've been saying for months. I'll be proven right there. Be it this summer (Hopefully) or sometime next season. We're not winning a title with him as our coach.

As to the rest of your post, I think Jones has way more leeway. He didn't wanna do the trade and wanted to keep Mikal. I don't think it's really fair to fire him for something that was forced on him. Presti I admit is likely a pipe dream.

I am very curious as to why you (and others but you can only answer for yourself) constantly fight me on this Ime thing. What is about him that YOU feel is lacking?

I think he's a solid coach (though his replacement in Boston is doing about the same so far, so it may just be talent..Ime lost in the finals like Monty did).

I am not necessarily a huge Monty fan. It's just what I expect from the team. I think if we get knocked out first round there is a decent chance he is gone, but I don't know that we will lose. And if we did and the Clips went on to win it all, it wouldn't look terrible (except we lost to them without George).

As for Ime, the primary reason is because he got fired for having relations with a younger female staff member, and given the Sarver stuff I can't imagine they would risk hiring someone who had those issues. It would likely come with a lot of backlash. The owner would certainly want to avoid that.

See you mention how good Boston is doing but fail to mention that JoeM is Ime's former assistant and likely runs the same offense that Ime did. Same defense too I'd imagine. You also fail to mention that it was Ime that instilled that whole attitude and locker room presence that the Celtics currently have.

What exactly has JoeM done? Even Tatum and Brown give Ime the credit.

So again, what makes you not want him? Besides the very basic "he slept with another woman"...ignoring the fact that it was consensual and the woman in question has never spoken out against Ime. Along with the fact that most ppl who do know seem to think Boston overreacted.

[TeamTragic]

Watch on YouTube

Perk is right about Monty.

[lilfishi22]

Also before everyone jumps off the cliff, these playoffs are pretty wide open, especially in the West. There isn't one super stacked Warrior team that's going to go 4-0 all the way to the Finals. Every game is going to be hard fought and there's no easy match ups. Even a team that is lacking in playoff experience (Kings) managed to beat a 4x champ in game 1, a Lakers team that had to fight just to get into the play-ins beat the #2 seed and even the Heat managed to take Gm1 from the Bucks. I mean, did anyone think we would steam roll a well coached Clippers team that had playoff Kawhi?

In my view, the Bucks and Celtics are the clear 1A/1B favourites but neither teams has the overwhelming talent that the Warriors had with KD. Even of the clear 1A/1B in this league, they won't have an easy path to the CF or Finals.

Nobody thought they would steam roll a Clippers team missing its 2nd best player and All NBA HOFer Paul George sure but they didn’t expect Suns to get punked in the 1st qtr and then lose the game and lose homecourt.

And idk you’ve been following much about the grizzlies lately but a vast majority people outside of Tennessee expected the Lakers to beat the Grizzlies in a 7 game series. Lakers with their new additions are far better than Memphis. Also worth noting, Lakers won after Ja Morant went out with injury. Did we have an excuse like that? And honestly if Suns do lose this series I hope we do have some type of injury like that to one of our main guys to at least save face in the media so we can blame the loss on the injury instead of a plain choke in back to back seasons. And Heat beat the Bucks because Giannis left the game with injury early in the 1st qtr and never came back. Seriously man, did you look up at all to see what the headlines in the NBA was today? All these injuries are dominating the headlines there’s no way you’d miss it. A Bucks team without Giannis is not better than Miami on anyone’s minds.

Not saying you’re gonna be wrong but I remember many people were spouting the same thing in the last playoff series the Suns played when Mavs tied it at 2-2. I remember there was a “this is actually good for the suns to have some competition” “we have them exactly where we want them, I wonder if we lost on purpose to toy with them” type crap.

Losing home court is more embarrassing and disappointing than it is some sort of death knell for this series. The point is that these playoffs will be competitive and hard fought and we're not far and away better than any team but no team is far and away better than us either.

I just don't understand the sky is falling mentality because we lost this one game

[dremill24]

Any time a team loses, the fault is always directed at rotations.

Its just the easiest thing to see. One would have to see/understand/interpret much more advanced concepts of the game to blame anything else. Internet peeps aint trying to bother with nuance and critical thinking.

[lilfishi22]

The biggest L for me in this game was Monty's decision to not play any of the depth pieces that emerged post trade deadline. TJ didn't play, Okogie got 6min despite playing starter minutes (and was a starter) for half the season and Ross played 4min and took one shot. On the other hand, Shamet who played 10 games to finish the season after coming back from injury (and didn't even play well) got 24min and took 1 3PTA.

We got guys like Ross and TJ and Okogie for very specific reasons. It makes no sense to me why Shamet is playing 24min and doesn't even play any role well

[TeamTragic]

The biggest L for me in this game was Monty's decision to not play any of the depth pieces that emerged post trade deadline. TJ didn't play, Okogie got 6min despite playing starter minutes (and was a starter) for half the season and Ross played 4min and took one shot. On the other hand, Shamet who played 10 games to finish the season after coming back from injury (and didn't even play well) got 24min and took 1 3PTA.

We got guys like Ross and TJ and Okogie for very specific reasons. It makes no sense to me why Shamet is playing 24min and doesn't even play any role well

It doesn't make sense to anyone that understands how to manage a lineup.

[Slim Charless]

The biggest L for me in this game was Monty's decision to not play any of the depth pieces that emerged post trade deadline. TJ didn't play, Okogie got 6min despite playing starter minutes (and was a starter) for half the season and Ross played 4min and took one shot. On the other hand, Shamet who played 10 games to finish the season after coming back from injury (and didn't even play well) got 24min and took 1 3PTA.

We got guys like Ross and TJ and Okogie for very specific reasons. It makes no sense to me why Shamet is playing 24min and doesn't even play any role well

I suppose maybe he was thinking he plays Shame to save energy/fouls so Booker/KD/CP3 don't have to check Kawhi as Shame DOES try hard out there. He's also a much better shooter (theoretically) then Okogie.

[MrMiyagi]

Shamet should've been the throw-in for KD instead of Jae.

[darealjuice]

I actually don't have a problem with starting Craig. He did about as well as you could hope guarding Kawhi, Okogie doesn't have the size to guard Kawhi, KD will only get into foul trouble guarding Kawhi full-time, and I wouldn't expect either Okogie or Craig to have big impacts on offense if they're not playing with the starters anyways. I think Craig gets more playing time if he doesn't get into foul trouble yesterday too.

My gripe is 24 minutes for Shamet and Wainwright seeing the floor at all. I'm hoping both of those were driven by Craig getting into foul trouble, but we'll see. I understand that Shamet gets playing time over Ross because Ross can't guard his own shadow, but I'd rather see Okogie's defense and occasional spot shooting out there. We should be running a 9-man rotation max, and Wainwright should not be in it. Unfortunately I don't feel good anyone on our bench playing big minutes in the playoffs though.

[Slim Charless]

Shamet should've been the throw-in for KD instead of Jae.

Monty:

[PittsburghSuns]

Nice watching Cam go off tonight. Can’t wait to watch Chris Paul put up 6 points on 2/9 FG tomorrow.

[oddity]

I understand that when you're the man, you get blamed for losing period.

But Devin Booker is so active on defense on giving so much heart that even if we lose how can you blame this man??

Boy, that didn't age well

[bwgood77]

You guys have been loving you some Monty for the past year and I get called out all the time for bashing him. Alot of posters here have backed Monty. He's our Marc Jackson, like I've been saying for months. I'll be proven right there. Be it this summer (Hopefully) or sometime next season. We're not winning a title with him as our coach.

As to the rest of your post, I think Jones has way more leeway. He didn't wanna do the trade and wanted to keep Mikal. I don't think it's really fair to fire him for something that was forced on him. Presti I admit is likely a pipe dream.

I am very curious as to why you (and others but you can only answer for yourself) constantly fight me on this Ime thing. What is about him that YOU feel is lacking?

I think he's a solid coach (though his replacement in Boston is doing about the same so far, so it may just be talent..Ime lost in the finals like Monty did).

I am not necessarily a huge Monty fan. It's just what I expect from the team. I think if we get knocked out first round there is a decent chance he is gone, but I don't know that we will lose. And if we did and the Clips went on to win it all, it wouldn't look terrible (except we lost to them without George).

As for Ime, the primary reason is because he got fired for having relations with a younger female staff member, and given the Sarver stuff I can't imagine they would risk hiring someone who had those issues. It would likely come with a lot of backlash. The owner would certainly want to avoid that.

See you mention how good Boston is doing but fail to mention that JoeM is Ime's former assistant and likely runs the same offense that Ime did. Same defense too I'd imagine. You also fail to mention that it was Ime that instilled that whole attitude and locker room presence that the Celtics currently have.

What exactly has JoeM done? Even Tatum and Brown give Ime the credit.

So again, what makes you not want him? Besides the very basic "he slept with another woman"...ignoring the fact that it was consensual and the woman in question has never spoken out against Ime. Along with the fact that most ppl who do know seem to think Boston overreacted.

I didn't say I didn't want him but that I don't see it happening for the reasons I mentioned. The Nets were all set to hire him but they took so much flack from the league that they backed out of hiring him.

I don't know exactly what happened with the woman, but it sounds like it was more than a relationship. She obviously came out and claimed he did/said something very inappropriate in addition to having the relationship.

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I know Ime got them to the finals like Monty did with the Suns.

Joe led them to a six game improvement in the record, all without RWIII more than half of the year.

[lilfishi22]

I actually don't have a problem with starting Craig. He did about as well as you could hope guarding Kawhi, Okogie doesn't have the size to guard Kawhi, KD will only get into foul trouble guarding Kawhi full-time, and I wouldn't expect either Okogie or Craig to have big impacts on offense if they're not playing with the starters anyways. I think Craig gets more playing time if he doesn't get into foul trouble yesterday too.

My gripe is 24 minutes for Shamet and Wainwright seeing the floor at all. I'm hoping both of those were driven by Craig getting into foul trouble, but we'll see. I understand that Shamet gets playing time over Ross because Ross can't guard his own shadow, but I'd rather see Okogie's defense and occasional spot shooting out there. We should be running a 9-man rotation max, and Wainwright should not be in it. Unfortunately I don't feel good anyone on our bench playing big minutes in the playoffs though.

I get we might've needed some size with Wainwright so I'm not too fussed with him playing some minutes but Shamet getting 24 when he's no better (likely worse) than Ross, TJ and Okogie is really hard to understand. Shamet is a better defender than Ross but the upside is clearly on Ross' side with his scoring or at least a floor spacer. Shamet didn't really add much offensively aside from finish on a couple of easy fast breaks but even with that, it's hard to understand him getting the minutes he got.

I think Okogie playing 6min is just odd. We could've used his defense and rim pressure and even if he's not going 6 for 8 from 3 or something, just having him out there is more helpful than whatever Shamet was doing.

I think in most circumstances, Shamet will get fewer minutes in G2 but with Monty, it's hard to tell

[Revived]

Anyway, it's clear from what I *have* watched the team doesn't have much of a heart and soul. Jumps right out at you.

They used to, they traded it away.

It’s clear this team would be better off with Bridges and Cam. Would make us deeper and more versatile. Still wouldn’t be a championship team because Chris Paul is trash and Ayton is inconsistent.

The new ownership team made a huge move and failed miserably. Durant is a great player but he’s older always been fragile and we were not a contender with or without him. Now our future is completely bleak can’t imagine book won’t want out in a couple years when these guys retire or are traded/released.

New owner got a new toy and wanted to play with it right away instead of slowly unwrapping his present and opening it in an appropriate manner.

He never accounted for the improvement and age of Bridges/Johnson instead decided to piss it all way for a big name.

[PittsburghSuns]

They used to, they traded it away.

It’s clear this team would be better off with Bridges and Cam. Would make us deeper and more versatile. Still wouldn’t be a championship team because Chris Paul is trash and Ayton is inconsistent.

The new ownership team made a huge move and failed miserably. Durant is a great player but he’s older always been fragile and we were not a contender with or without him. Now our future is completely bleak can’t imagine book won’t want out in a couple years when these guys retire or are traded/released.

New owner got a new toy and wanted to play with it right away instead of slowly unwrapping his present and opening it in an appropriate manner.

He never accounted for the improvement and age of Bridges/Johnson instead decided to piss it all way for a big name.

Watching those guys play tonight hurt thinking this could have been our core with Book for many years. Still not sure what would have happened with DA long term and CP was a horrendous long term deal at his age but man this blows.

[darealjuice]

I actually don't have a problem with starting Craig. He did about as well as you could hope guarding Kawhi, Okogie doesn't have the size to guard Kawhi, KD will only get into foul trouble guarding Kawhi full-time, and I wouldn't expect either Okogie or Craig to have big impacts on offense if they're not playing with the starters anyways. I think Craig gets more playing time if he doesn't get into foul trouble yesterday too.

My gripe is 24 minutes for Shamet and Wainwright seeing the floor at all. I'm hoping both of those were driven by Craig getting into foul trouble, but we'll see. I understand that Shamet gets playing time over Ross because Ross can't guard his own shadow, but I'd rather see Okogie's defense and occasional spot shooting out there. We should be running a 9-man rotation max, and Wainwright should not be in it. Unfortunately I don't feel good anyone on our bench playing big minutes in the playoffs though.

I get we might've needed some size with Wainwright so I'm not too fussed with him playing some minutes but Shamet getting 24 when he's no better (likely worse) than Ross, TJ and Okogie is really hard to understand. Shamet is a better defender than Ross but the upside is clearly on Ross' side with his scoring or at least a floor spacer. Shamet didn't really add much offensively aside from finish on a couple of easy fast breaks but even with that, it's hard to understand him getting the minutes he got.

I think Okogie playing 6min is just odd. We could've used his defense and rim pressure and even if he's not going 6 for 8 from 3 or something, just having him out there is more helpful than whatever Shamet was doing.

I think in most circumstances, Shamet will get fewer minutes in G2 but with Monty, it's hard to tell

Considering CP3 and Book sat about 15 minutes yesterday, I think Shamet would have played around that much without foul trouble for Craig last night. Okogie would have made more sense to fill those minutes though. I'm not a huge Ross fan personally.

[MrMiyagi]

I actually don't have a problem with starting Craig. He did about as well as you could hope guarding Kawhi, Okogie doesn't have the size to guard Kawhi, KD will only get into foul trouble guarding Kawhi full-time, and I wouldn't expect either Okogie or Craig to have big impacts on offense if they're not playing with the starters anyways. I think Craig gets more playing time if he doesn't get into foul trouble yesterday too.

My gripe is 24 minutes for Shamet and Wainwright seeing the floor at all. I'm hoping both of those were driven by Craig getting into foul trouble, but we'll see. I understand that Shamet gets playing time over Ross because Ross can't guard his own shadow, but I'd rather see Okogie's defense and occasional spot shooting out there. We should be running a 9-man rotation max, and Wainwright should not be in it. Unfortunately I don't feel good anyone on our bench playing big minutes in the playoffs though.

I get we might've needed some size with Wainwright so I'm not too fussed with him playing some minutes but Shamet getting 24 when he's no better (likely worse) than Ross, TJ and Okogie is really hard to understand. Shamet is a better defender than Ross but the upside is clearly on Ross' side with his scoring or at least a floor spacer. Shamet didn't really add much offensively aside from finish on a couple of easy fast breaks but even with that, it's hard to understand him getting the minutes he got.

I think Okogie playing 6min is just odd. We could've used his defense and rim pressure and even if he's not going 6 for 8 from 3 or something, just having him out there is more helpful than whatever Shamet was doing.

I think in most circumstances, Shamet will get fewer minutes in G2 but with Monty, it's hard to tell

Considering CP3 and Book sat about 15 minutes yesterday, I think Shamet would have played around that much without foul trouble for Craig last night. Okogie would have made more sense to fill those minutes though. I'm not a huge Ross fan personally.

We had a whopping 10 bench points last night. Give me Ross, because I can't stand watching Shamet shoot.