Puff wrote:[Wow
I do not know where you were after the 48 win season we added a key reserve in Thomas and had a healthy Bledsoe for all 82 games. We **** the bed and played poorly after dumping the players Hornacek could not coach while missing the playoffs.
This year he had Bledsoe in better shape than ever before and most everyone expected 50 wins and the playoffs, how soon we forget. Bledsoe stayed in Phoenix over the summer and started the season quite well. We also signed the great Tyson Chandler and Brandon Knight to big contracts. Both have had productive careers. The Tyson signing was considered a good move by most observers and fans. He also had our future core Warren and Len with another year of experience along with maybe getting the steal of this past draft in Booker. Hornacek also did not have to coach those guys he could not coach last year (Marcus Morris, Gerald Green, Goran Dragic and Isaih Thomas). He basically started the season with a new roster. He again appears to have a roster he cannot coach. This is two years in a row. How many times does the normal NBA team turn over the roster while keeping the same coach? I think Hornacek has reached his limit, at least mine.
You are correct - he should not resign - he should be fired immediately - but Sarver is not that smart.
But the Suns were not bad last year before the All-Star break. They represented a roller coaster, but they were also 29-25 and still very much in play for a playoff berth. Then management decided to make some changes and the biggest acquisition, Brandon Knight, hurt his ankle. Hornacek never enjoyed a full season with which to build on the 48-win success or even to work with Thomas; there was just too much impatience and too much radical change for ambiguous returns.
(I will also say that while Channing Frye by himself should not constitute a critical piece, when playing two ball-handling, driving guards simultaneously, having that three-point shooting "stretch-four" makes a critical difference in the current NBA, given what today's players are accustomed to spatially and given how most of them lack refined passing skills. During the 1990s, for instance, Phoenix arguably possessed four-to-six players almost ever year who were better passers than anyone on the roster over the last four seasons.)
Warren and Len profile as complementary players—and not as elite complementary players, either. I like them both well enough, but they do not form much of a core by themselves. Booker could be more than that, but he turned nineteen just before the season started. When Stephen Jackson was nineteen in 1997, he could not even make the Suns. And Tyson Chandler is an aging role player whose diminished athleticism has turned him into an offensive liability while reducing his defensive impact as well. At his age and with his mileage, this danger was always there.
Hornacek may not have represented the long-term answer at coach, but without better management and better personnel (and better attention to how players fit together), there are no long-term answers at coach.
