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2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V

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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#761 » by Ghost of Kleine » Tue Apr 1, 2025 3:28 am

mkot wrote:
BobbieL wrote:
King4Day wrote:Super excited this season is almost over.
Thankfully the real Suns came out and prevented our front office from thinking we can be good if we just make minor tweaks.

I know some people (Ishbia especially) hates the idea of tanking but watching a team with no expectations grow is FAR more fun than this.

Deal Book or KD to get our picks back. Trade the other to get some youth back. Wishful thinking.
At least we traded 2031 to Utah for literally nothing


Still cannot believe they traded that pick for three picks of much lesser value
what the hell were they thinking


It was believed that the move is to make the Butler trade done, but the 2nd trade wasn't a done deal, apparently, and they did the first deal anyway :lol:

That's just southpark level hilarious

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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#762 » by Hitachi77 » Tue Apr 1, 2025 3:39 am

The Kings and Mavs both blew their games, and KD has only been ruled out a week. Clearly the basketball gods want us to suffer to the last moment.
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#763 » by garrick » Tue Apr 1, 2025 4:30 am

Ghost of Kleine wrote:
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And the irony is that it just doesn't matter because it's incredibly unlikely that we win any of our next 4 games. So we're not likely to make up any ground and capitalize on King's losses regardless.

Won't matter if we make the play in anyway because we won't be able to beat the Wolves in a single elimination game and it would be a sweep by OKC or at best a gentleman's sweep.
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#764 » by SunsRback4Good » Tue Apr 1, 2025 4:52 am

KLEON wrote:Kings and Mavs just giving out gifts


Me and Oprah love gifts. :)
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#765 » by BurningHeart » Tue Apr 1, 2025 5:00 am

I just hate being right. I'm constantly proven right in sports and life over the last 20 years and because I'm not a celebrity or a grifter or anyone with any power or influence or anything whatsoever, I'm just on the sidelines shooting out "no ****"s and" gee whiz"s.

Anyone who's anyone knew this was a terrible mix. Anyone who's anyone knew that Durant is a cancerous, perpetual drama, mercenary scumbag.

The love child of Helen Keller and Ray Charles could have **** seen all this coming.


It's tiring and demoralizing.
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#766 » by Ghost of Kleine » Tue Apr 1, 2025 5:32 am

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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#767 » by sunsbg » Tue Apr 1, 2025 5:40 am

Ghost of Kleine wrote:
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For any suns fans out there thinking it couldn't get any worse! :-?


Ishbia's thinking was picks have no value since I'll spend money and with 'big 3' there is no way Suns end in the lottery. Then reality kicked in and Suns almost gave a lottery pick last year as they barely avoided the play-in and only a miracle will prevent not giving one this year. The team is going into semi-rebuild so things won't look much better next few seasons. Just awful trades. I don't care what were Ishbia's intentions. Trading unprotected picks for a 35+yo player who won't be on the team when those picks convey was always a stupid idea.
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#768 » by Ghost of Kleine » Tue Apr 1, 2025 5:44 am

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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#769 » by Saberestar » Tue Apr 1, 2025 5:53 am

The Mavs lost at home against the Nets. Well...the G-League Nets lol.

The Kings lost @ Indiana.

Now we need to make an effort and steal the next game @ Milwaukee.

Beal is questionable. That would be a great opportunity to show his value as a 2nd option on offense.
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#770 » by sunsbg » Tue Apr 1, 2025 5:53 am

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For whatever reason I thought home game vs HOU is winnable. A few games left with potential to be as embarrassing as last game if opposing teams decide to play hard. Yikes. Wish Suns could just wave a white flag and forfeit rest of the season. It's obvious the players wish that too.
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#771 » by sunsbg » Tue Apr 1, 2025 6:07 am

Saberestar wrote:The Mavs lost at home against the Nets. Well...the G-League Nets lol.

The Kings lost @ Indiana.

Now we need to make an effort and steal the next game @ Milwaukee.

Beal is questionable. That would be a great opportunity to show his value as a 2nd option on offense.


At the end we'll probably fail to beat for a play-in spot a team which was playing G-league players after all regular players were hit by injuries and another dysfunctional team like ours. That's the reality.
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#772 » by BurningHeart » Tue Apr 1, 2025 9:08 am

I am not a proponent of tanking.

Do you people really want to watch 4 extra games of this bull roster?
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#773 » by sunskerr » Tue Apr 1, 2025 1:38 pm

just relegate us to some obscure south american league please
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#774 » by BobbieL » Tue Apr 1, 2025 2:16 pm

BurningHeart wrote:I just hate being right. I'm constantly proven right in sports and life over the last 20 years and because I'm not a celebrity or a grifter or anyone with any power or influence or anything whatsoever, I'm just on the sidelines shooting out "no ****"s and" gee whiz"s.

Anyone who's anyone knew this was a terrible mix. Anyone who's anyone knew that Durant is a cancerous, perpetual drama, mercenary scumbag.

The love child of Helen Keller and Ray Charles could have **** seen all this coming.


It's tiring and demoralizing.


I think Booker has taken on some of Durant. Just not players who are leaders - -they like being second fiddle players. Just hoop and thats it.
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#775 » by BobbieL » Tue Apr 1, 2025 2:17 pm

Calvin Klein wrote:Any chance this clown tries to trade Beal for embiid?


And then we’d have to see people say “well at least he tried” when embiid plays 3 games a season.


Thats my biggest worry - he trades Beal for Embiid or a Paul George
like you say, to show he is "all in"
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#776 » by Ghost of Kleine » Tue Apr 1, 2025 2:45 pm

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I love KD as a player! He's a fantastic talent. And it'd be cool to see him retire here too. But the bigger picture here is that him statingbdoes absolutely nothing to help us right this mess!


And people deluding themselves into saying give it two more years must love the experience we've gone through this past 2-3 years because nothing will change for the better with this roster as constructed and All 3 players eating up the majority of our cap flexibility and having no assets or youth and athleticism to create a real team around KD and Booker anyways.

KD will continue to age and at some point very soon, perhaps even next season completely fall off a clif and Booker will be making 70+ million to play faux " Chris Paul" averaging solid assists while having 10 point and 13 or maybe if lucky 20 points games occasionally.

And then will never again be a truly elite SG in his prime years because he'll keep opting to pass/ defer to lesser talents rather than play into his natural gifts aw an elite scoring guard because Steve "effing" Kerr convinced him to be something he's not! Brilliant plan to take out an elite oppositional threat in the western conference by the way!

Worst of all is that over these next 2-3 years, we'll continue hemorrhaging cost controlled lottery level talent! And have no legitimate incoming young athletic talent, so when KD does finally retire or is predominantly irrelevant making supermax money, we'll still he the most expensive lottery team in NBA history, a 2nd apron rebuilding team with no real assets for the future.

And on top of everything else, thusly forcing ourselves into an even longer, much more painful decade + long full rebuild because we futilely chose to hold onto our only remaining assets left ( KD and Booker) while achieving nothing really and now they ( KD and Booker) only having minimal- neutral teade value at best for their age/ contract!

It's not fun or good, butvwe need to move both while they still carry mostly optimal value, otherwise things will get much worse and forva much longer time needed to fix things and become relevant again!

# Not close to winning!! :banghead:
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#777 » by garrick » Tue Apr 1, 2025 3:00 pm

sunsbg wrote:
Ghost of Kleine wrote:
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For any suns fans out there thinking it couldn't get any worse! :-?


Ishbia's thinking was picks have no value since I'll spend money and with 'big 3' there is no way Suns end in the lottery. Then reality kicked in and Suns almost gave a lottery pick last year as they barely avoided the play-in and only a miracle will prevent not giving one this year. The team is going into semi-rebuild so things won't look much better next few seasons. Just awful trades. I don't care what were Ishbia's intentions. Trading unprotected picks for a 35+yo player who won't be on the team when those picks convey was always a stupid idea.

yeah I was shocked we put zero protections on any of those picks and that was just criminal of him to be so careless like that. :banghead:
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#778 » by bwgood77 » Tue Apr 1, 2025 3:31 pm

BobbieL wrote:
bwgood77 wrote:
Saberestar wrote:At some point people need to understand that two years isn't a long time. Ishbia arrived and made the KD trade and that season we played better and went to the 2nd round losing against the Champions 4-2.

Next year 49 wins and lost 4-0 to the Wolves (Western Conference Finals).

This season just 35 wins and the team has been really disappointing. We will see how this ends but I am pretty sure that we will see multiple changes. It's not like we have been bad for 15 years lol.


Yeah, it's been two years and he's traded away pretty much 7 years worth of draft picks (or as many as he is allowed to) and we have gone from a team that won 64 games the year before he bought us (and had made no changes really), to what we are now, after blowing all those draft picks and young players for one old superstar. Sure he's good. Were we better with him that year? I don't know. We had just gotten healthy when we blew it up..healthy for the first time since winning 64 games the previous year and were playing really well. We may have gone 8-0 with him, but he was also out a lot that year after we traded for him and we still had Ayton, Paul, Payne I think, etc.

If he made us really bad but we still had all our picks, fine, Or even put some protections on them.


It will be very interesting to see what happens

Just glad Zach Lowe is back with a youtube/podcast - he was good. So I am sure he will have some good insights
I just hope the news comes out that Booker is open to being traded.


Oh, Lowe is back? Awesome. I'll have to watch his youtube channels. I find myself watching a lot of youtube channel/podcasters with all that is going on in the country these days.
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#779 » by bwgood77 » Tue Apr 1, 2025 3:39 pm

Hitachi77 wrote:
bwgood77 wrote:
Saberestar wrote:At some point people need to understand that two years isn't a long time. Ishbia arrived and made the KD trade and that season we played better and went to the 2nd round losing against the Champions 4-2.

Next year 49 wins and lost 4-0 to the Wolves (Western Conference Finals).

This season just 35 wins and the team has been really disappointing. We will see how this ends but I am pretty sure that we will see multiple changes. It's not like we have been bad for 15 years lol.


Yeah, it's been two years and he's traded away pretty much 7 years worth of draft picks (or as many as he is allowed to) and we have gone from a team that won 64 games the year before he bought us (and had made no changes really), to what we are now, after blowing all those draft picks and young players for one old superstar. Sure he's good. Were we better with him that year? I don't know. We had just gotten healthy when we blew it up..healthy for the first time since winning 64 games the previous year and were playing really well. We may have gone 8-0 with him, but he was also out a lot that year after we traded for him and we still had Ayton, Paul, Payne I think, etc.

If he made us really bad but we still had all our picks, fine, Or even put some protections on them.


Yeah but it has been mentioned here before, you can’t call us a 64 win team. Once CP3 fell off a cliff on his birthday that team was screwed. We had the most embarrassing single game loss in team history in game 7 (note it’s the most embarrassing single game, the most embarrassing series was the Wolves series last year).

I agree he gave up too much for KD, that’s obvious. But we need to be honest about the situation. He didn’t destroy a contender. He hurt a decent team. There was no CP3 level player we were going to get to become a contender again, especially since Bridges and Cam were going to demand bigger contracts. Even if we got Haliburton I don’t think we’d be a contender. He’s not CP3.

If your goal is to be decent for a long time, indeed he destroyed the team. But if your goal is to win a championship, I don’t blame him for what he did. KD transformed the Warriors into the GOAT team and very likely leads the Nets to a title without all those injuries. And that Nets team didn’t have some amazing supporting cast. He saw the impact KD has had and went for it.

The key now is to blow it up. Remember we missed the playoffs for a decade from poor management. We didn’t even sell all of our picks or make crazy trades. We just sucked. We have assets and can try to get what we can for them.

Obviously is retrospect we should have blown it up sooner instead of trading for KD, but I don’t think anyone here wanted that.


Yes, we were not the same, but we were still VERY good with that team when Payne started and everyone else was healthy. The team had great chemistry. Of course there was the Ayton factor too but the KD move was still extremely short sighted. I mean even the most optimistic people about it said "well it will be worth it for a chip or two" and thought we were going to be a contender for a few years, speaking AS IF CP3 was also still the same player.

It was still a very good team with a go to guy, role players, CP3 still had his intangible leadership, etc, and we could have made smaller moves, seen how we did that year in the playoffs and gone from there, looking for a good Ayton deal if there was one and still having flexibility to use picks or trade them going forward, with a pretty solid main core 3 that just had great chemistry. Grayson Allen at the time had been offered for Crowder too. We were still really good the previous year when Paul was out which moved Book into the MVP picture that year since we kept playing well when CP3 went down the year we won 64.
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Re: 2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V 

Post#780 » by BobbieL » Tue Apr 1, 2025 3:40 pm

Ghost of Kleine wrote:
Read on Twitter


I love KD as a player! He's a fantastic talent. And it'd be cool to see him retire here too. But the bigger picture here is that him statingbdoes absolutely nothing to help us right this mess!


And people deluding themselves into saying give it two more years must love the experience we've gone through this past 2-3 years because nothing will change for the better with this roster as constructed and All 3 players eating up the majority of our cap flexibility and having no assets or youth and athleticism to create a real team around KD and Booker anyways.

KD will continue to age and at some point very soon, perhaps even next season completely fall off a clif and Booker will be making 70+ million to play faux " Chris Paul" averaging solid assists while having 10 point and 13 or maybe if lucky 20 points games occasionally.

And then will never again be a truly elite SG in his prime years because he'll keep opting to pass/ defer to lesser talents rather than play into his natural gifts aw an elite scoring guard because Steve "effing" Kerr convinced him to be something he's not! Brilliant plan to take out an elite oppositional threat in the western conference by the way!

Worst of all is that over these next 2-3 years, we'll continue hemorrhaging cost controlled lottery level talent! And have no legitimate incoming young athletic talent, so when KD does finally retire or is predominantly irrelevant making supermax money, we'll still he the most expensive lottery team in NBA history, a 2nd apron rebuilding team with no real assets for the future.

And on top of everything else, thusly forcing ourselves into an even longer, much more painful decade + long full rebuild because we futilely chose to hold onto our only remaining assets left ( KD and Booker) while achieving nothing really and now they ( KD and Booker) only having minimal- neutral teade value at best for their age/ contract!

It's not fun or good, butvwe need to move both while they still carry mostly optimal value, otherwise things will get much worse and forva much longer time needed to fix things and become relevant again!

# Not close to winning!! :banghead:


here is the thing - I don't love either Booker or Durant as players
fantastic talents to be sure -- I want to win. Neither of these two guys are winners
I think keeping Durant would be a BIG mistake
and if he wants to stay, its just for the money. which is fine
he can find it on some other team

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