Can't beat the worst, can't beat the best

[hunterxaz]

Where does that leave us?

[Sun Scorched]

Put it this way....

1. This is the regular season. Are we lacking energy and consistancy? Sure. I doubt this Suns team will look the same in the post-season.

2. There is no way in hell that teams like the Heat and Twolves take the Suns in a best of seven series. Relax.

3. While it's hard to stomach three losses to both the Heat and Twolves, the Suns are still atop the Western conference... that means that other teams have lost more games than us....

Enjoy our wins, learn from our losses. It sucks, but on any given night these things happen. People seem to forget that every team is made up of men who are paid millions to be in the best physical shapes of their lives. Every professional team has a shot at beating every other professional team on any given night no matter what. End of story. Don't freak out.

[enigmatics]

Put it this way....

1. This is the regular season. Are we lacking energy and consistancy? Sure. I doubt this Suns team will look the same in the post-season.

2. There is no way in hell that teams like the Heat and Twolves take the Suns in a best of seven series. Relax.

3. While it's hard to stomach three losses to both the Heat and Twolves, the Suns are still atop the Western conference... that means that other teams have lost more games than us....

Enjoy our wins, learn from our losses. It sucks, but on any given night these things happen. People seem to forget that every team is made up of men who are paid millions to be in the best physical shapes of their lives. Every professional team has a shot at beating every other professional team on any given night no matter what. End of story. Don't freak out.

Give the spin machine a rest. I swear, if I hear the uttering of the words "only regular season" again, I'm going to snap. ATTENTION: When you haven't won a championship, you don't get that kind of treatment.

[Sun Scorched]

Give the spin machine a rest. I swear, if I hear the uttering of the words "only regular season" again, I'm going to snap. ATTENTION: When you haven't won a championship, you don't get that kind of treatment.

ATTENTION: When you have absolutely no idea what goes on within an organization on a daily basis. When you have no idea what the players, coaches and front office talks about in terms of strategy. When you have no idea what is going on in the lives of the players, both on our team and the opposing team. When you have no idea about how severe or minor actual injuries are.

You have absolutely no right to make conjectures about something that is out of your realm of understanding. I don't pretend to, you shouldn't either, it makes you look ignorant.

That kind of treatment? Thanks for regurgitating everything that stupid sports columnists won't shut up about. Brilliant.

[enigmatics]

-= original quote snipped =-



ATTENTION: When you have absolutely no idea what goes on within an organization on a daily basis. When you have no idea what the players, coaches and front office talks about in terms of strategy. When you have no idea what is going on in the lives of the players, both on our team and the opposing team. When you have no idea about how severe or minor actual injuries are.

You have absolutely no right to make conjectures about something that is out of your realm of understanding. I don't pretend to, you shouldn't either, it makes you look ignorant.

That kind of treatment? Thanks for regurgitating everything that stupid sports columnists won't shut up about. Brilliant.

.............and the spinning continues.

[impulsenine]

2. There is no way in hell that teams like the Heat and Twolves take the Suns in a best of seven series. Relax.

Let's throw out the losses to Minnesota, Miami and the Clippers on that rationale., and look at the contender teams' bottom-feeder losses. I drew the line at around Sacramento and Indiana, but surprisingly the usual suspects were Minnesota and Memphis. Those two teams have a habit of doing this; the Bulls also have Detroit's number and they suck a lot more than Washington (otherwise I'd toss the Boston losses). I don't know what to say about our loss to Miami, though.

- All of Boston's, LA's and Dallas' losses have been to 'decent' teams.
- San Antonio's only bottom-feeder loss was to Memphis.
- Detroit lost to the Bulls three times (!) and Memphis.
- New Orleans also lost to Minnesota

Throwing out the losses (but not adding them as wins):

33-7 Boston*
30-9 Detroit* (-4)
30-9 Phoenix (-4)
29-11 New Orleans (-1)
28-13 Dallas
27-12 San Antonio (-1)
27-13 LA

* Artificially inflated due to conference.


What do we see? Things are very close, and for all of Phoenix's 'troubles,' we're still winning a lot of games. We apparently just can't be bothered to try hard against terrible teams every night. This isn't good, but it's not the worst sin. So, what about top-notch opponents?

Between Boston, Detroit, Phoenix, New Orleans, Dallas, San Antonio and LA, here are their respective records (note, I did this informally just surfin' through their records; I might've missed one or two).

4-2 Dallas*
4-3 Phoenix
3-2 Boston (2 wins vs. LA)
4-4 San Antonio
3-3 Detroit
5-6 LA

So when it comes to creme-de-la-creme competition, it's pretty tight (nobody's dominating), and Phoenix is actually one of the best. In fact, that Dallas record may be a bit misleading: One win was their victory over Phoenix by three points at home 48 hours after the Suns played San Antonio. I am pretty sure that if the Suns had played Houston or Indiana previously, they could've won that game, putting Dallas at 3-3 on this list.

[CroesusDeluxo]

-= original quote snipped =-



ATTENTION: When you have absolutely no idea what goes on within an organization on a daily basis. When you have no idea what the players, coaches and front office talks about in terms of strategy. When you have no idea what is going on in the lives of the players, both on our team and the opposing team. When you have no idea about how severe or minor actual injuries are.

You have absolutely no right to make conjectures about something that is out of your realm of understanding. I don't pretend to, you shouldn't either, it makes you look ignorant.

That kind of treatment? Thanks for regurgitating everything that stupid sports columnists won't shut up about. Brilliant.

lol nice post

[Sun Scorched]

.............and the spinning continues.

Cute.

[hunterxaz]

-= original quote snipped =-



Give the spin machine a rest. I swear, if I hear the uttering of the words "only regular season" again, I'm going to snap. ATTENTION: When you haven't won a championship, you don't get that kind of treatment.

i completely agree. the suns have not proven themselves in the playoffs so they have no right to just say "ah, well, we have nothing to play for until then..."

[impulsenine]

i completely agree. the suns have not proven themselves in the playoffs so they have no right to just say "ah, well, we have nothing to play for until then..."

Can't disagree more. Let's face it: if not for Dallas' inexplicable meltdown in front of Miami, the Suns have only lost to the eventual champ for three years running. We've been in that maddening 2nd place for a long time, now. There's also the shadow of the KJ squad that was in the same boat. So it's not very surprising to me that the team just does not care about a team with 8 wins.

That's not an excuse, but then Minnesota's beaten other top-notch teams, too. But the point is that we have proven ourselves for three years in the playoffs. Otherwise, "proven" is synonymous with "championship," which is silly.

[hunterxaz]

The Suns have been destroyed the past 3 seasons by teams that eventually went further than they did every single season. We haven't proven that we can beat those teams... how do the Suns think they don't have to play with 110% intensity every single game, night in and night out?

[impulsenine]

The Suns have been destroyed the past 3 seasons by teams that eventually went further than they did every single season. We haven't proven that we can beat those teams... how do the Suns think they don't have to play with 110% intensity every single game, night in and night out?

In 2007, Phoenix took care of business with L.A. before going against San Antonio. We know how that went. Nobody, not even a Spurs homer, would say Phoenix got destroyed. They know how very, very lucky it was for them that Diaw and Stoudemire walked off of the bench. "The Suns have been destroyed"? Mmm, no.

In 2006, the Suns went through two brutal (although highly entertaining) 7-game series that admittedly should have put away earlier. When they got to Dallas, they lost Raja Bell. Both teams had blowouts against each other in the series, but the Suns never recovered from losing their best defender. Again, it was a very close series.

In 2005, after thrashing Memphis, and beating Dallas 4-2 (with three wins decided by 10+ points), we lost to the eventual champs San Antonio 4-1. We didn't have Joe Johnson in the first 2 games, and we won the first game he got back up to speed when he scored 26 points. San Antonio was clearly the better team overall, but with Amare going bananas, it wasn't a thrashing by any means.

Sooo... I don't know what playoff series you're talking about when you say that "the Suns have been destroyed."

[mkot]

-= original quote snipped =-



In 2007, Phoenix took care of business with L.A. before going against San Antonio. We know how that went. Nobody, not even a Spurs homer, would say Phoenix got destroyed. They know how very, very lucky it was for them that Diaw and Stoudemire walked off of the bench. "The Suns have been destroyed"? Mmm, no.

I don't understand that either, how people kept saying the Suns got destroyed by the Spurs last season in the playoffs. The series were tied at 2-2 going into Game 5 where we didn't have Amare and Diaw available and we promptly lost that decisive game 5 and that's the series. And it wasn't like Game 5 wasn't close. We were leading until late in the 4th where our players ran out of gas (because we essentially only had 6 players to play).

[impulsenine]

At this point, though, I'm ready to write off an awful lot of people as self-delusional in more ways than I knew possible.

This is partly because I've been following a lot of politics lately.

[-SDU-]

suns will be fine

i dont care about our record against the best teams yet because as far as im concerned, we are only now starting to get raja back in form, diaw at least is being slightly more effective than earlier this year and all we need now is barbosa to settle into his role for this year and we will be at our best

we havent been our best at all this season yet, BUT i totally believe we will get it together by then

[hunterxaz]

records are important doesnt matter if you're battling the best teams or the worst teams. home court matters a lot. and as far as our past 3 years of the playoffs... just a bunch of excuses. sometimes things dont roll our way, but that doesn't mean we can't overcome them. convincing yourself otherwise is just... lame.

[-SDU-]

unfortunately the west is SO tough this year that these 4 stupid losses (2 wolves, hawks, heat) could be the difference between finishing 1st and 5th

[impulsenine]

i completely agree. the suns have not proven themselves in the playoffs so they have no right to just say "ah, well, we have nothing to play for until then..."

records are important doesnt matter if you're battling the best teams or the worst teams. home court matters a lot. and as far as our past 3 years of the playoffs... just a bunch of excuses. sometimes things dont roll our way, but that doesn't mean we can't overcome them. convincing yourself otherwise is just... lame.

Quote 1 is a very different thing than Quote 2. No doubt, the Suns should've won those games, and I hold 'em to it. They are playing as if they are a lot more worried about the playoffs (much like the Spurs do), and the reason is that they have proven themselves there.

Every championship team depends, a little, on luck; this is especially true of injuries. I didn't post any excuses. I just wrote why they lost, and how in no circumstances did they get 'destroyed.'

Should Miami have beaten Phoenix? Uh... no. Of course not. Is the loss excusable? Not in the least. Do we have to worry about it? Not really. Minnesota has beaten New Orleans, too. San Antonio and Detroit both lost to Memphis. It happens. It's not good, but it happens, and I'm frankly glad that the Suns are in the mindset that this is all foreplay, even if it drops a win. I'll take that mental toughness to home-court advantage any day, even (especially) versus San Antonio.

And besides... for all the moaning, we still have home-court advantage, and given that every team drops games sometimes, I'd rather have four losses to terrible teams than four losses to good teams.

Like Shawn Marion said: "Tell me how we get better than first?"

[mkot]

I'd rather have four losses to terrible teams than four losses to good teams.

Me too, but this isn't a game I should have to feel ok about losing. I didn't say anything negative when losing to the Heat, and I didn't feel very bad losing to Minny the first time. But how many losses to lower teams you can take a season? We were getting waxed not once, but twice now by the worst team in the league, it is NOT ok. And I hope the players think the same. It's NOT ok to get out-rebounded like this, PRIDE should have made the Suns play harder then they did. I don't care if it was a b2b, every team has b2b sets, play through it. I'm a bit sad about this because we used to excel in b2b but now we're getting old we can't do that anymore.

Here's quote of the game:

"This game bites me in the ass because we didn't build the characteristics we need for when it's going to count," Nash said. "That's what bothers me.

"Not enough pride. Not enough consistency."

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/PaulCoro/15406

[impulsenine]

I don't like getting beat, but in a way, I hope they avoid that feeling of invincibility we had last year around this time when we were rolling out huge win streaks. That's another reason not to blow it out of proportion.

Mostly, what I'm sayin' is, that the team shouldn't lose these games, but I understand why they're thinking of this as 'just the regular season.' Because of that, the losses don't bother me as much as they normally would.