"Defensive deficiency, two trades lead to death of Suns"
by magenta on Apr 2, 2009 5:43 PM MDT
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PrintBy John Schuhmann, NBA.com
Posted Apr 2 2009 12:25PM
"The Suns' defense really started to go downhill when Kerr traded his best defender, Shawn Marion, to Miami in order to acquire Shaq last February.
Say what you want about Marion's attitude in the locker room and how he expressed joy upon being traded from the best team in the West (at the time) to the worst team in the East. The fact is that he's one of the best defenders in the league and can guard 4 1/2 positions (not all centers, but some of them). It's no coincidence that Miami's defense got worse when they traded Marion this February to Toronto in the Jermaine O'Neal deal.
Kerr compounded the Marion mistake when he traded his second-best defender, Raja Bell, in December's deal to acquire Jason Richardson. And when Gentry took over as coach after the All-Star break and promised to return the Suns to their seven-seconds-or-less ways, the team apparently took that as a directive to stop caring about defense at all. At least Porter, while he was lacking the proper personnel, made some acknowledgement that in order to be a successful team, you have to get stops."
The Jrich trade is a mistake. We lack so few defenders...
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I was one of the few who didn't like the trade from the start
We got our best defender traded as well as our second best passing option.
The way the Suns handle personel issue is like a stop-gap process. See a hole. Plug it in a stop-gap process. See a hole. Plug it in. See someone unhappy? Then trade him.
Where is the planning? I hire my own team and there has to be a core vision in both hiring and firing.
I can't be the only one whose had enough of this...
We’re still talking about the Marion trade? Really? I guess gambling on a trade was worse than losing in the semis and having Shawn opt out. If only we’d waited it out, we could’ve signed Mutombo, Horry, and Juwan Howard!
Raja, a roleplayer on the downside of his career recognized almost exclusively for his defensive play was complaining about his touches. Boris couldn’t coexist with Amar’e, not even D’Antoni could figure that out. I absolutely loved those dudes, but Raja had regressed and Boris wasn’t playing up to his potential. If you look at what Raja, Boris, and J-Rich have done for the Suns this year, J-Rich has had the biggest impact.
If we play under Gentry the entire year, we make the playoffs, even with the J-Rich trade. If Amar’e and LB don’t go down we make the playoffs. Some guy trying to make his 5,000 words doesn’t make this worth discussing, us not having enough defensive personnel is kind of a “no duh” point.
+1
Marion is gone. Get over it. And Bell’s D is do damn overated
by Funky Flapsack on Apr 3, 2009 11:31 AM MDT up reply actions
Definitely
Bell was terribly overrated on defense. He is a hard-nosed defender who will fight through screens but is terrible in isolation. He gets raped by guys who use superior offensive skill/athleticism for one-on-one opportunities. The way the Wades and Kobes play defense, with a lot of gambling and cheating off their man; they’re still able to lock down their man a lot more effectively than Bell simply through their athleticism. It’s a simple fact. Athleticism >>> All. There’s a reason why Dwight Howard not only made the NBA, but is dominating it. Bell was simply too slow, too weak, and had insufficient elevation to keep up with the premier shooting guards. End result? His defensive performances were generally around the same level as J-Rich’s current effectiveness. If you watch the game, instead of hyping up Bell’s reputation, which somehow snowballs into more of a reputation than fact, you wouldn’t even need me to type this comment.
Losing Kurt Thomas and two 1st round picks...
was a bigger blow to the defense than Raja and Diaw. As much as we have debated the Shaq/Matrix trade, at least that was an understandable trade. And Shaq has not been the reason the Suns have not won. Last time I checked, he’s been playing pretty well.
But back to the Thomas trade, yes he may not have been worth the $8 million luxury tax hit, or $16 million, but we were so, so close. He was the best at defending at Duncan, and is still a great defender. If that trade doesn’t go down, KT continues to help protect Amare and instill a defensive presence with Marion and Bell. Grant Hill, Barbosa, and Diaw give D’Antoni a solid 8 man rotation, and most importantly, Thomas doesn’t end up in San Antonio, via their boys (Presti and Carlesimo) in Seattle/OKC, Shaq remains in Miami, and we probably finish with the best record in the West, and go to the Finals. And most importantly for Robert Sarver antes up $8 million in 2007, when the economy is still doing well, versus $20 Million in a recession.
by Aluminum Foyle on Apr 3, 2009 3:06 PM MDT up reply actions
All Kerrs fault???
I seem to remember Nash wanting Marion out because he was tired of hearing him complain about everything. I seem to remember D’Antoni wanting the Marion for Shaq deal to go down and even pushed Kerr to do it. Everyone wants to pile all the faults of the Suns on Kerr and Sarver but it isn’t all their fault. I am tired of hearing how if we had Marion we might be in the playoffs this year. I really doubt it, ever since Marion was traded he has been nothing but injured.
The 7 seconds or Shaq has been working and even though we will miss the playoffs I don’t think it is because of these trades. This team is missing a finisher. Something that Amare was and I think that is why we are faltering right now because not having our finisher, Amare, we are having a tough time of keeping a lead in the 4th quarter.
Magenta doesn't understand that
Marion had recurring back and groin injuries last year, as well as a whole host of other physical defects(including an extremely ugly jump shot) throughout this whole season. Not only that, but Marion’s play has been nothing short of downright pedestrian, if not shitty, in the time since he has been traded. Perhaps the Suns medical staff knew more about his dwindling athleticism and health than someone churning out trash on the basis of hindsight wisdom. You are talking complete BULL when you claim that Miami’s defense went downhill the moment Marion left. You have no idea what you are talking about and you are pulling your own misguided opinions out of thin air. Of course it’s not a coincidence. Because it DIDN"T HAPPEN. DUH. Miami’s defense did not deteriorate significantly when they removed Marion. 6’7 Marion and 6’8 Haslem were forming a Dwarven frontcourt that was getting ripped to pieces every night by bigger players. They had pathetic shot-blocking, horrendous post defense, and were getting routinely abused even by small forwards posting up on their PF/C. And oh, just an example, if at Staples Center the Lakers shoot 49% against us in one game, and the next game we play the Grizzlies at home, and the Grizzlies shoot 48%, does it mean our defense has improved?
Oh wait. Of course you have all the answers. You’re the guy with hindsight wisdom! Oooh….I know what YESTERDAY’s lottery numbers were. I could have been a millionaire!!!! OMFG OMFG.
Be nice
Can we all just get along?
Maybe if we take Pres. Obama motto: “All we need is hope and change”, concerning the Suns, then they will be doing as well as our economy…..CRAPPY…….Go Suns….
not to get political or anything...
…but the way the economy is doing isn’t solely due to obama or his administration. he inherited one of the worst situations that he could have, and it’s only been three and a half months since he took office. it’s been a short amount of time, and we still have yet to see how his policies will be carried out.
how this relates to the suns: if, next year, the terms “hope” and “change” are more prevalent, we can expect that the team will fall short of expectations. but, that doesn’t mean that we can’t come back even stronger. even if we miss the playoffs again next year and we opt to become a younger, rebuilding team, that definitely does not mean that all is lost and “hope” is a filler word used to placate the masses.
by Trevor Paxton on Apr 5, 2009 5:20 PM MDT up reply actions
Sorry you listen to the Mass Media 'they have a love afair with Obama' he can do no wrong!!
Obama said we needed that stimulus package 2 months ago asap, but neglected to inform the public that only a 1/3 of that spending package will be used this year. You want to blame Bush for all the problems that is crap, it was Clinton that threaten the banks that everyone who wanted to buy house had the right, that is bull crap. Obama said he takes responsibility from the time he became president; well in March alone 600,000 people in America lost there jobs……. What about that????? Prediction, Obama will go down as one of the worst presidents of all time. Another prediction, unemployment rate will hit 10% by November….
Hello, I was talking about trading Bell and Diaw for J Rich in my last post
Not Marion.
I have asked since the J Rich trade where the team’s defensive help is going to come from.
Please explain how J Rich as a “dun defend that good” (Remember Roger Mason and his 3) and known for unnecessary boneheaded moves on the court PURE SHOOTER, is value for money for trading Raja Bell, a good shooter and man-to-man defender “We need one thanks to Nash” and Boris Diaw who is not just our second best passer but fills in Amare nicely.
Both did not like Porter’s system but who did in ther team, other than Shaq.
Are you telling me that the Suns could have played better without Amare with J Rich’s help as compared to playing with Bell and Diaw?
The Charlotte Hornet fans are laughing at us right now.
On a side note, I agree that selling 2 picks and dumping Kurt Thomas may have cost us last “or the season before next” season’s play-offs as well as our near future.
Clearly, I’ve touched a nerve here but this needs to be said.
Blah blah blah blah Jason Richardson
Blah blah defense! Blah blah blah Raja Bell and Boris Diaw.
Blah blah blah blah Charlotte Hornets?
by hcblankscreen on Apr 4, 2009 1:16 PM MDT up reply actions
Tsk tsk tsk
The Hornets fans are also thanking us for our “Iverson” trade.
And we still don’t know what we gave away.
The penchant for defending bad trades seems to be a trend here.
And yet we so enjoy proposing trades.
Anyone else see the problem here?
+1
Exactly why I am instinctively opposed to most trades especially for a winning team. I didn’t like the Shaq trade (but admit freely how much I’ve come to enjoy having him here) and my immediate reaction to the JRich/Diaw deal was to call out Kerr for having an itchy trigger finger.
Blogging Suns Basketball
I love shaq too
But I don’t think we can afford to keep him another year…
trading is fun
I thought J-Rich was a badass before he came here. I had him on my fantasy team last year and was rewarded for it. Since he’s come to the Suns i now see why. Sure, he’s had some mental lapses (see traffic stops and ComeFromNowhereLebronBlocksYour360Dunk) but i think he brings a lot more to this team than Bell did.
Hear me loud and clear. If Gentry had this team from the beginning (including J-Rich) we would be a 2 seed. For sure
5th or 6th seed maybe
Flunky, the fact that we can consistently score over 100 points and still lose shows us that the team with J Rich will never be a number 2 seed.
Losing 2 players that played passing and defense well on the Suns when it has lots of scorers like “Need more touches Shaq baby”, “Look at my offense but forget about my defense” Nash really sink our chances to close out close games. Trying to outshoot people while locking down their best attackers will win your close games.
He’s cheap. He expires after next season. And even if his defense is on the decline, he hits enough threes to keep the defense honest and make them defend the perimeter. Again, just holding him and riding out his contract makes a ton of sense, because we’re not likely to get anyone of equal value for the same price.
You keep talking present tense
like any of this is a possibility anywhere except bizarro Suns world, where our roster has every player we would ever have drafted and no bad trades were made in hindsight. For the majority of people here, it’s not about defending the trades anymore; it’s about moving on from this trade that happened four months ago and was already analyzed to death. Nothing has changed about that situation — instead, we have a game with huge implications today that people would rather focus on.
Marion’s gone. Bell and Diaw are gone. Suns fans have garnered a (deserved) reputation for pining for what could have been, but even some Suns fans are like “damn, dude, let it go.”
+1.
the roster as constituted with all the “if only we kept all those picks, etc.” talk (as well as the current line up) would look like this.
PG: steve nash, rajon rondo, goran dragic.
SG: jason richardson, joe johnson, leandro barbosa, nate robinson, rudy fernandez.
SF: grant hill, luol deng, alando tucker, matt barnes.
PF: amaré stoudemire, louis amundson, jared dudley.
C: shaquille o’neal, robin lopez.
if we had all those players, which is highly unlikely that we’d pay all those players just to have 5 players on the inactive list, but let’s just play along for the sake of making a ridiculous point, our salary would be $104,361,497. the luxury tax threshold is $71,150,000. that would put us at $33,211,497 over the luxury tax number, which would have us paying a ridiculous amount of money.
so, while it would be awesome to have all that talent on our team, it’s extremely unrealistic. now, i know the signings of current players wouldn’t have happened if we had deng, joe johnson, etc., but here’s the bottom line: it’s so incredibly realistic that we would have kept that team together. it’s all good and fine to think “i wonder what would have happened if we kept all those players”, but the reality of it is, there’s no way.
i think everyone should just sit back, look forward to the future, and hope the suns’ organization can make the right offseason moves to keep us in a contending spot.
by Trevor Paxton on Apr 5, 2009 6:02 PM MDT up reply actions
Fair comment : >
But if we have rajon, we don’t need to draft goran
Same thing for joe johnson and the other potential
Never had any fan love for Luol. Hill and Barnes bring us more bang for bucks.
As for PFs, the second and thrid stringers are dirt cheap.
Just my observations…
The thing the critics miss is that Bell is a great trading piece
Raja is a cheap piece whose contract expires after next season. So even if his defense goes downhill, we can trade him or watch him hit enough threes to keep the defense honest and defend the perimeter.
No offense but those who do not know their past are condemned to repeat it
Suns’ fans seem to drink directly from the Koo-Aid poured out by Kerr day in day out.
The Jrich trade made no sense other than the fact that Kerr wanted to direct the blame of Porter’s dysfunctional system in the early days away from himself and Porter. So Bell, who spoke out, and another malcontent was quickly traded as the centrepiece of this scapegoating strategy i.e. they were locker room poison.
The trade is another reoccurence of a naive hope that a trade can solve everything like a shot in the arm.
Suns fans bought this hook and sinker and to this day seems to believe that trades, especially mid-season ones, help the team.
Hello, Earth calling Planet Mars.
And we are still trying to talk trades most of the time.
I must have missed
where people around here have taken part in the Steve Kerr lovefest, happily applauding each of his moves and singing their praises unquestioningly. Maybe that’s a different blog, one that doesn’t feature the Steve Kerr Moron Meter, where there aren’t three FanPosts a day questioning what in the world he’s done (with help, mind you) to our organization. And yet there is much more to blame for this collapse than just Kerr, and making him the figurehead for the Suns’ failures this season is just as narrowminded as your description of the typical “Suns’ fan,” which it has become increasingly clear you cannot accurately categorize.
The trade didn’t make a ton of sense, and in some ways it still doesn’t. But was this a team that could contend before it? No. We’re fooling ourselves if we think this team was among the league’s 10 best at any point this season, with any roster. Sure, if we’d stumbled into the playoffs, we could have maybe put together a decent stretch and won a series or two, but there are at least six teams that would kill us in a seven-game series, period.
Here’s the bottom line: Trades (or other roster moves) ARE coming. This team cannot just coast into training camp next year as constructed unless Sarver decides to put up $10 million+ in luxury cap hits. Somebody probably has to go. You might as well get used to the idea.
Look, I’ve watched the various debates here about which trades should and shouldn’t have happened, and which players did and did not revolt against the system, and who exactly should be skewered for this team falling short of the promised land this season. For the most part, I’ve avoided them, content to watch this team finish out the season before jumping in on the speculation. But the blame goes everywhere. Plain and simple. Shortsighted fans, an organization without an identity, professional players who skirted around the changing responsibilities of their jobs — it doesn’t matter. This is still our team, and each fan has their own right to clamor for whatever it is they believe makes this team the best it can be. Similarly, each fan has the right to root for this team to make the playoffs (which obviously isn’t happening at this point) or not. Each fan can decide whether they want to try and bring as much of this core back as possible, or blow it up and bring in some talented youngsters.
The beauty of places like this is that it’s an open forum for discussion for each of those viewpoints, which in your FanPosts you have increasingly cast aside for this misguided idea of Joe Sunsfan, who blindly and happily licks the plate of scraps Steve Kerr and Robert Sarver have left behind, casts a blind eye to Steve Nash’s defense and passive-aggressive media dealings (as much as I love the guy), and stands up and cheers when the Jumbotron says “Charge!” You are entitled to your opinion, but need to acknowledge that others can and will disagree with you, and their opinions are just as valid.
I am fine with trades but my point is that they should not be seen as cure-alls
That’s the point that I have been constantly making. History has already shown that as the case.
And before any more trade manias start going in fandom, please take note that other teams would love dealing with the Suns if they think our team is desperate for trades and under immense fan pressure to pull them off asap.
We don’t need any more “Iverson” trades.
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