2023-24 Season Discussion and Speculation 3 - Post Free Agency Discussion

[grumpysaddle]

Gotta see a player with the full uni on, always looks weird just a bad angle photo of a jersey. Better than the Nash era stuff, regardless.

[bwgood77]

This season is put up or shut up time for Ayton. Expectations are completely different now with Booker, KD and Beal here, all 3 being consummate professionals and focused on winning a championship. Vogel also strikes me as a no nonsense guy who won't be afraid to challenge players.

We've already seen Ishbia won't hesitate to make big moves, if the same old inconsistent moody Ayton comes back this season he's gone by the trade deadline, guaranteed.

People act like Ayton played like he did last year every year. As a rookie he had horrid defense but was playing instinctively and very good offensively for a rookie with 1 year college experience. Then his defense took major steps in years 2 and 3 and he looked better and better, and then in year 4 his offense took a major step. He was inconsistent but so is everyone.

This last year was different...some bad games here and there...what appeared to be motor issues at times, but our roster was also crap while we had like 7 players injured for long stretches so he was always playing with different players. It impacted Bridges as well for a long while.

If we are healthy, and with a fresh start, a training camp with new players, he should get better. He had a slow start shooting last year, so hopefully that doesn't help again. I do worry about communication on defense overall, because Paul and Crowder were big here (which also helped Ayton), and I think KD is very quiet and Beal has never been much of a defender, so we need a vocal defensive guy talking on the floor.

But he will overthink at times, and it will make him freeze, and then he plays worse overthinking things, loses confidence, and it hurts his game...hopefully he can avoid most of that which could result in fan boos as well.

But again, it's not like he's been the same player he was last year the previous 3 years. He was vastly improving on defense in years 2 and 3 and then on offense (shooting from inside the arc..among league's elite) that year. He was anchoring the defense in two of those years and giving us very efficient scoring in year 4...and far more consistent.

He's now the 4th option behind 3 guys who are all elite scorers. All he has to do is run the floor, crash the offensive boards and set some proper screens.

If Ayton still can't excel at his role now that it's so defined and simple, then you have to cut your losses and move on becuase he will never get it.

He got a lot better at setting screens and was among the leaders in screen assists. He also has had double digit rebounds every year and has overall been a very efficient finisher. He could be a little more consistent rebounding but overall he is a top 10 C in that regard already....and on a per minute basis even better. The main thing is his defense getting back to where it was. Hopefully Vogel helps with that, but the whole team needs to focus on defense. We should be fine on offense.

I doubt you watched him much pre KD. He looked pretty bad with KD but he has looked a lot better most all the time prior to that. Just some inconsistent games here and there that frustrate people.

[sunsbum]

I doubt you watched him much pre KD. He looked pretty bad with KD but he has looked a lot better most all the time prior to that. Just some inconsistent games here and there that frustrate people.

KD's fault now!! Another day another excuse! Aytons problems were happening long before KD got here.

[bwgood77]

I doubt you watched him much pre KD. He looked pretty bad with KD but he has looked a lot better most all the time prior to that. Just some inconsistent games here and there that frustrate people.

KD's fault now!! Another day another excuse! Aytons problems were happening long before KD got here.

Did I say it was his fault? No. just inconsistent. In his first 3 games with KD, he had 16 boards twice, but the game in between that he had 3. He played fewer minutes, got 4 shots, was in foul trouble, etc, but it was obviously inconsistent. He shot well overall in those games, but didn't get a ton. In the first one he was 7/10, then 2/4, then 4/6.

In the 5 after KD came back, he had double digit rebounds in 3 of them, but 3 and 5 in the other two. He had double digit points in 4 games, 3 over 15. Shot well and got to the line 7x in one of them.

So he had good games, just a few inconsistent ones with really low boards, but at the same time, KD rebounds more than other PFs, so sometimes he will get them.

Then in the playoffs there were similar consistencies. People just don't remember the games he plays well or pretty well...it's just those few low rebound games they focus on.

[Jdiddy701]

What do we think? Seems like these are the new jerseys for this year

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?s=46

Kind of ugly

Yeah, I like the idea but they look half finished somehow.

Not sure why the league forced us from not being able to wear the valley jerseys again. Those were perfect.

At least they’re better than our recent jerseys, but still pretty disappointing that’s what we came up with. The Valley jerseys were perfect. Hopefully the authentics look better than the swingmans pictured here.


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[lilfishi22]

What do we think? Seems like these are the new jerseys for this year

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?s=46

It's a nice throwback to the 90's era jerseys.

Beats these attempted throwbacks

[lilfishi22]

Gotta see a player with the full uni on, always looks weird just a bad angle photo of a jersey. Better than the Nash era stuff, regardless.

Thought they were cool at the time but looking back....not great. For the post 2000's era, I think the 2015-2019 might have been the epitome of bland and lazy design

THese are instant classics


Also who's idea was the short lived t-shirt jersey era??

[garrick]

What do we think? Seems like these are the new jerseys for this year

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?s=46

It's a nice throwback to the 90's era jerseys.

Beats these attempted throwbacks

I feel like this is just like reinventing the wheel.

There's nothing wrong with the classic 90's jerseys and really wish they would just keep that same iconic design. I haven't really liked many of the newer jerseys to be honest and wish they would just keep it the same purple and orange from the KJ & Barkley era, this newest one looks similar enough to the 90's jerseys just worse.

[Calvin Klein]

We have two of the most iconic and cool jerseys ever. 90s and valley jerseys. Its a shame they have to keep changing them to sell more.

[sunskerr]

I think the sleeved/shirts jerseys look bad because 1) its all **** orange. 2)the shirt and shorts are the exact same color/pattern/texture. If its not white or black, having the exact same color will look weird, and even worse if there's no design/texture/pattern to break up the shirt from the shorts. It's a pretty simple fashion faux pas.

There needs to be more of a contrast between the top and bottom for sleeves to make sense. Check out NRL jerseys in Australia for an idea of how to do sleeves properly.

[lilfishi22]

I think the sleeved/shirts jerseys look bad because 1) its all **** orange. 2)the shirt and shorts are the exact same color/pattern/texture. If its not white or black, having the exact same color will look weird, and even worse if there's no design/texture/pattern to break up the shirt from the shorts. It's a pretty simple fashion faux pas.

There needs to be more of a contrast between the top and bottom for sleeves to make sense. Check out NRL jerseys in Australia for an idea of how to do sleeves properly.

I like the general design although I really don't like all those sponsorship patches which messes up with the design but it's also like 98% of the reason why the NBA wanted to go down the shirt route. Every time I see someone wearing NRL jerseys on the street, I immediately think it's just gone too far.

[Bogyo]

What do we think? Seems like these are the new jerseys for this year

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?s=46

The white ones look better of these somehow. At least in my opinion. Cooler / bit retro lookin' design. I could see those selling especially if we do good.

(random rant: hard to get Suns stuff in europe generally, not sure why. By now a LOT of teams stuff is easy to get. Bulls/Boston/Lakers as they are NBA royalty. Bucks/Dallas/Denver/SA bc of the european players GSW on their recent run and Curry. Miami cuz its Miami, and some of their jerseys just look fng cool. Heck, even Brooklyn with the KD stuff (which I never really liked), but not much from Suns, really...)

[lilfishi22]

What do we think? Seems like these are the new jerseys for this year

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?s=46

The white ones look better of these somehow. At least in my opinion. Cooler / bit retro lookin' design. I could see those selling especially if we do good.

(random rant: hard to get Suns stuff in europe generally, not sure why. By now a LOT of teams stuff is easy to get. Bulls/Boston/Lakers as they are NBA royalty. Bucks/Dallas/Denver/SA bc of the european players GSW on their recent run and Curry. Miami cuz its Miami, and some of their jerseys just look fng cool. Heck, even Brooklyn with the KD stuff (which I never really liked), but not much from Suns, really...)

It's a global thing. It's really hard to find Suns merch in Australia too but fairly easy to find the big market merch like Lakers, Warriors etc. I have noticed a very slight uptick in Suns merch though since we started getting good over the last few years but before that, no chance.

[wheezy]

What do we think? Seems like these are the new jerseys for this year

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?s=46

Hopefully Ishbia also spends for a better brand design department.

[ImNotMcDiSwear]

What do we think? Seems like these are the new jerseys for this year

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?s=46

Hopefully Ishbia also spends for a better brand design department.

You gotta know he personally approved these, right?

I think they're pretty cool. Not amazing, but pretty cool.

I've always thought that since Suns are stars, we should have an alt black/purple jersey design that featured a bunch of stars in the background. Also thought we should try an alt with pink in addition to purple and orange in a sunset design.

But yeah - those classic sunbursts ought to be our default jerseys that stick around forever the way the Bulls, Celtics and Lakers jerseys have stayed the same for so long. They're classic.

[Bogyo]

What do we think? Seems like these are the new jerseys for this year

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?s=46

The white ones look better of these somehow. At least in my opinion. Cooler / bit retro lookin' design. I could see those selling especially if we do good.

(random rant: hard to get Suns stuff in europe generally, not sure why. By now a LOT of teams stuff is easy to get. Bulls/Boston/Lakers as they are NBA royalty. Bucks/Dallas/Denver/SA bc of the european players GSW on their recent run and Curry. Miami cuz its Miami, and some of their jerseys just look fng cool. Heck, even Brooklyn with the KD stuff (which I never really liked), but not much from Suns, really...)

It's a global thing. It's really hard to find Suns merch in Australia too but fairly easy to find the big market merch like Lakers, Warriors etc. I have noticed a very slight uptick in Suns merch though since we started getting good over the last few years but before that, no chance.

Your profile GIF perfectly sums up my answer to this.

[grumpysaddle]

Gotta see a player with the full uni on, always looks weird just a bad angle photo of a jersey. Better than the Nash era stuff, regardless.

Thought they were cool at the time but looking back....not great. For the post 2000's era, I think the 2015-2019 might have been the epitome of bland and lazy design

THese are instant classics


Also who's idea was the short lived t-shirt jersey era??

I think that was Adidas pushing it right? Before Nike took over as the jersey makers for the NBA. They probably thought they'd sell more "jerseys" if they were shirts like for soccer teams in other countries, but it failed miserably and just looked stupid.

[SlovenianDragon]

Our best jerseys besides the valley which every1 loves was the native american ones... Was that our city jerseys? Those were dope...I got a jacket....The court looked dope too...

[kennydorglas]

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[Mulhollanddrive]

I've been hesitant on Point Beal but was reading a Washington blog and they had this game mentioned.

Beal had 27 points, 17 assists playing PG when Dinwiddie was out.

Looks more comfortable in that role that I would have thought.

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