Beyond Amare...

I agree with some of it

But I think there are a lot of generalizations. SSOL is beautiful and entertaining basketball but I don’t think it wins championships. Some of the points I’ve raised before.

• Reliance on a few guys (7 to 8) in the entire season and the playoffs — Stamina is obviously a problem here
• Absolute dependence on Steve Nash centered offense. When Nash is guarded well, like with Bowen, the offense shuts as well.
• “Pace-centered defense” or sucking teams into SSOL so they’d rush their shots and hope they’d get tired and miss. In every playoff game against the Spurs, they couldn’t get a stop when they needed to. It’s also hard to argue that if not for Stern or injuries, the Suns would have pass through, because counterfactuals will always be counterfactuals.
• The Suns have been running the same offense for the past four years. Teams have certainly adapted to it. That’s why it was harder for the Suns to win games last year even before the Shaq Trade.
• True that SSOL is unpredictable basketball, in terms of entertainment, maybe but not in terms of strategy. You have to rely on quick passing, fast breaks, quick drives, cuts, volume 3 point shooting, and PNR. It didn’t work with elite teams like the Lakers or Spurs last year.
• Teams that won using offense, Shaq’s Lakers and Hakeem’s Rockets were very much low post offense teams. The good thing about the low post is relying on high% shots instead of “good shooting nights”.
• The Celtics demonstrate an effective M2M and team defense basketball. Something that the Spurs were doing for the past years. Suns’ players stagnated on that aspect of the game.
• Another problem with SSOL is it’s an ego filler system. It keeps guys happy by padding their stats with production. What’s the problem here? Obviously, when the offense siwtched during Porter, everyone’s stats went down and others complained. I think with Basketball, it has to be a team effort where people are ready to sacrifice their own personal gain for the good of the team. SSOL inflated the stats of players in the Suns, not to mention their “market value”. Any protest Porter’s system is obviously related to SSOL.

*Other variables to consider for the issue with Porter

• Nash is older and he’s obviously passed his peak. Some argued that Steve couldn’t work with the normal and predictable offense. I think with statistics, there may be some truth to it.
• Similar to Nash, I think Amare has a problem adapting to normal and predictable offense and still rides in SSOL.
• Too many alpha dogs in this team wanting to take the lead and pad their stats. (J-Rich’s shots). This was explained earlier in SSOL as an ego padding system. It keeps guys happy
• The team is going through a transition and is expecting high returns.

I agree with

• True that the offense relies on Shaq too much, but how can we blame him if he’s up against, I don’t know, Pryzbilla? Or Greg Ostertag, is that guy still alive? Shaq is taking high % shots after all.
• However, I think the offense should be more Amare and Nash than Shaq all in all. This can be done by benching Shaq if Amare and Nash are on the court. And maybe put them all together at a certain point. Other guys should get involved and Porter should “democratize” the offense a lot more.
• More than offense, I think defense is the bigger issue of the Suns. If we’re comparing stats, than Coach D is better than Porter, but that’s a mirage at most. Since Porter doesn’t reply on SSOL or pace centered defense, it’s been hard for guys to adjust to real team defense. I support the move for more defense to win a championship. Going back to SSOL is not going to do it, at least, in my opinion.

*Predictability or creativity

Creativity or Predictablility? I’d say predictability is better. The Spurs were running through the same thing over and over again in every playoff game that we went up against them and we couldn’t stop them. The same thing for the Bulls, Lakers, Rockets before. It was predictable because it works, the plays and sets would produce a certain outcome for the players to manuever. Predictablity that is effective works. While predictability of the Suns is not operating on optimal effectiveness but that doesn’t mean predictability itself is a bad thing.

I also think SSOL, while creative is very flash, it’s also predictable. It also runs a certain logic that teams realized after playing the Suns 3 year straight. You know they’re going to run and take that 3 point or slash. It just looks so brilliant the way the Suns did it.

I think it’s an issue of player development. When Marion moved to the Heat, he couldn’t produce as much (maybe an ego problem) when he was on the Suns. I think it’s based on playing another kind of game, the more predictable one, that the Suns’ are having a hard time adapting to.

Just my two cents. Thanks

Nice discussion here. Thanks.

I believe the problem is Terry Porter.

I have no evidence to back it up, it’s just my honest opinion.

I think, ultimately, the problems the Suns are having are because of chemistry, and the fact that the Suns don’t seem to have an identity or to really be a team. Each individual player, and the coach, each contributes a bit to this lack of cohesion and fluidity, so lets take a look at them.

First of all, the big Cactus, Shaqovich

The thing that makes me wonder about Shaq on the Suns is that, I don’t feel Shaq thinks, or wants the Suns to be his team. I know its often talked about Shaq’s ego and what not, but when he came to Phoenix, he wanted to play as a role player, and let Amare emerge, not be the focal point of the offense. But Porter’s offensive schemes have called for the new Shaq to be the primary offensive weapon, something I’m sure Shaq is not complaining about, but I’m not sure if Shaq really feels like he’s the Suns man.

I know when Shaq was in the Lakers ( I live in LA so its better than a Miami ref) the Lakers were his team, and he put the team on his back for games at a time, especially in Kobe’s early years. When I see Shaq on the Suns, I get the feeling he doesn’t know what he should do. Yes, he’s taking high percentage shots, and yes, he’s the newer, faster, stronger Shaq, but I don’t think that Shaq really has ownership over this team the way he did in LA, and to a lesser degree in MIA.

Even though he gets pissed off when they lose games, its not like he straight up comes out and calls his team mates(Amare) out for their mistakes, because it doesn’t seem like Shaq’s sure whether or not he’s the man in Phoenix, and if he’s not he would be making a mistake to call out a seemingly franchise player. Shaq seems disconnected to the Suns because when he shoots many shots, even at a high percentage, even at a record percentage from the free throw line, the media attacks him as being selfish and what not, even though the schemes ask for that, and when he doesn’t take a good number of shots, and isn’t agressive, the team loses. So it seems Shaq is stuck between being the odd man out and being the man, which causes discontent among the other “men” in Phoenix, which brings me to.

STAT, Amare

Amare, in my opinion, has been this season’s more erratic player. It seems as though Amare, who’s said many times before that he wants to be in the same discussion as DWade, Kobe, and LeBron, feels that his grip on “his team” is slipping away with the emergence of Shaq. Amare seems to be pouting, almost in the mindset of, ‘if its his team, let him win the games’, and the problem with that is, that 1. it loses the team games when Amare doesn’t bring it, and 2. Shaq is bringing it, and putting the team on his back, so where does that leave Amare?

Even though he’s stated he wants to stay with the Suns, I feel that Amare, like JJ before him, just wants to be “the man” on a team, regardless of its a good team, bad team, any team. Amare just doesn’t seem like he’s buying into the whole “team” aspect of the new Suns that was never present before. With the old suns, it was Nash, who was never selfish, Marion who was fed by Nash, Bell who shot when open, and Diaw, who was erratic. Among those players, the only ones that can create their own shots are Diaw at times, Nash, and Amare.

Before, Amare was much more “the man” because he was the one taking 20 shots a game, every game, because nobody on Phoenix could make their own shots. Now that the suns have JRich and Shaq, and to a lesser extent Hill, Amare isn’t as much the man as he was before, and it seems to be affecting him mentally. He seems disconnected, because he doesn’t have that same confidence that he had before, because now that the team is pretty officially Shaq’s team, where does that leave Amare? A role player? For all the talk of Amare the role player, he has never been interested in being a role player, only a star, and I think that once 2010 hits, if Amare hasn’t been allowed to be the man in phoenix, he’s going to bolt for some god-awful town where he can shoot the ball 25 times a game.

Canadian Bacon, Nash

Steve Nash needs to be a more vocal leader. That, in and of itself seems to be the main problem. Nash always was the guy who led by example, never really super vocal, and that left almost a leadership gap, which Amare, try as he might, could not fill. The chemistry problems that the Suns are having right now stem from the fact that they have a tenuous leadership structure. They have Nash, who is quiet, and they have Shaq, who is vocal, but is still a newcomer to this team, and they have Amare, who wants to be a leader, but obviously isn’t. The leadership vaccuum that Nash creates leaves so much room for other peoplet hat it’s no surprise that there is such bad chemistry.

Really, those three are the most important to the Suns chemistry. If Amare would learn to grow a pair, like DWade did when he was paired with Shaq, and show a little humility toward the 4 time champion, 3 time finals mvp, and let him dominate while still playing his team, and Steve Nash continues to facilitate the offense, then this team really has a chance to be good. They have the raw talent to match up toe to toe with any team in the league, but they lack the cohesion. This team needs a better coach, someone they can trust. Get an Avery Johnson, someone that can whip the Suns into shape, someone who wont take Amare’s excuses, because Porter, as good a player as he was, is not a strong enough coach to really influence Amare, let alone Shaq and Nash.