The Upcoming Season

[tsherkin]

Because I'm a loud-mouth and a mod for this board, I thought I'd collect my thoughts on Phoenix's upcoming season in one spot and force whoever reads this thread to deal with them. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Rough Depth Chart:

Center: Robin Lopez
Power Forward: Amare Stoudemire, Louis Amundson, Channing Frye
Small Forward: Grant Hill, Jared Dudley, Earl Clark, Alando Tucker, Taylor Griffin?
Shooting Guard: Jason Richardson, Leandro Barbosa, Sasha Pavlovic
Point Guard: Steve Nash, Goran Dragic

Assuming Amare is, in fact, played at the 4 instead of the 5 (which I hope does not happen, because he's way better at the 5), then the 5 depth is pretty weak and will be a problem. If not, then that works out fine. In any case, frontcourt talent is going to be a bit of an issue unless someone takes a noticeable step forward.

Grant Hill is not going to give a lot this year, much as he will try, and the SF slot is going to cause trouble even if he's healthy and productive. He needs a reliable backup and there isn't one guy I'm really intrigued with on that list for the upcoming season (unless Clark comes in and wows, I look at him as a prospect for the future).

Lots of offense out of the 2, but as usual, not so much defense, nor much in the way of clever offensive creativity. Dragic remains an uninspiring option behind Nash, Spain or no Spain.

Bleh. I am horribly unenthused by this team.

HOWEVER, since they have no choice, I suspect that they will run and gun like Hell, since that's about all they can do, and if Nash is healthy and still has the juice, they have some scoring punch. They're going to miss Marion a lot, though. A healthy Amare is my assumption, and adding him to the season in a run-and-gun environment is exceptionally appealing. I could see 50-ish wins and a first- or second-round smoking, but not much more unless changes are made.

It's tough to believe in this team; it's been bled dry of depth, defense and rebounding. Frye isn't going to help much with defense or rebounding, so this team will rely on Dudley, maybe Clark, etc, unproven guys, to fill in those gaps. Unfortunately, those are the mortar of championship material.

I'm hoping that Amare comes back with a thunderingly dominant season; if he's REALLY good, like 26+ ppg good, then the tenor of this team's prospects changes a lot.

[Mr. Sun]

> Bleh. I am horribly unenthused by this team.

Oh but they can take you for a roller coaster ride.

[Never Fear 33 Is Here]

Just out of interest sherks, what is your reasoning behind GH not doing much? Sure I am probably the biggest fan of his known to man. But within the Run 'N Gun system I only see him doing more than he did last season.

[tsherkin]

> Bleh. I am horribly unenthused by this team.

Oh but they can take you for a roller coaster ride.

Oh, I'll be watching... even if they're a 6-win crap team (which they won't be), I owe it to them for the good times to watch them.

[-SDU-]

good read, thanks for taking the time man

i think run and gun will be great again, but alot of people are forgetting some things about when run and gun worked best

1 - we had shawn marion whos ability to defend 1 through 4 and outrebound anyone else on our team. These factors made up for the fact that we were so undersized and were a huge factor in our success whilst playing small ball

2 - we had elite 3 point shooters at the 1 2 and 3 spots with a solid option (marion) at the 4. this helped spread the floor greatly which is what helped make the nash amare pick and roll so deadly. if you collapsed then you know we were going to nail a trey - not to mention we were always a threat to hit corner 3;s on the fast break. Having grant hill in there now at 3 and possibly frye at 5 really throws a spanner in the works of what made the small ball system so successful.

with that said, i still think if we run nash amare pick and rolls 50% of the time, we will still score at will. those 2 have shown a "stockton malone" type chemistry which is purely unstoppable when its on

im thinking 43 wins and 9th seed at this stage

[-SDU-]

on the plus side - clark dragic amundson and dudley are players who i am very excited to see this season

we all know what the others can do, i love watching the nuances of the game and its the small pieces of development in these guys which ill be keeping a close eye on

[tsherkin]

Clark is an X-factor, for sure. I hope he can contribute quickly.

In any case, Phoenix will be fun to watch and I doubt they will be bad. It'll be better than these past two years, which is nice.

[The Diesel]

tsherkin,

In your opinion, what caused these last two years to be such a disaster?

[DirtyDez]

As much as i hate the idea of Amare playing 'center' i will admit a PF-C combo w/ Amare and Clark over the next few years sounds pretty damn good, that's if EC develops

[The Diesel]

I don't know why they didn't re-sign Stromile Swift. Him and Amare at PF/C would be the most athletic combination BY FAR because they're both awesome athletes.

[Qwigglez]

The Suns essentially have three three-point shooters (Nash, Richardson, Barbosa) this year as opposed to the years before when the whole team could shoot. Hill, Dudley, Clark, Dragic, are all decent three point shooters, who will probably make 1 three pointer every two to three games.
What changes this year is, we have more guys who can create their own shot, instead of relying on Nash. Which kind of turns us into the Dallas Mavericks, who run an offense that is built around isolation plays.

Still hurt that we didn't get Chandler. That would have changed the offense up so much.

[tsherkin]

tsherkin,

In your opinion, what caused these last two years to be such a disaster?

Bad management and ownership, some bad breaks, some questionable officiating...

Robert Sarver has been a disaster of an owner.

The Suns were legitimately interesting going forward in 2005; not contending then, but interesting. REALLY interesting. Then they got rid of JJ and that was just a bad move all around because it robbed them of a lot. 05-06 was a miracle season based around the breakout of Boris Diaw and how good Steve Nash was. If ever there was a year Nash deserved the MVP, that was it. But yeah, those 04-05 Suns were a blueprint for future success that was never realized.

06-07 was another great year and the officials basically boned them. I don't know that they'd have beaten Cleveland, despite the significant difference in depth, because Lebron is and was just that good (and Phoenix didn't even know the word 'defense,' certainly not against him).

Dwindling depth killed them in 08. Nash looked awful against the Spurs. Couldn't hit a three, looked very mortal from inside the arc and was still a defensive liability, so he wasn't doing anything special. Amare looked pedestrian. Well, not pedestrian, but also mortal and not quite the immense outlier he had been in other years. 23/9 on 49% FG? Good stuff, but well beneath himself.

Shaq, of course, looked awful offensively in that postseason; not yet all the way back physically and playing in a system that didn't really cater to his strengths (but still also flubbing shots he should have made). Terrible spacing, too, since Bell was the only guy making 3s.

This past year was a freaking disaster. Terry Porter was a terrible move; he's not a horrible coach, but a TERRIBLE fit for this roster. You can't take a roster of veterans and remake them if you don't have the right pieces. Porter never reached Amare to any degree while he was healthy and he remained a mundane rebounder and a horrible defender, and while Porter did good things for Shaq, he didn't know how to balance the perimeter/interior games, totally boning Nash and Amare in the process. Again, defense was a big issue, and while the offense was great (2nd best in hte league, actually), the team didn't know what it was. It was like a strange mix of Riley-ball and Nelson-ball.

They were one of the 5 worst defensive teams in the league and basically the best offensive squad, even without depth.

It's just, for lack of a better word, a giant clusterf****, you know? Nothing went right for these guys.

Nothing.

I wish that they had Mark Cuban as their owner, that would have actually made a rather significant difference. I wish that they retained D'Antoni, or made the full and SERIOUS transition to a team that could use Shaq, if that was their intent (which would have basically required them to trade Amare and/or Nash, which didn't make sense). I wish that they'd made a legit effort to get Samuel Dalembert instead of Shaq, because he would have fit in more sensibly with an up-tempo team. I wish they hadn't lost JJ because the owner was a tard. Etc, etc.

So many things went wrong. A lot of them are rooted in management decisions, though some are personnel-related, it's hard to pin anything down. I'd say, though, the sale of the team to Sarver was the beginning of the end.

[The Diesel]

tsherkin,

Good post; thanks for responding.

[lilfishi22]

If D'antoni hadn't been fired I believe he would've made the Shaq experiment work. Towards the end of regular season Shaq was really fitting in but because of the change in game in the playoffs and the still unfamiliarity with the team, he wasn't as efficient. Also his conditioning wasn't as good as it should've been due the the inactivity in Miami.

D'Antoni would've kept Shaq's ego in check as best as anyone could. Porter gave Shaq's ideas that he's the most important player in the team and our game around Shaq.

[Never Fear 33 Is Here]

good read, thanks for taking the time man

i think run and gun will be great again, but alot of people are forgetting some things about when run and gun worked best

1 - we had shawn marion whos ability to defend 1 through 4 and outrebound anyone else on our team. These factors made up for the fact that we were so undersized and were a huge factor in our success whilst playing small ball

2 - we had elite 3 point shooters at the 1 2 and 3 spots with a solid option (marion) at the 4. this helped spread the floor greatly which is what helped make the nash amare pick and roll so deadly. if you collapsed then you know we were going to nail a trey - not to mention we were always a threat to hit corner 3;s on the fast break. Having grant hill in there now at 3 and possibly frye at 5 really throws a spanner in the works of what made the small ball system so successful.

with that said, i still think if we run nash amare pick and rolls 50% of the time, we will still score at will. those 2 have shown a "stockton malone" type chemistry which is purely unstoppable when its on

im thinking 43 wins and 9th seed at this stage

Totally agree man, but you are forgetting that GH still has the corner 3 and one would think that Frye would be encouraged to "spread" the floor with his 3 ball (GH went from 12 to 104 attempts and Frye had 33 attempts last season). Sure it doesn't give us the rebounding that Marion did, but it does give us that offence that he may have brought to us.

[KJ7]

Frye isn't going to help much with defense or rebounding, so this team will rely on Dudley, maybe Clark, etc, unproven guys, to fill in those gaps.

Amen to that. And that's really going to be our downfall. Just so many question-marks over players and their ability to fill a role. Namely Frye, Clark, Dudley, Lopez and Dragic. All these guys are wildly inconsistent. If 2 of the front-court guys can come in and just give us solid effort and contribution every night I'll be pretty happy about it.

I'm just really glad we are going back to PnR which we should have never gone away from as our primary weapon in the first place (Shaq or no-Shaq). I actually like the way Frye/Clark/Dudley and Hill will fit in as role-players in the PnR. Hill fills up the baseline at 18-22 feet while Frye can get out to about 18-20 at the elbow the way Kurt used to. Dudley and Clark will prolly be wing players out to the 3. They can all def spread the court pretty well as role-players in the PnR. Lopez and Lou are the only one with huge question-marks in that regards but they'll be more Hunter-types in our system. All energy and beating their man down the court.

Our downfall will undoubtedly be our defence. Especially in the back-court ... all 4 guards are just extremely ordinary defenders to the point where I wouldn't mind if we just played zone all season to be honest and if the opposition hit their 3s well good on'em. Rather at least make a team shoot to win then have them constantly beating our guards off the dribble or beating us up inside.

We'll get smashed on the boards as well but I think our running should make up for that.

For me Dudley and Clark are just massive X-Factors going into this season. I'd really like to see Dudley put on about another 10 pounds of muscle and have him be our post-defender against PF's. Just make sure he doesn't get backed down easily while help arrives. Think that's just a pipe-dream tho but with his ability to shoot the ball and his hustle he would make a good kind of gritty Marion-lite. Clark can be the player we always dreamed of having next to Amare (minus the rebounding) but I think he's a couple of years away still.

I'll predict a 48-win season. 7th/8th seed and first round exit.

[ray ray]

I'm really excited about the upcoming season. Not because they are title contenders but because this can be lead either way. We can easily be another lottery team which would suck because we don't have our pick or this can be the one of the better teams in the regular season. There's a couple of players that can either make or break this upcoming season.

1) Jared Dudley: this cat defiantly has the desire and hustle to become a better version of Matt Harpring. He's a above average defender, can shot from 18ft and will dive to the floor for a loose ball. What's going to make him is his ability to hit the 3 point shot. If he can extend his shooting ability he's going to improve the Suns immediately. He's not an all star but he's what every team needs. He's good at everything but not great at one thing.

2) Earl Clark: He was easily the 2nd best athlete in the NBA draft. The Suns are going to need for him to develop asap! He's been labeled by many as the best defender in the draft with his ability to guard points and power forwards...hmmm.. Kind of like Marion, okay I'm not saying that he's like Marion but he can be similar. He's 6'10 with a 34 inch vertical leap and a wing span of 7'3. They are pretty good attributes for someone who is expected to help immensely in the defense side of the ball. Where Clark needs to improve is going to be able to hit those open shots that he's going to have. I believe that Nash will make Clark better in transition but where he's going to improve in the half court.

3) Jason Richardson: he needs to be the Jason Richardson who played with Warriors. We need him to be explosive, hit threes, dunk on people and not have mental breakdowns at the end of games.

If these three player step up and have the seasons that they are very capable of. Then I expect this team to win 50 games and depending who they face in the 1st round will determine their success for this upcoming season.


Go Suns!! Can't wait until the season begins!

[rsavaj]

Yeah it's hard to be optimistic about this coming season. I mean, we lost Shaq and Barnes, and replaced them with Frye(lol) and Clark(unknown). That's ridiculous, especially compared to how Dallas and San Antonio loaded up.

[The Diesel]

Yeah it's hard to be optimistic about this coming season. I mean, we lost Shaq and Barnes, and replaced them with Frye(lol) and Clark(unknown). That's ridiculous, especially compared to how Dallas and San Antonio loaded up.

Most Suns fans wanted Shaq traded because they feel he destroyed the team.

[tsherkin]

Most Suns fans wanted Shaq traded because they feel he destroyed the team.

That's ridiculous; Shaq didn't destroy the team. Management/ownership and coaching destroyed the team. Shaq didn't undermine anyone, didn't do anything that caused problems. He came in and produced, but the team's assets were not managed well, certainly not maximized, but none of that is a Diesel issue.