The Boogie Watch

[Damkac]

Fortunately Suns didn't traded Booker for that loser.

[Qwigglez]

Vlade, unsurprisingly, wanted Booker for Boogie:

“There was no way that we (could get) Jokic. I wanted him, but (Denver refused). I tried to get Booker in Phoenix, and Ingram from the Lakers but there was no chance. I wanted to start from the beginning and I think that’s for the best.”

http://bsndenver.com/vlade-divac-says-nuggets-turned-down-a-demarcus-cousins-nikola-jokic-swap/

I was willing to give the Kings Bender. They should have taken that. Instead they got greedy.

[kennydorglas]

Ohhhh, Divac really put Ingram in the same sentence as Booker and Jokic
Ok

You guys are lucky that Magic declined that deal lol

[dremill24]

Are these guys all of a sudden allowed to talk specifically about other teams' players? Im seeing a lot of it. Or are these quotes from 'sources' and not straight from the GMs?

[gaspar]

Read on Twitter

The change of scenery is doing wonders for Boogie.

[TeamTragic]

Vlade, unsurprisingly, wanted Booker for Boogie:

“There was no way that we (could get) Jokic. I wanted him, but (Denver refused). I tried to get Booker in Phoenix, and Ingram from the Lakers but there was no chance. I wanted to start from the beginning and I think that’s for the best.”

http://bsndenver.com/vlade-divac-says-nuggets-turned-down-a-demarcus-cousins-nikola-jokic-swap/

Vlade is officially the biggest dumb **** in the NBA. Hands down.

Vlade, unsurprisingly, wanted Booker for Boogie:

“There was no way that we (could get) Jokic. I wanted him, but (Denver refused). I tried to get Booker in Phoenix, and Ingram from the Lakers but there was no chance. I wanted to start from the beginning and I think that’s for the best.”

http://bsndenver.com/vlade-divac-says-nuggets-turned-down-a-demarcus-cousins-nikola-jokic-swap/

I was willing to give the Kings Bender. They should have taken that. Instead they got greedy.

Hell no to offering Bender for that headcase. [reggiemiller]Are you kidding me?[/reggiemiller]

Read on Twitter

The change of scenery is doing wonders for Boogie.

You mean he didn't change after being traded?

[GMATCallahan]

Here's a serious question, when do Suns fans have an expectation of making the playoffs? Forget competing for a title for a second, just competing for a playoff spot. This team is about to be seven years since and it doesn't look like that is changing anytime soon, especially if this move makes New Orleans a sure-fire playoff team.

When it comes time to pay these young players, will they just have to rebuild again?

I think 2 years from now is realistic. Next year is an outside possibility. Young players will grow, the team still has its own picks and a couple from Miami. No contracts that will hurt the team (aside from Knight maybe). Plenty of cash to throw at worthy free agents. Internal growth is key.

Two (or three) seasons from now would indeed make more sense; Denver, for instance, possesses an even more talented young roster, one with a young franchise center in Nikola Jokic, who makes Len look like a chump by comparison (on offense; not on defense). The Nuggets also feature a couple of young guards, in Emmanuel Mudiay and Jamal Murray, whose potential could be at least as great as Devin Booker's. (Mudiay remains very raw, but I would be surprised if Murray does not become an offensive weapon in this league, sort of a blend between Booker and Leandro Barbosa.) And the Nuggets are already in line for the eighth playoff seed at the moment. Then you have New Orleans with Davis and Cousins and Portland with Lillard and McCollum, so the Suns are still a ways back, competing with the Lakers to see which team can move away from the cellar and join the eighth seed also-rans, let alone become the eighth seed.

But two seasons from now, Bledsoe will also be in the final year of his contract. Either way, Ulis, Criss, and especially Bender need significantly greater time to develop.

If one considers the Nuggets, they began a genuine rebuild (while retaining some solid pieces) at least two years before the Suns, and then they landed a second-round steal in Jokic, so they are ahead of Phoenix's pace. The Jazz began their rebuild even earlier, and Utah is well ahead of Denver, let alone Phoenix. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that even though the Suns will have now missed the playoffs for seven straight seasons (and eight of the last nine), they kept putting off a genuine rebuild. First they opted to hold onto Steve Nash and Grant Hill until the bitter end, rather than seeking to deal Nash for a major asset and jump-starting the rebuilding process. Then, even after Nash and Hill departed in 2012, the Suns still tried to compete with some illogical mishmash that included Michael Beasley and an aging Luis Scola and Jermaine O'Neal (quite possibly the most senseless season in franchise history). In the summer of 2013, under new general manager Ryan McDonough and new head coach Jeff Hornacek, Phoenix finally made a concerted effort to revamp its roster with youth and athleticism, but when the Suns surprisingly won 48 games (albeit without earning a playoff berth) in '13-'14, Phoenix spent the next two off-seasons trying to accelerate the rebuilding process by becoming players in free agency. Those attempts failed to meet expectations on the court, and in the meantime, the Suns gave away their greatest asset—free agent signee Isaiah Thomas, inked to a bargain-basement contract by McDonough—for a trinket. Not until a year ago did the franchise fully commit to a traditional rebuilding process that emphasizes youth and the draft.

So the Suns wasted a lot of years; a lot of kids who started following the team at eight, nine, or ten years of age may well graduate from high school without ever knowing a playoff club in Phoenix, which is sad compared to the childhood and adolescent experiences that the franchise gave generations of fans beforehand. There is nothing like that visceral love that you have as a kid, but Phoenix will likely end up with a decade of forgettable basketball. The Suns are finally on the right track, but they still have a ways to go, especially because top prospects possess so little experience and so much youth when they enter the NBA now. Rebuilding through the draft used to potentially be quicker when most players spent four years in college.

Steve Kerr spent a lot of years in the NBA as a role player with several franchises, but he said that the best back court that he ever played with was the trio of Kevin Johnson, Jeff Hornacek, and Dan Majerle in Phoenix.

Watch on YouTube

(Start at the 2:40 mark.)

Well, Kerr played only one year with them, but "they were so good, individually and together" even though Johnson was just in his second season, Hornacek in his third, and Majerle in his first. Yet Hornacek and Majerle was twenty-three as NBA rookies, while K.J. turned twenty-three during his second season. (All of them played four years of college basketball.) Nowadays, a really talented player may not be twenty-three until his fifth season, so unless you are talking about a full-fledged phenom like Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, you need to wait awhile for a guy to really get into his playing prime at twenty-two or twenty-three years of age. And even then, you still may not receive the full range of fundamentals that you did with someone who spent three or four years in college.

If you are really lucky and you draft really well, like the Sonics/Thunder starting about a decade ago, you can still move the process along quickly, but Oklahoma City represents the exception. The Warriors did make the playoffs (and win a playoff series) in 2013 with a second-year Klay Thompson and a rookie Harrison Barnes and Draymond Green, but Stephen Curry was in his fourth season by then.

[gaspar]

Read on Twitter

[garrick]

I think Cousins might only be coachable by someone like Phil Jackson who was able to handle the headcase that was Rodman but Phil isn't coming back and I don't really see anyone that can really manage Cousins at this point.

Its sad to see him waste his talent by being such a knucklehead.

[jcsunsfan]

I think Cousins might only be coachable by someone like Phil Jackson who was able to handle the headcase that was Rodman but Phil isn't coming back and I don't really see anyone that can really manage Cousins at this point.

Its sad to see him waste his talent by being such a knucklehead.

I think the problem is his game itself (his personality off the court is an issue but a separate one). He is like a big version of Brandon Knight. He just doesn't play effective team ball, and his defense is deceptively bad. Again, when a f/c high volume player shoots as low a percentage as Boogie does, the efficiency of your entire offense suffers.

50% is a good mark for guards.

Below 50% is a bad sign for bigs.

[GMATCallahan]

I think Cousins might only be coachable by someone like Phil Jackson who was able to handle the headcase that was Rodman but Phil isn't coming back and I don't really see anyone that can really manage Cousins at this point.

Its sad to see him waste his talent by being such a knucklehead.

Even then, Rodman was a veteran in his mid-thirties who had already won two championships with Detroit. He understood the game's nuances inside and out, understood what winning required, and pursued the ball for the purpose of creating more chances for his teammates. Dealing with a high-volume, high-usage, ball-dominant player like Cousins with no playoff experience strikes me as a different deal.

[bwgood77]

Although if we would have traded a bunch of assets for him, we would have been a top 3 or 4 seed with ease. Booker is better than AD.

[garrick]

I think Cousins might only be coachable by someone like Phil Jackson who was able to handle the headcase that was Rodman but Phil isn't coming back and I don't really see anyone that can really manage Cousins at this point.

Its sad to see him waste his talent by being such a knucklehead.

Even then, Rodman was a veteran in his mid-thirties who had already won two championships with Detroit. He understood the game's nuances inside and out, understood what winning required, and pursued the ball for the purpose of creating more chances for his teammates. Dealing with a high-volume, high-usage, ball-dominant player like Cousins with no playoff experience strikes me as a different deal.

Yeah true and Rodman absolutely hated to handle the ball and was focused solely on rebounds and defense.

[RaisingArizona]

Although if we would have traded a bunch of assets for him, we would have been a top 3 or 4 seed with ease. Booker is better than AD.

F'n A