nixluva wrote:

TMS wrote:

The Suns also say they are more attentive to defense, although they ranked 22nd, according to basketball-reference.com’s defensive rating formula. (They were 16th in 2005-6.)(Note that they are not as good on D as they were under MDA, despite having more size and supposedly more emphasis on D)

u don't think no longer having Marion, Raja Bell, Boris Diaw & now with Barbosa being out for a big chunk of the year had just a tad bit to do w/that? the Suns players saying they're stressing defense more under a different coach is pretty telling.

Kerr is the one that is responsible for this roster! He's the one that made the deals to move the guys they had before under MDA. Kerr made a big deal about D back in MDA's last year and that's after they tried to improve the rosters D with KT then Shaq. Now they've got Lopez and you'd think they'd be able to at least hold up at the level they had back when MDA was there. They've shrunk back over the last 2 years and it's up to Kerr to being in players that could help to improve that area. If they don't have better defenders that's ON KERR! He shouldn't have talked so much about MDA's lack of D while not doing his job in bringing in players that can play D! Kerr is the one that brought in Terry Porter with this whole shift to a defensive team only to see that crash and burn and then have to hire MDA lite in his assistant Gentry. All this talk about more focus on D if fine, but the source of the problem wasn't MDA it was Kerr and his failure to bolster the roster in terms of defensive help.

the point i made was in reference to your bolded point above... ur trying to make some connection w/the defense being worse this season & MDA's absence as if MDA was the reason the Suns played better D when he was coaching... the fact that the Suns no longer have their defensive minded players on the roster any more seems to have much more to do w/this than MDA's absence... i don't see how u can possibly make any kind of correlation here other than that.

TMS wrote:

Cosmic wrote:We should have never torn down the roster. I think Isiah put together a powerhouse.

Curry
Zach
Q
Craw
Marbs

And then we would have had Gallo, Chandler, Hill, Lee, Douglas.

Jeffries and Darko.

I agree. Just keep firing the coaches until we get one that could guide that star power to their rightful place at the top of the Eastern Conference.

---

But, no, we had to tear down that formidable team!

But that doesn't mean we wouldn't have been great this year you know.

If Mike had just started and played:

Darko
Hill
Gallo
Chandler
Douglas

From the start of the year? We'd be 42-22 and sitting pretty. Zero doubt in my mind. Not sure how much more of these losses in 09/10 I can take anymore! We were robbed of a playoff berth. Absolutely.

FIRE THE DAMN COACH NOW!!!!

Promote Herb.

probably a better plan to build a champion is your favored route to trade away every draft pick we own for the next century & hope we can land the next Michael Jordan in free agency to come save our franchise.

We have a better chance to find the next Michael Jordan in free agency than we do constantly picking at 8th or 9th in the draft which is where we would be picking from.

And, no, I don't favor trading every draft pick I don't know where you got that from.

And, no, we haven't traded every draft pick.

We bought Toney Douglas last year, that's working out nicely.
We dumped Hill who is no longer a draft pick and in another trade picked up Walker and Rodriguez who seem like some nice youth.
We traded a 2011 swap which if we do well this summer won't be much of a swap if one at all.
We traded ONE DRAFT PICK ONE: The 2012.

So other than it sounding good for the argument "We traded three draft picks!" it's simply not true.
I get it you didn't want to dump Hill.
I get it that you liked that Isiah roster and thought a few tweaks and it'd be good.
I get it that you don't want to tear down the roster.

Well, we did, so it's kind of time to look forward and see what we do with the first cap space we've had since we put together the LJ-Camby-Spree-Childs-Ward-Houston squad.

It's something we should have done with Ewing's expiring.
It's something we should have done when Isiah had our roster lined up will all 2007 expirings.
It's something we should have done when Walsh came in, OH WAIT, we are, and it's the correct thing to do regardless of what happens in 2010.
Just one more MLE signing or just one more trade wasn't changing a damn thing for that Isiah roster. And no draft pick would either.

eViL wrote:

djsunyc wrote:good to see the past 2 season mean absolutely nothing. no big deal i guess.

that to me is more of an indictment of the nba's cba, than it is about d'antoni or walsh. the rigidity of the league's trade rules, the way the cap works, the luxury tax, and the MLE, have all combined to create a big mess of a league where lopsided, talent-for-salary-relief deals are commonplace.

Good point.

Pharzeone wrote:

BasketballJones wrote:

eViL wrote:

djsunyc wrote:good to see the past 2 season mean absolutely nothing. no big deal i guess.

that to me is more of an indictment of the nba's cba, than it is about d'antoni or walsh. the rigidity of the league's trade rules, the way the cap works, the luxury tax, and the MLE, have all combined to create a big mess of a league where lopsided, talent-for-salary-relief deals are commonplace.

Good point.

Well isn't that the whole point about a competitive sports market?

Good point.

Marv wrote:

BasketballJones wrote:

Pharzeone wrote:

BasketballJones wrote:

eViL wrote:

djsunyc wrote:good to see the past 2 season mean absolutely nothing. no big deal i guess.

that to me is more of an indictment of the nba's cba, than it is about d'antoni or walsh. the rigidity of the league's trade rules, the way the cap works, the luxury tax, and the MLE, have all combined to create a big mess of a league where lopsided, talent-for-salary-relief deals are commonplace.

Good point.

Well isn't that the whole point about a competitive sports market?

Good point.

ha. d'antoni struggled mightily this year, regardless of the quality of the team he had to work with.

1. allowed and relied on way too many 3’s.

2. did a poor job of playing and developing 2 1st round picks.

3. benched for long periodic or didn’t use at all players who could have contributed.

4. very poor play-calling at ends of games.

5. featured an offense with players with slashing abilities and/or height advantages camped around the 3-piont line. little flow or movement.

6. defense was often poor.

Good points.

Pharzeone wrote:

BasketballJones wrote:

eViL wrote:

djsunyc wrote:good to see the past 2 season mean absolutely nothing. no big deal i guess.

that to me is more of an indictment of the nba's cba, than it is about d'antoni or walsh. the rigidity of the league's trade rules, the way the cap works, the luxury tax, and the MLE, have all combined to create a big mess of a league where lopsided, talent-for-salary-relief deals are commonplace.

Good point.

Well isn't that the whole point about a competitive sports market?

i don't really think the NBA's system is a good one. you can have a competitive sports market without having this particular CBA. the system is broke. deals like the jeffries/tmac trade are examples of how broke things are. it is virtually impossible to turn around a team without first gutting it completely. and as far as i'm concerned, that's just not a sign of a system that works.

when deals like ilgauskas for jamison happen, and then cleveland gets ilgauskas back because washington wanted to save more money, it is obvious the system doesn't work. gasol to the lakers, and steven jackson for an injured raja bell and radmanovic are more examples. then, under this same ****ty system, many trades that actually would make sense can't happen because of the stupid salary matching rules. this is the best they can come up with?

one bad signing can set a team back for many seasons. the MLE has led to more mediocre garbage players making more money than they should because cap strapped teams can't help but throw MLE's at guys like Jeffries and Kapono.

today's skilled GM's are not bball architects, they're accountants. they make money deals. as it stands, most every contender is assembled around a player they drafted. so it appears the highest percentage chance of turning around your franchise is to be garbage, to win the lottery, and to do so during a year when a true franchise talent is available.

every team in the nba is just waiting their turn to draft the next big thing unless they have one. if you have one, then you can be on the other side of the money deals. the side that gets the talent in exchange for expirings. in the meantime, if you don't have one, your choices are very limited and you are unlikely to assemble a championship caliber squad without tremendous luck.

donnie obviously thinks that free agency is where the knicks will get lucky. that remains to be seen.

Pharzeone wrote:Nix, with this reasoning that it's on Kerr and not on MDA then you should be killing Walsh for the current state of the Knicks roster with the same line of thinking.

Kerr has had his 2 yrs since MDA to improve the teams defense. It's not like MDA is still making decisions for the Suns. With MDA out of the way there should've been a major improvement in the roster to improve the D. More than the roster Kerr has had every opportunity to bring in a defensive minded coach if he so chose. He could've went after Avery or Scott. In any event IMO he's talked the talk and asn't done anything appreciable to live up to the standard he was so vocal about. 2 years after MDA and the team is actually worse defensively.

We'll have a chance to see how the team looks when DW builds his team which I would expect to have better balance and more talent than the team we have now. My point has been that when MDA had some guys that could defend the team was never bad on D, just not great. Then again neither were the Magic Lakers. Teams are often built with a certain make up and they lean towards D or O. I would like a team that is balanced and good on both ends. I think we can finally have that here. I'm not expecting Lebron, but with a major improvement in Talent and balance we can move way up the ladder in the East next year.

jimimou wrote:

BasketballJones wrote:

Marv wrote:

BasketballJones wrote:

Pharzeone wrote:

BasketballJones wrote:

eViL wrote:

djsunyc wrote:good to see the past 2 season mean absolutely nothing. no big deal i guess.

that to me is more of an indictment of the nba's cba, than it is about d'antoni or walsh. the rigidity of the league's trade rules, the way the cap works, the luxury tax, and the MLE, have all combined to create a big mess of a league where lopsided, talent-for-salary-relief deals are commonplace.

Good point.

Well isn't that the whole point about a competitive sports market?

Good point.

ha. d'antoni struggled mightily this year, regardless of the quality of the team he had to work with.

1. allowed and relied on way too many 3’s.

2. did a poor job of playing and developing 2 1st round picks.

3. benched for long periodic or didn’t use at all players who could have contributed.

4. very poor play-calling at ends of games.

5. featured an offense with players with slashing abilities and/or height advantages camped around the 3-piont line. little flow or movement.

6. defense was often poor.

Good points.

you really need to get your cable package back to where it was

Good point.