Catch 22

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Prediction time everyone...

Since we are finally about 95% sure we will be having some kind of season, lets start the asinine guessing of how good or bad the team we all love will be.  Will they climb to the top, fall somewhere in the torturous middle, or be plain bad?  There are good and bad things too all 3 possibilities.  Lets take the first... Somehow Steve Nash find that they have one great last year in their aging legs, Robin Lopez remembers how to play center, and Carter goes Vinsane.  I say the best we could possibly even pray for is another heartbreaking, but admirable trip to the western conference finals.  Now, while this may be fun for the ride we have a major problem with this scenario, if we do manage this, there is no way Steve and Grant can go another year, and we will fall into a couple of seasons of rancid, horrible, deathly boring basketball like Timberwolves fans.  Also because we played well we won't be able to get any lottery picks in the draft leaving us once again to pray for a Dragic or Lopez so that we can justify the pick.  

The second option is also kind of a catch 22.  For this idea we would pretty much have a season a lot like our prior one, it wasn't bad, it wasn't good, but it was watchable if only for the fact that we always had a chance of seeing the brilliance of Nash and Grant.  We even got thrown a bone with the wonderfully skilled big man in Gortat, however like last season we will be in no position to better our team, we will have a middle 1st round pick if were lucky and two stars that probably only have another quarter season in them.  Yeah we don't totally suck, but we also aren't getting anywhere.

Third possibility is that we are the Timberwolves/Wizards/Cavaliers etc.  and we smell of putrid rotten meat.  We hardly make it to 20 wins and we are in the bottom of the barrel desperately begging for wins.  I know this sounds terrible, the first bad Suns team in a long time cannot be good for the franchise.  Well think again, while I wouldn't wish this on any team, I do think that there is value in being terrible.  If we are this bad, then we will have a couple of first round picks and the ability to drop some heavy contracts to sign some big names, and possibly right this aging ship.  

Now these three possibilities really come down to what the team decides to do with the shorter free agency.  I am guessing that they don't really play much ball this time around since they don't have too much money to play with and they have already countless times publicly said that Steve Nash, our most valuable piece, isn't going anywhere.  That being said I do see Grant Hill turning the clock back a little further then he already has.  I think if he can stay on the court he still is a potent scoring threat that could go off for 35 on any given night.  Not to mention we have a more skilled Jared Dudley to look forward to.  If he was able to add a couple more moves to his arsenal we can pretty much be guaranteed another 15 to 17 a night from him as well.  Now if you add the consistent Steve Nash and a much improved Marcin Gortat (15 and 10 is my prediction) then our team isn't looking bad after all.