AtheJ415 wrote:Interesting take from HP hoops.
"• None of this gets around the problems of the Suns, which have very little to do with what Sarver's talking about. Even if he's got a point, there are concrete ways to address the issues. The players need to buy into their coach, they need to play for one another, they need to be less selfish, and they need to defend better. This isn't a social science experiment, it's a basketball team. However, let's also be clear on this: Sarver hired a good coach, gave the team good players, and they haven't played well, end-dot. The Suns are talented. You can say that Hornacek hasn't been good enough to fix their problems, or that Sarver didn't do enough to bolster the roster, but they had good young players on cheap contracts and he still spent money to add Tyson Chandler and keep Brandon Knight. This failure is on the players."
Thought that was pretty accurate. We have the talent. We have overall a good coach, despite my personal belief that he has failed by epic proportion this season, and my belief that it is the coach's number 1 job to get buy in and get through to his players. But neither is performing well this year, and it includes everyone on the roster. The problem is everyone. The solution is everyone. That's why this is so maddening. That said, please trade Chandler and Tucker and the vets. This season is lost.
I could swear I read somewhere a quote either attributed to other coaches around the league, and maybe even Pop, saying something like..."Hornacek is a great coach. The problem is he has players that are uncoachable." Now I know some don't buy into that theory, and I've managed people for quite a few years, at all different levels, and sometimes, if you just get the wrong person for the job, no matter how much you train them or teach them, they are not the right person for the job, or if team dynamics and chemistry isn't right, it is just a lost cause, or if there are too many people meddling or talking behind backs it can get really bad.
Now one could say "Yeah, well you're probably a bad manager then." Fair enough, but overall, I've had my share of success with most teams, trained some of the best people at organizations I've been at and put together some of the best teams.
But sometimes when you are given a bunch of people who may be talented at SOMETHING, but pieces just don't fit together and they just might be wrong for the project. Now you could say "well it's your job to restructure the project to where it works". Sure, I suppose you can try that but it isn't always that simple.
I've NEVER been in a position where I was given a team, and this team drastically overachieved to what the expectations were, and then someone come in and take someone off it, add a redundant person to one area of a team, and a big downgrade from the missing piece, leading to team dissension, and then someone above me again deciding to completely overhaul that team a few months later, leaving it with VERY little healthy team members.
Then months later overhauling it again.
The one time I had a brief period of a bunch of incoming and outgoing people was on a large project, and I was sent various people, and I was tasked with training them on complex projects quickly, and some were very confident yet very unqualified. Some were just such slow learners or didn't have the ability to learn, that they just were not fits and I had to get them out of there immediately.
Now that last part, is something the COULD and perhaps SHOULD be done with Knight if he is not getting team players involved to the extent he should, but there are a multitude of reasons Knight SHOULD play, for #1, the controversial trade that brought him here. #2, he HAS to try and get better (most think you can do this the more you play together to get used to playing with each other), #3, IF we did even want to trade him, it's better not to bench him.
I think the main problem with this team right now, and part of the reason they just got blown out twice by bad teams (other than them being the 4th and 5th road games in 5 days) is that they JUST started playing together, in a brand new lineup, and when you throw a new team together, especially with people fresh out of college, or people with little experience, and add them to be integral parts to a somewhat experienced team, and firm to all click well and work perfectly together, especially against teams with guys who have been playing together awhile, you're going to experience some problems.
I know that was long winded and I didn't re-read before posting, and I got interrupted in the middle, so if it doesn't make sense, I apologize.
