Bill Simmons hits the nail on the coffin...

by Aluminum Foyle on May 3, 2008 7:30 PM MDT Comment 13 comments

How true it is about the end of the Suns era. What could have been, if better decisions using common sense had been applied in the front office.

Here's Bill's solace to the Suns/Spurs rivalry:

"Maybe the Suns didn't win a championship, but we'll remember them 100 times more fondly than the brutally efficient and hopelessly bland Spurs, who taught everyone over the years that the regular season doesn't matter, transformed the NBA Playoffs into a flopathon, revived the vile and fan-unfriendly Hack-A-Shaq strategy and did everything short of sending Bruce Bowen out on the court with a chain saw and a taser. If the Spurs were the Team of the Decade, no wonder ratings dwindled until the league's big comeback this season.

The real shame is that all the mugging, acting, eye-rolling, flopping, rule-bending and hysterical shrugging obscured what should have been remembered as a throwback sports team, a shrewdly assembled roster of well-coached guys who played beautifully together, didn't care about credit and revolved around the best power forward who ever played. Instead, we'll remember them as the team that turned the NBA Playoffs into the World Cup. Congratulations, fellas."

[Note by Phoenix Stan, 05/03/08 6:25 PM PDT ]

A couple days late, but I finally worked up the courage to read this article. There's no news here and yet seeing it all splayed out is just too depressing for words...

All teams have their "what if" moments (Sam Bowie ) but I think going back to their earliest days, the Suns have to be right up there with any other sport organization ever...ugh

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That article

is incredibly depressing

by rsavaj on May 1, 2008 8:21 PM MDT reply actions 0 recs

You're right.

That was depressing to no end.

Simmons gets a lot of flak these days about being a homer and all, but the guy knows basketball.

by Azreous on May 1, 2008 10:11 PM MDT reply actions 0 recs

JJ

Really, the only horrible debacle was JJ. If he had stayed …

But could it have really happened? He wanted out. He wanted to be The Man somewhere else. It wasn’t all “peaches and cream”; remember that?

Diaw’s contract was an over-reaction to that PR nightmare. If Diaw hadn’t been signed, could you have imagined the public outcry?

Marcus Clanks was GM Antoni’s fault—not Sarver’s or Kerr’s.

It’s pretty easy to watch how it played out and then critique it. I’d like to see him link to articles he wrote - at the time - explaining how it would all backfire.

Mmmmm ... Guinness

by JSun on May 1, 2008 11:02 PM MDT reply actions 0 recs

I was listening to Jeff Dean on XTRA910 (not really a fav, but only talking head I could find speaking basketball yesterday afternoon) and he was talking about the JJ deal/no deal. Basically, he laid it out as not really Sarver’s fault. It’s not so much the $5mil, but that JJ wasn’t a very popular guy on the team. He just sort of didn’t fit in with the rest of the guys.

by KJ7 on May 2, 2008 3:47 PM MDT up reply actions 0 recs

I blame Marion

it’s convenient for me.

by AZSEAfan on May 2, 2008 4:24 PM MDT up reply actions 0 recs

So do I

It makes things easier

Mmmmm ... Guinness

by JSun on May 2, 2008 5:17 PM MDT up reply actions 0 recs

I went back and forth

JJ didn’t want to be around. He also felt slighted about the non-extension the year before. He got more slighted when the Suns only offered him $60M for 6 years, instead of $70M for 5 years.

But, then, Sarver came around and said he’d offer the max. I wonder what would’ve happened if Sarver offered the max from the get-go. I’d hope that he (or his staff, or somebody in the organization) would’ve been smart enough to know that the 6-yr/$60M would’ve been received badly. Did he do it on purpose? Did he do it on purpose to set it up because JJ still would not have been happy with a max offer?

Then, after being offered the max, JJ said he “wanted more respect.” That, I do not understand. Sarver could’ve matched the Atlanta offer and JJ would’ve had to have shown up. He did, in fact, match it via the sign-and-trade.

Simmons’ only valid point is that you could’ve made him stay. I think you can put up with a slightly negative work environment for $15M a year. I think it may have worked itself out.

Mmmmm ... Guinness

by JSun on May 2, 2008 5:22 PM MDT up reply actions 0 recs

It was JJ, not Sarver

Gambo and Ash reported at the time…before the contract negotiations even got serious, that JJ wanted out. They’ve said ever since that you can blame Sarver for a lot of things, but losing Joe isn’t one of them.

Even so, Sarver (like Jerry Colangelo and his partners), while super-rich, isn’t Mark Cuban rich. He’s trying to make the numbers pencil out every year…which just ain’t gonna happen. As everyone always says, “You make your money on a sports team when you sell it.” Well, Sarver doesn’t want to do it that way. He wants to limit the year-to-year red ink. And because it’s his money on the line-well, his and his partners’-I can’t really blame him.

I will say this, though: Jerry Colangelo left the D-backs in a very bad way financially when he left, such that we had to deal with a few years’ worth of mediocrity. But those few years followed a world championship. That will hold me for a long, long time. If the Suns were to lose $30 million next year and win the championship, and then shed payroll to sop up some of the red ink, I’d have no problem with that. That one title could probably sustain me during five or six years of mediocrity.

But that’s not what we’re looking at. We’re looking at an owner who is, by turns, penny-wise and franchise foolish, and then penny-profligate and franchise foolish. Sometimes, he sells draft picks for nothing; other times, he signs stiffs to big, fat contracts. In the end, we’re left with a team that’s good enough to make the playoffs, but nowhere near good enough to win a title. Same as the Suns we saw in the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s.

Come on, Mr. Sarver, you’re a successful businessman. Clearly you realize that the business model ain’t working—for you, financially; for the team, professionally; and for the fans, emotionally. When what you’re doing isn’t working, you know you gotta start doing something different. Something REALLY different. SOON.

by beatcal on May 4, 2008 12:11 AM MDT up reply actions 0 recs

i think we're missing a big point

Amare, Marion, Joe Johnson really put themselves first, they appear (by their actions) to care much more about their rep and how much money they get instead of being part of history. I blame all 3 of those players for being “not smarter than a fifth grader”.

Look at the Lakers (Magic), or the Spurs (Duncan, Parker, Ginobili). We’re talking about 2 teams who don’t have players that think of themselves first, but their team. Our top players are grossly overpaid. Before the 2005 team went through their season, it should’ve been clear (and 1-2 yrs before) that a team needs 2-4 great players and then good roles players. We had that core in talent and skill in Amare, Marion, Johnson, and Nash but mentally, we never had it.

Team chemistry and unselfish players on and off the court are key, we simply don’t have that. You want to know who Amare is, the person, not the player with out of this world skills and ability. Listen to him bash the coach at the end, listen to him complain about not having a go to guy when Amare was the one who failed in all sorts of areas, Diaw almost single handedly won 2 games for us, if we’d placed the ball in Diaw’s hands there at the end instead of resorting to Nash whose clearly a fast break point guard, not a set offense point guard, things would’ve had a better chance to get to game 6 at least.

There’s chemistry issues all over this team still, I don’t care if we get Pop to coach over here, Amare would demand a trade rather than let someone teach him. Look at the baby Kobe complaining for a trade just last year…same thing…me first mentality. If the Lakers didn’t steal Gasol, they’d be out of the playoffs or early on.

I like Bill Simmons, it’s funny he has so many haters. One final thought, I went over to pounding the rock, every other word seemed to be they suck, or we have the best 3 players in the world….I know the Spurs are currently better than the Suns, no argument there, but our blog is classy, not to sure about theirs…..some nice swear words all over there also, nice to know they’re trying to keep it clean…that’s a joke..but, N.O. will crush them, which makes the Suns look even worse.

by be-the-ball on May 4, 2008 3:30 PM MDT up reply actions 0 recs

B.S

There’s something about good old Bill that is both heart warming and guy wrenching at the same time.

by dang on May 2, 2008 2:57 PM MDT reply actions 0 recs

every article he writes

is just so true. he puts into words what you feel but can’t describe. he is able to seperate his fan and writer sides and see so clearly the sad winding path that we have been going down,

by calphxfan on May 2, 2008 8:31 PM MDT reply actions 0 recs

Reading it would be like pouring salt in the wound and I don’t feel like it, so I am not reading it at all!

About Joe Johnson, you hear Gambo & Ash’s version of the events and then you hear Bickley say the exact opposite, so I have never really known what to believe. All I do know and believe is that it got to a point where Joe said he didn’t want to be here and Sarver didn’t want to pay him if he wanted to leave so bad.

by TwinnerA on May 4, 2008 12:46 AM MDT reply actions 0 recs