Charles Barkley or Steve Nash?

[TheBomb81]

Who's the greatest Phoenix Sun of all-time?

[saintEscaton]

Louis Amundson hands down

[NTB]

NTB means Nash the best, so...

[bwgood77]

At absolute peak I'd say KJ, and the odd thing is he peaked his first four years for the Suns. But since it was short lived, and Barkley only played a few years for us and might have cost us a championship for partying the night before a game, I'll take Nash since he made everyone else better and almost got us there despite playing with different various lineups.

[Cactus Jack]

At absolute peak I'd say KJ, and the odd thing is he peaked his first four years for the Suns. But since it was short lived, and Barkley only played a few years for us and might have cost us a championship for partying the night before a game, I'll take Nash since he made everyone else better and almost got us there despite playing with different various lineups.

Nash. longevity. As good as Barkley was, it has to be Nash. Not a fan of KJ. Don't like the dude ("Mayor KJ"). Some of the things he said about Seattle during the whole Sacramento fiasco. He was a good player. But, from my pov, he's a slim ball politician now. him.

[LukasBMW]

Nash for his accomplishments on the court but also off it.

Barkley was great, but he really only have us 3 good years. Then he was washed up and started crying like a baby.

Nash is a 2 time MVP and class act. It's a shame we didn't find a way to have him retire with a Suns jersey on.

[TeamTragic]

No contest. Barkley is just alright.

[OGBAH]

Socks

[DirtyDez]

If our greatest player in franchise history only played here for 4 years we'd better at least have a title in that span.

[LukasBMW]

That said, I wish both could have played together.

GMAT ripped me a new one the last time I said this and said that the Barkley Suns and Nash Suns had different styles and thus it wouldn't have worked. A valid argument.

But I still think that if you throw the 2 greatest Suns of all time on a team, they make it work. Barkley may not have been able to run the pick and roll like Amare, but Barkley was a better defender, better rebounded, and actually had a post game.

More importantly, Barkley was clutch and had heart. Amare chocked in prime time and he didn't have half the desire of chuck.

If Malone and Stockton worked, Nash and Barkley would have worked.

[bwgood77]

That said, I wish both could have played together.

GMAT ripped me a new one the last time I said this and said that the Barkley Suns and Nash Suns had different styles and thus it wouldn't have worked. A valid argument.

But I still think that if you throw the 2 greatest Suns of all time on a team, they make it work. Barkley may not have been able to run the pick and roll like Amare, but Barkley was a better defender, better rebounded, and actually had a post game.

More importantly, Barkley was clutch and had heart. Amare chocked in prime time and he didn't have half the desire of chuck.

If Malone and Stockton worked, Nash and Barkley would have worked.

Barkley may have worked better with Nash than with KJ because Nash deferred more but the teams with Nash were based on ball movement and shooting or finishing quickly (and the KJ teams were somewhat the same before Barkley...KJ scores or passes and that guy shoots immediately) so it all depends on Barkley. Most people who become Suns fans because of Barkley or watched him at a really young age, don't realize that he kind of had an impact on the Suns team of adding a ton with rebounding and toughness, but the beautiful flow of offense from 89-92 stopped, and that offense was very similar in many respects as far as ball movement to the 2005-2010 Suns. Barkley cuts that movement off completely very often, and will take the offense in his own hand in half court sets. Often when the team is clicking and he should let the PG do is thing....Barkley made KJ less effective and I'm guessing he would do the same with Nash. I think if prime KJ was on the team in 2005, 2007 or 2010 the Suns win it all.

[Qwigglez]

Right now Nash. By 2030, Devin Booker.

[Mulhollanddrive]

Barkley.

[Mr Puddles]

Right now Nash. By 2030, Devin Booker.

I can see it now: 8 time league MVP Devin Booker retires after leading the Phillips Suns to a record breaking full decade of winning consecutive championships. Fresh off a hard-fought series against the Bronnie James led Cocoa Puff Caveliers, the Suns are invited to the White House to be personally congratulated on their terrific accomplishment by US President Kim Kardashian.

[GMATCallahan]

Nash. longevity. As good as Barkley was, it has to be Nash. Not a fan of KJ. Don't like the dude ("Mayor KJ"). Some of the things he said about Seattle during the whole Sacramento fiasco. He was a good player. But, from my pov, he's a slim ball politician now. him.

To my knowledge, Kevin Johnson never said anything negative about Seattle. In fact, he stated in 2013 that Seattle deserved a new franchise, and he had said more recently that he hopes that Seattle one day receives a new franchise. Obviously, he did not want that franchise to be the Kings.

http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/1/22/3905800/kings-sale-seattle-nba-kevin-johnson-press-conference

He is the mayor of Sacramento (his birthplace and hometown), not Seattle. If he felt that a new downtown arena and the city's retention of an NBA franchise constituted a communal priority, of course he was going to fight to keep the Kings in Sacramento. In that regard, he was performing his civic duty.

And, really, the Kings never belonged to Seattle. The notion that Seattle somehow "deserved" them makes no sense. Seattle deserved the Sonics, and losing them proved unfortunate and in many ways unfair—but that development has happened many times before in major American professional sports, and it will probably occur again. I would like to see federal legislation that prohibits taxpayer money from being spent on sports stadiums for privately owned major league sports teams (unless the taxpayer money only comes about via new entities and new revenue streams that would only derive from the construction of the new stadium, such as the leasing of parking permits that would stem from the new parking lots). That way, corporate welfare-seeking team owners and wealthy investors could not hold taxpayers hostage by leveraging sports franchises to pit communities against each other in public bidding wars—essentially a racket. This concern has only become more pressing lately, because franchises have been building beautiful new state-of-the-art stadiums—and then, less than twenty years down the road or a little over twenty years down the road, while the stadiums are still beautiful and extremely viable (if in need of occasional repairs and renovations)—they are seeking to build new stadiums yet again, buttressed by hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer resources. And the sports leagues and commissioners themselves are pushing individual owners in this direction. Meanwhile, communities—especially poorer ones with limited tax bases and marginal political clout—see their infrastructure, schools, and public services continue to deteriorate.

The San Francisco Giants built the most scenic sporting venue in America about seventeen years ago, and they did so entirely with private money.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidwhelan/2010/10/25/the-san-francisco-giants-are-the-capitalist-choice-in-the-world-series/#56bc8d6845ca

That business practice should constitute the standard, not the exception. If legislation were adopted to make it the standard, we could avoid most of these these semi-perennial melodramas and the blame games that result.

[Damkac]

This pool could as well be renamed to "Greatest No-Ring of All Time"

[Frank Lee]

It is apparent that many of you have no idea how good Alvin Adams was.

Btw, who has the most Ws ?

[Qwigglez]

Right now Nash. By 2030, Devin Booker.

I can see it now: 8 time league MVP Devin Booker retires after leading the Phillips Suns to a record breaking full decade of winning consecutive championships. Fresh off a hard-fought series against the Bronnie James led Cocoa Puff Caveliers, the Suns are invited to the White House to be personally congratulated on their terrific accomplishment by US President Kim Kardashian.

I can see it now... "On this week's episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians, Suns superstar Devin Booker helps Kim paints the White house pink!"

[GMATCallahan]

That said, I wish both could have played together.

GMAT ripped me a new one the last time I said this and said that the Barkley Suns and Nash Suns had different styles and thus it wouldn't have worked. A valid argument.

But I still think that if you throw the 2 greatest Suns of all time on a team, they make it work. Barkley may not have been able to run the pick and roll like Amare, but Barkley was a better defender, better rebounded, and actually had a post game.

More importantly, Barkley was clutch and had heart. Amare chocked in prime time and he didn't have half the desire of chuck.

If Malone and Stockton worked, Nash and Barkley would have worked.

Nash and Barkley probably would have "worked" as a tandem—there was too much talent there for them not to have worked. (My point earlier was that the tandem would not have guaranteed a championship.) The style, however, would have been different from that of Nash's glory days in Phoenix.

Something to remember is that Nash did not meld easily with Shaquille O'Neal in Phoenix after Mike D'Antoni departed. Under Terry Porter, the Suns ran a more conventional offense that mixed fast breaks and pick-and-rolls/pops (primarily involving Amar'e Stoudemire) with isolation plays for Stoudemire in the elbow-extended regions and post-ups for O'Neal on the low blocks. Nash found his driving lanes narrowed and his overall game stunted, and he averaged a relatively pedestrian 13.8 points on .468 field goal shooting, along with 9.8 assists, in 46 games under that setup (before Phoenix fired Terry Porter at the 2009 All-Star break).

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/n/nashst01/splits/2009/

O'Neal, of course, was thirty-six years old and past his prime, if still an All-Star. A prime Charles Barkley would have demanded even more post-ups and isolation plays, reducing Nash's pick-and-rolls and playmaking opportunities even further. Because Nash constituted such a great perimeter shooter, with such great range, he and Barkley could have still represented a deadly tandem—for their inside-outside balance as much as their pick-and-roll potential. But Nash would have been a more limited player—think of the Dallas version of Nash who never averaged as many as 9.0 assists per game in a regular season, never shot as high as .490 from the field, and shot just .430 from the field in the playoffs on two-point field goal attempts, never reaching .450 on two-pointers in the postseason—or even the Los Angeles version of Nash, who spent a lot of time watching Kobe Bryant and trying to position himself on the perimeter, without the ball, in order to space the floor for Bryant and launch catch-and-shoot threes in the event that that he received the rock.

Intangibly, media reports later surfaced that Nash did not care for O'Neal's joke-cracking and locker room raucousness, preferring an atmosphere that proved calmer and more professional. Barkley was even more of a clown than O'Neal. (Unlike Shaq, who adopted a poker face come game time, Sir Charles often continued clowning during games. Granted, Barkley did not tackle fellow big men in the locker room, like O'Neal. On the other hand, after the Suns lost Game Six of the 1995 Western Conference Semifinals in Houston, Barkley joked loudly in the locker room that the loss would sap some of the fun from his visit to a topless bar later that night. Given the stakes, not many of his teammates were laughing along with him.)

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports in the summer of 2009 (the article is no longer available online), Nash only inked a contract extension with the Suns at that time after general manager Steve Kerr agreed to trade O'Neal. In other words, according to this report, Nash forced Shaq out of town. Granted, the Suns may have wanted to move a thirty-seven-year old O'Neal anyway, and Nash may have tolerated Barkley's less attractive or less professional qualities if Sir Charles was in his prime and could constitute a meal ticket of sorts.

I cannot confirm Wojnarowski's report, but Sports Illustrated stated that fall, in its '09-'10 NBA preview, that Nash was looking forward to a quieter locker room.

Like any ringless vet, Nash hungers for his first title, but after last season he also looks forward to more simple pleasures -- a return to the breakneck Phoenix offense of seasons past, teammates who want to run as much as he does and a locker room that is much quieter without Shaquille O'Neal.

"Obviously I want to win a championship before I'm done," says Nash, 35. "But last year highlighted how special it is to have a great working environment, continuity, familiarity, those characteristics that are special to your career and your life."

... "Hopefully we win a championship," Nash says. "But more than that, I hope we build a great environment and spirit around our team."

http://www.si.com/nba/2013/12/13/suns-team

None of that information means that a Barkley-Nash tandem would not have "worked," but Nash's experience with Shaquille O'Neal in Phoenix, both on the floor and off it, suggests that complications could have emerged. Multiple longtime basketball writers (Peter Vecsey and Mike Tululmello, the latter of whom covered the Suns locally for years) have written that at least one Phoenix teammate (A.C. Green, who had won multiple championships with the Lakers) suggested to head coach Paul Westphal at one point that Phoenix trade Barkley—because of the latter's unwillingness to get with the program and follow team rules. Or as center Danny Schayes later told told a newspaper columnist after leaving the Suns, "Charles has his own set of rules and can do whatever he wants." (Although Schayes appreciated Barkley's humor as much as anyone, he too wanted the Suns to fully function as a team.) Those comments in the paper led to Barkley's flagrant foul on Schayes (along with an off-color comment) that one can see late in the second video here from January 30, 1996, in Miami:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYWff_A9Fms[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qxQi0qXqeE[/youtube]

So, again, we do not how exactly Nash would have worked with Barkley, on or off the floor. Again, my suspicion is that they still would have constituted a very effective offensive tandem, but either way, the system and flow would have functioned differently from what Nash enjoyed under Mike D'Antoni and Alvin Gentry in Phoenix.

As for the Stockton-Malone paradigm, one might note that Barkley—regardless of what he may say now (much of what he says as an analyst contradicts how he actually played)—was unwilling to play like Malone. Although I believe that Malone ultimately amounted to the more effective and valuable player (largely due to his superior defense, conditioning, durability, and reliability), Barkley possessed a lot more "game" than Malone. Malone had game, but Barkley could do a lot more. He possessed more moves on the block, better footwork, more handle, greater shooting range (although Sir Charles became carried away in fashioning himself as a three-point shooter), and better creativity. Malone played a simpler game: setting screens and rolling or popping to score off pocket passes from Stockton, posting to fire catch-and-shoot or one dribble-and-fade fall-away or turn-around jumpers off entry passes from Stockton, running the court in straight lines to take fast-break passes from Stockton, and making simple rip-through moves from the top of the key).

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAC0GhFF650[/youtube]

Malone played with military-style structure and regimentation, whereas Barkley's superior talent encouraged him to freelance more and play his own game, outside of any real flow, with his teammates orbiting around him like satellites. The danger, however, was that Barkley's longer leash would lead him to hang himself by mistake, which happened a little too often for Phoenix to ever win a championship.

The point is that Barkley's greater array of skills and talent meant that he did not, and would not, play quite like Malone. That is part of the reason why Tom Chambers, a less talented player than Barkley, twice averaged more points per game in a season for Phoenix than Barkley ever did and scored more points in a game than Barkley. Chambers would routinely play off Kevin Johnson in the manner that Malone played off Stockton, whereas Barkley would do so less often—he would do it often enough, but he also wanted the ball in his hands a lot so that the offense would run through him. And his talent and skills justified that desire, even as his tendencies and lack of discipline often did not.

Barkley could certainly prove highly effective in the pick-and-roll, but he could do much more and he wanted to do much more, which is why the dynamic between himself and Nash would have been very different compared to Stoudemire and Nash. Although Barkley did not handle the ball as well as LeBron James, imagine telling a guy like LeBron to just set screens and roll to the basket over and over again. (Again, Barkley did not handle the ball as well as James, but his footwork and post moves were vastly superior.)

Here are a couple more points to consider, for whatever they are worth:

A) When Kevin Johnson visited the TNT studio on April 2, 2009, Kenny Smith stated that if Stockton and Malone constituted the #1 pick-and-roll combination of their era, Johnson and Barkley represented #1A—and that in the minds of Smith's Houston Rockets, Johnson and Barkley amounted to the more dangerous pick-and-roll tandem, actually superior to Stockton and Malone. And consider that Smith's Rockets faced the Stockton/Malone Jazz for a total of 10 playoff games in 1994 and 1995 (including a winner-take-all game) and the Johnson/Barkley Suns for a total of 14 playoff games in 1994 and 1995 (including two winner-take-all games, obviously). So even if Nash/Barkley were to equal Stockton/Malone as a pick-and-roll duo, would it even be as good as, or better than, Johnson/Barkley?

Consider, too, that in the first two seasons that Kevin Johnson and Charles Barkley played together, Phoenix finished first in the NBA in Offensive Rating (points scored per possession), despite significant injuries. The Suns merely dropped to third in Offensive Rating in Johnson and Barkley's third season together, '94-'95—and may well have finished first again had Barkley and K.J. not combined to miss 49 games (35 by K.J.). In Barkley's fourth and final season in Phoenix, '95-'96, the Suns ranked seventh in Offensive Rating, despite Barkley and K.J. combining to miss 37 games (26 by K.J., who by now was playing with two undiagnosed sports hernias) and despite the entire roster only featuring one natural three-point shooter in Wesley Person. In one game, primarily to prevent Barkley from shooting threes without singling him out, Paul Westphal banned the Suns from shooting beyond the arc. (Phoenix ultimately shot 0-1 on threes.)

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1995&b=19951205&tm=PHO

In nine of the first twelve games where Johnson and Barkley played after Cotton Fitzsimmons returned to the head coaching position in January 1996, the Suns attempted a total of five three-pointers or fewer. Fitzsimmons was mercifully trying to discipline a team that lacked three-point shooters, but of course, maximizing court spacing is what optimizes the pick-and-roll, because such spacing forces longer defensive rotations that render defensive help on the pick-and-roll ineffective or impossible. This element, more than any other, is what Mike D'Antoni used to unlock Steve Nash's potential, turbo-charging Nash's numbers in the process. K.J. and Barkley did not enjoy that degree of court spacing around them, especially in their final season together—sometimes that year, they did not have any decent three-point shooters around them, let alone two or three as in D'Antoni's offense or most offenses nowadays. Nonetheless, Phoenix enjoyed some outstanding offensive performances in that stretch of games that I mentioned, including one in Atlanta where the Suns scored 120 points on .638 field goal shooting—while shooting 1-3 on threes.

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1995&b=19960130&tm=MIA

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1995&b=19960131&tm=ATL

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1995&b=19960204&tm=WA1

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1995&b=19960206&tm=PHO

Part of my point is that I do not concur with the conventional wisdom that Barkley and Nash necessarily represented the two best players in Phoenix history, MVP Awards or not.

2) Although Barkley may have been a better defender than Stoudemire, that statement is kind of like saying that Brandon Knight is a smarter guard than J.R. Smith. Well, maybe, but ...

[Cactus Jack]

Nash. longevity. As good as Barkley was, it has to be Nash. Not a fan of KJ. Don't like the dude ("Mayor KJ"). Some of the things he said about Seattle during the whole Sacramento fiasco. He was a good player. But, from my pov, he's a slim ball politician now. him.

To my knowledge, Kevin Johnson never said anything negative about Seattle. In fact, he stated in 2013 that Seattle deserved a new franchise, and he had said more recently that he hopes that Seattle one day receives a new franchise. Obviously, he did not want that franchise to be the Kings.

http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/1/22/3905800/kings-sale-seattle-nba-kevin-johnson-press-conference

He is the mayor of Sacramento (his birthplace and hometown), not Seattle. If he felt that a new downtown arena and the city's retention of an NBA franchise constituted a communal priority, of course he was going to fight to keep the Kings in Sacramento. In that regard, he was performing his civic duty.

And, really, the Kings never belonged to Seattle. The notion that Seattle somehow "deserved" them makes no sense. Seattle deserved the Sonics, and losing them proved unfortunate and in many ways unfair—but that development has happened many times before in major American professional sports, and it will probably occur again. I would like to see federal legislation that prohibits taxpayer money from being spent on sports stadiums for privately owned major league sports teams (unless the taxpayer money only comes about via new entities and new revenue streams that would only derive from the construction of the new stadium, such as the leasing of parking permits that would stem from the new parking lots). That way, corporate welfare-seeking team owners and wealthy investors could not hold taxpayers hostage by leveraging sports franchises to pit communities against each other in public bidding wars—essentially a racket. This concern has only become more pressing lately, because franchises have been building beautiful new state-of-the-art stadiums—and then, less than twenty years down the road or a little over twenty years down the road, while the stadiums are still beautiful and extremely viable (if in need of occasional repairs and renovations)—they are seeking to build new stadiums yet again, buttressed by hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer resources. And the sports leagues and commissioners themselves are pushing individual owners in this direction. Meanwhile, communities—especially poorer ones with limited tax bases and marginal political clout—see their infrastructure, schools, and public services continue to deteriorate.

The San Francisco Giants built the most scenic sporting venue in America about seventeen years ago, and they did so entirely with private money.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidwhelan/2010/10/25/the-san-francisco-giants-are-the-capitalist-choice-in-the-world-series/#56bc8d6845ca

That business practice should constitute the standard, not the exception. If legislation were adopted to make it the standard, we could avoid most of these these semi-perennial melodramas and the blame games that result.

KJ basically said in an interview somewhere. Essentially we lost our team, cause the fans weren't showing up, and so we didnt deserve another team (Kings). It was a hot topic around here when the whole thing was going down. Was I hoping the team would move? Of course. I'm still bitter about that as well. Stern had it out for Seattle, still does. Here comes this guy, Chris Hansen (along with Steve Ballmer) who offers a ridiculous amount of money to buy the Kings. He has a sales agreement with the Maloofs. Keep the team in Sacramento, fine. But don't even bother to offer an expansion franchise to these guys (Seattle group) after everything they've done?? They couldn't even throw us a **** bone. The Sacramento/Seattle fued got ugly. Much like the OKC rivalry. KJ is not a very popular guy among Sonics fans. Vivek Ranadive is a joke. I find myself actively rooting against Sacramento lol. Too much bad blood there. Why does Sacramento get to have a team, but Seattle can't? It's maddening.