Bickley Article on D'Antoni

Amare did also make mistakes as well such as his public calling out of Bowen (which I agreed w/ at the time and still don't really have a problem with) and more importantly on the court his ability to play smart and stay out of foul trouble.

If I had to guess, I would say that he is taking it out on Marion and maybe Diaw. We all pretty much thought that Nash's comments during the Laker's series calling out his teammates was directed at Marion as well. So, I would say its Nash and Amare "vs" Marion in that they feel like he didn't give 110% for the full 48. That's just my hunch.

Regardless, we know that Nash and Amare aren't going anywhere and IMHO shouldn't. I agree pretty much w/ Bickley's list of untouchables: Nash, Amare, Bell, Barbosa and I would add KT. We do know how much Coach D likes Diaw so I wouldn't be surprised to see him back but ONLY if they manage to move Marion.

The Coach and Sarver talked up Marion a lot during the year but I always felt like they were saying those things to appese his ego as he always feels slighted and underappreciated in the media and by the organization.

On to the three points.

1. 
   
2. I'm not sure who to believe about the chemistry issue. On one hand we have Amare skipping out on the exit interviews, which unless he had a legitimate reason (and it doesn't sound like he did), is really, really, really not a good sign. It basically means (a) he was totally uninterested in hearing about the plans for next year, and (b) he didn't want to see his teammates one last time before heading to the off-season. This just seems like a definite bad thing to me, unless he had a darn good reason (e.g., emergency) that nobody has reported yet. On the other hand, there was a quote from (I think) James Jones and also Eric Piatkowski both saying how well everyone gets along and how much fun it is to play on this team. Jones even said something to the effect of it was the "closest team [he's] ever been on at any level". So who knows.
3. 
   
4. I'm not ready to throw Mike D'Antoni the GM (or Mike D'Antoni the coach either for that matter) under the bus just yet. In my mind, the off-season last summer was a disaster primarily for one reason: Mike D'Antoni naively believed Tim Thomas when he said he wanted to come back to the Suns and would be "silly" to sign somewhere else. Everything the Suns did at the draft (or didn't do) was to free up money to sign Thomas. Then Thomas backed out and signed elsewhere, and the Suns were left to scramble up a Plan B. And then Plan B (Salmons) backed out too, so they ended up with Plan C. I didn't think the Banks signing was a bad idea at the time. Here was a guy who had been a starter who said he wanted to come to the Suns (at a discount) so he could learn from Steve Nash. I would take a guy with that attitude ten times out of ten. Unfortunately, Banks just either can't figure out how to play in our system, is no longer interested in learning, or wasn't really who he said he was to begin with. Sure he's been a colloassal bust, and in hindsight, obviously keeping Sergio or even Rondo would clearly been the better option. But by the time they even got to Banks, the draft was over, Tim Thomas had played Judas, and Salmons decided he'd rather play with Ron Artest instead of Nash. Diaw's contract is another bust (so far), but after the Joe Johnson fiasco, there was no way they weren't going to come to a deal with Diaw. I thought it was a good idea at the time too. So since I would have made the same mistakes as D'Antoni, I guess I really can't complain about it too much. :) That said, this was his one free pass. Now, he really needs to redeem himself this summer or else it's probably his last year as coach, GM, or both (just a hunch).
5. 
   
6. As for the Spurs controlling the tempo, honestly I don't think the Suns are nearly as bad as everyone says they are in a "slow down" game. It's obviously not the way they play best, but they hung in there with the Spurs in every game during the series, even the one they played without Amare and Diaw. During the fourth quarter of Game 4, the announcers were even saying that it looked like the Suns had finally "broken through" against SA. It felt that way to me as well. Who knows what would have happened had they had all their guys in Game 5? No guarantees, obviously, but I'm guessing the series would have been decided tonight not Friday. In any case, the Suns aren't that far behind SA, if they're even behind at all. And I just hope D'Antoni means it when he basically said the same thing (and that Sarver lets him follow through on it).