Phoenix Suns Start Fast, Fade Faster, Fight Back, Fall Short: 96-99 to the Toronto Raptors

I wish I’d seen Barbosa’s post game interview. That guy is one of my favorites. I hope he can come back and play for us next year.

You cannot succeed in the NBA if you have a poor home record… And we are losing at home to the bottom tier of the NBA. This roster won’t stay the same if we keep playing like this.

Maybe that will wash off whatever delusion is in the face of the FO.
Where do I begin? The coach hasn’t done anything close to good this year, he seems to not know what TimeOuts can be used for, makes bad substitutions. I really don’t think he calls plays at all. He barely take advantage of players abilities beyond shooting (see Makieff’s post game and Chilly’s slashing).
Talent this is a word which barely exists in the teams vocabulary. Its just a mix of a star (Nash), a great defender (who this days turn the ball over a much as he gets stops), a finishing big man (who is totally dependent on being fed), a young prospect (Keef), and a bunch of players who at most are 8-9 bench guys on good team.
Defense for whatever reason, the Suns this season are getting stops (except when the game is really close and time is winding down), yet they make that go to waste by letting the opponents get the ball back for second chance points. The culprit, Gortat. You might say, “isn’t he a good rebounder?”, but the truth is he’s only thinking about his own stats. He doesn’t box out, which allows opponents room to the rim to get the ball back.
This team needs get amass losses to allow for the FO to throw in the towel on the season, as the only way this team makes the playoffs is if the all player of 7 other WC teams die or are all suspended for the rest of the year. This team needs to trade all or most of the following players for draft pick and expiring contracts;
Hill: this might very well be his last season, so y not get something for him, even if its just a late 20 pick
Frye: after defending him for so long, I think I’m through with that. To start the season, he was shooting poorly, but still contributed on the boards and on D, now he just stands around waiting to throw up another brick.
Warrick: as much as I like him, maybe we should just let him go, there’s gotta ge a team out there that’s looking for a 3.5 who can score.
Lopez: well, he’s a 7 footer, which still counts for something in the NBA
Dudley: if the right deal comes along.
That leaves the team with 8 players, hence the D-League will be used to fill the team (at least they’ll be hungry enough to show what they can do)
Roster for the remainder of the season
Nash(limited floor time) – Bassy(just to improve our pick’s chances)
Brown – Price
Redd – Chilly
Morris – D-League guy
Gortat – D-League guy

dammit.

We just never know what team is going to show up in a suns uniform.

it has been the crappy one with pretty alarming consistency.

Then I realized it was true… and laughed again.

Made me laugh as well.

Robin has the hair edge over Burke, and Burke has 3PT range, so I’d call it a wash.

The Knicks moved into eighth in the eastern conference tonight, even though Carmelo made only one free throw the whole game.

I mean, Amar’e despite the tough start is a better player. Kurt Thomas is a little worse, but still the best backup big-man out there. Nash is only all-star caliber now. Marion isn’t all-star caliber anymore, but still a very good role player, good enough to start. Diaw is fat-er. I don’t even think Tim Thomas is playing anymore, something about his wife. Barbosa is still the same. House is probably done. Well, that team probably wouldn’t be a contender anymore, but they’d be a lot better than this one. I think they’d be like the Spurs of the past few years. In other words, good, but finished.

We did tonight.

The whole Diawn to Phx idea is starting to sound like a decent idea at this point…

he might be spending more time watching the calendar.

Well defense is one of those things that a player really has to put in the effort and want to do, while also being somewhat good at it. We have a lot of players that just are not great defenders.

Add that to the fact that with this condensed season, team practice is something that is not going to be a common event. I am sure the job Elston has on his plate at the moment is monumental.

If possible. I am pretty mad I missed the interview with LB after the game.

uh, look in the article for the transcription…

he really said that

He gets almost no playing time after he got all that praise in the pre-season from Gentry. He produced one really nice game at the beginning of the season and then has tailed off completely.

Frye sucks, Hill sucks, Warrick sucks, Dudley sucks, Brown sucks, Telfair sucks, Price sucks, Morris sucks, Redd sucks, basically everyone not named Gortat or Nash sucks. I hope you’re happy Sarver.

Sorry Steve. This is not the kind of team you should be on….

Nash talked how the Suns have to execute to a precision due to the lack of overall talent.
This is no new news folks.

I hated him coming into the league but he has developed into a nice role player.

I thought his effort was great – he just missed two of those great-wide-open 3’s.

If we are hopeless. Try to get some draft picks!

we let the league change us. now we have nothing

trust me, there are worse options out there. You see what happens to the other team’s ability to score when Redd and Warrick play. Losing 110-100 is just as bad as losing 100-90 or 90-80. They are all 10 point losses

Chilly is a nail in our coffin lid; I don’t think there is a GM so stupid to pick up the Chilly contract.

A little jab to get them moving, maybe..? Or just maybe his frustration of having to haul mediocre players around the last two seasons…

We’re stuck in the Cavaliers mindset, they always though Lebron made everyone better so he always had fantastic role players and third option type of guys. But he never got his Robin, ever.

Right now we have two great players and an absolute abyss of a dropoff in talent level between them and the next guy. We have 10 great bench players, and what we need (and what I’d rather have) is 3 average starters. No one outside of Keef, Nash and Gortat should be out of trade talk. Anyone is up if packaged together they can get us a starter caliber player.

And we can’t bank on 2012 either, there is no one left to sign pretty much. Westbrook is extended, Love is too, Gordon is close to being extended, we have slim chances of getting Howard or D-Will, or both, and by the time the FA class rolls in it’ll be all washed up guys re-living their glory days. And we’ll sign three of them and be stuck on the treadmill of mediocrity for another year because Nash (if he resigns) and Gortat are too good to lose more than 2/3rds of the games they play in, we’ll becom the Milwaukee Bucks. I DON’T WANT US TO BE THE BUCKS GODDAMNIT.

but when the management drains hope for the following season it’s just depressing. Nothing Sarver or Blanks/Babby has given me confidence they can turn this team into a winner before trade deadline or in the off season. Even landing Gortat cost the Suns too much in terms of chemistry/talent and really was just a trade made to undue the colossal mistake that was LB for Turkaglu.

We are not only losing, but losing to bad teams. We are losing to teams missing their best players and we still can’t even COMPETE in these games!!!! I try to stay optimistic but this team is just not good enough. When we aren’t playing on top of our game we have no chance of winning.

Hopefully we don’t have to pay Canadian taxes…those are a beast…

bugger bugger damn yo!

They seriously love him. Too bad the Raps don’t have anything the Suns can use because that would be one of the most realistic trade partners.

Let’s pool our resources here and bring back Chinese Jordan. My girlfriend has at least 1/2 of it covered in our house alone.