ROSTERBATION ALERT!!!!!!

The suns know they are not going anywhere the next 3 years unless they make some trades LOOKING TOWARDS THE FUTURE!!! I've come to think that we have to players in their prime or soon to be and 2 other valuable assets to trade

We have 5 trade assets that can make us a average team now, but a contender in 3 years...

-STEVE NASH, GRANT HILL, JARED DUDLEY, MARCIN GORTAT, ROBIN LOPEZ

There is no point in wasting these 4 players' final years as a player, or waste their prime and then by the time we become contenders, Dudley/Gortat would be in their early 30's

SO I HAVE CAME UP WITH TRADE SCENARIOS THAT WILL MAKE US INSTANT CONTENDERS IN 3 YEARS IF WE TANK THE NEXT 2 SEASONS... now i know some wont agree but i just dont see a point in keep players in their prime years on a rebuilding team when they are valuable trade asets!

HOW I SEE IT SHOULD BE DONE:

1) Find a trade partner for Nash, Hill, etc. who has valuable young assets and contracts to match up

2) DING : Atlanta Hawks

3) Suns recieve: Jeff Teague, Josh Smith, Kirk Hinrich(expiring contract), 2012 1st rd pick

Hawks recieve: Steve Nash, Marcin Gortat, Grant Hill, Ronnie Price

4) Find a trade partner desperate for a big man and/or a 6th man

5) DING: Minnestota TWolves

6) Suns recieve: Michael Beasely, 2nd rd pick

Minnisota recieve: Jared Dudley, Robin Lopez

7) Find a taker in desperate need of spreading the floor

8) DING: any team who could use a 7'0 3pt shooter

9) Suns recieve: Late 2012 1st rd pick , 1 bad contract

xxxx recieve: Channing Frye, Sebastion Telfair

WITH THESE 9 STEPS, YOU ARE LOOKING AT 2 MORE LOTTERY YEARS BUT WITH MANY MANY BUILDING BLOCKS FOR THE FUTURE, MANY MANY DRAFT PICKS, MUCH MUCH CAP SPACE FOR 2014.......

Potential scenario:

PG: Jeff Teage, Kirk Hinrich

SG: Michael Redd, Shannon Brown

SF: Josh Smith, Hakim Warrick

PF: Michael Beasely, Markieff Morris

C: bad contract from xxx team

We would have 3 expiring contracts and 3 1st rd picks in 2012 (top 5, mid, late)

4 young building blocks (TEAGUE, SMITH, BEASELY, MORRIS)

By the time those 4 hit there prime, we would be contenders with our 3 1st rd picks all on rookie contracts and we would have PLENTY A PLENTY of cap space to sign veterans/ expeirinced players in 2014/15 to come try win a ring in phoenix...

Comment what you think/ Are the trades fair? How fast would we be contenders?

Here at BSotS we have talented writers who spoon-feed us with information about our team - giving us the down low on their real world observations of our team dynamics and player attitudes. This isn't one of those posts, though.

We also have mathematical geniuses who show us through the fine art of statistics how and why our Suns are falling off a cliff playing the way they are. This, also, isn't one of those posts.

And then we have a bunch of armchair GM's and coaches - a group of lively hacks who love to speculate idly on how the current management is doing it all wrong (morons I tell ya!), and how we could do it so much better.

This is TOTALLY one of those posts!

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The Phoenix Suns have gotten off to a rough start this season. Sitting 12th in the Western Conference with a 9-14 record during a condensed, shortened season, there is little hope for a playoff berth barring a dramatic change in the Suns' level of play. As this harsh reality became more and more evident with each passing game, many fans on this blog, in order to maintain their sanity, began to take part in a favorite past-time of fans of struggling professional sports teams everywhere: looking ahead to the future.

There has already been plenty of discussion regarding free agency as the Suns have positioned themselves to be major players on the market. Now it is time to take a look at another way to add talent to the roster: the 2012 NBA Draft.

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lets just say 1 week before the trade deadline, the suns find themselves about 8 games out of the playoffs with a record something like 12- 22 and MVSTEVE asks for a trade ; There would be MANY teams asking for his services but 6 specifically come to mind: Knicks, Magic, Hawks, Blazers, Mavs, Pacers

TO ME ; WHICH EVER TEAM TAKES NASH HAS TO TAKE FRYE OR WARRICK ALSO!!!

Knicks - they have no contracts to match up with steve nash's so lets take them out of the picture for steve nash for now...

Magic - http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=7yd7dle

Hawks - http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=7jn5pp4 (Suns recieve Hawks 2012 1st rd pick)

Blazers - http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=7vtujcc

Mavs - http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=7a4uwvq

Pacers - http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=8ych63t

Considering the Suns amnesty Childress and do not trade steve nash, we will have 34 million to spend on free agents... We only have 5 players returning next season: Gortat, Frye, Markieff, Dudley, Warrick and i honestly think we can rebuild thru the next 2 drafts and off seasons while staying competitive...

We must sign 4 or 5 players and draft 1 rookie in order to have a full rotation...

OUR NEEDS : starting PG, back up PG, Starting SG, Back up SG, Starting SF, Starting PF

FREE AGENT CANDIDATES ( not including DWILL or DH12)

Starting PG: Steve Nash ; Raymond Felton ; DJ Augustin

Back up PG: Goran Dragic :):):) ; Kirk Hinrich ; Jordan Farmar

Starting SG: OJ Mayo ; Eric Gordon ; Landry Fields

Back up SG: Barbosa :):):) ; Carlos Delfino ; Jodie Meeks

Starting SF: Nic Batum ; Michael Beasely ; Gerald Wallace

Starting PF (draft): Thomas Robinson ; Perry Jones ; Jared Sullinger

Sure, we might have to overpay for some guys but we have the choice of choosing really ANYONE of each of those groups and possibly give nash a chance to try winning a ring while staying in the place he loves + staying a young team once nash retires...

I WANT YOU FANS TO COMMENT WHAT THE SUNS ROSTER WILL LOOK LIKE NEXT SEASON:

My Prediction---

PG: Steve Nash ; G Dragic

SG: OJ Mayo ; Leandro Barbosa/ Landry Fields

SF: Michael Beasely ; Jared Dudley

PF: Thomas Robinson ; Markieff Morris (kansas pf's)

C: Marcin Gortat ; Channing Frye

I am completely not surprised that Marcin Gortat finished 5th on the West Center voting list (behind Bynum, DeAndre Jordan, Marc Gasol and Nene). Our team is rather small market and is performing horribly in the first part of the season.

What I was a little surprised by was the fact that he was completely disregarded by all the analysts rambling about "who deserved to go", "who should go in the future" and all other honorable mentions.

As I see it Gortat is an All-Star Conundrum. In all fairness All-Star Game is a show - and Gortat is an anti-highlight. I know that one might argue that stats and performance should get you into the All-star Game but we all know it's BS.

If you take a look at stats for West and East C's Gortat is waaay ahead of some of the other guys in most stats:

1st in the league FG%, 5th overall in Double Doubles, 3rd among Centers in scoring, 4th in rebounding.

Again, not that I am shocked by this omission - he is by no means a star, but rather a hard-working guy producing at a very high level without making sensational plays.

Do you guys think he will ever be an All-Star? and what does it really mean?

My projection of his stats for the end of this year: 17/11/2 with FG% above 55%. Does it mean he is a Top 5 center?

IMO his value to the team he plays on is comaprable to Bynum's (because of his superior durability) behind only Howard and Gasol. What do you guys think?

Well, as in the days of dark and ill... doubts and whispers started to emerge from the dark side of one's conscience, and the scape goat had been chosen in the name of Steve Nash...as many tried to be convinced that the sky will be ever bright and sunny again when Nash is gone.

Here i thought to put few reasons why we should let Nash to stay and retired as a Suns player.

1) Nash is still the charismatic enigma for our team in his twilight years as a basketball player, enigma is in the sense that he is still unpredictable in the way he leads us to victory, showing flashes of his past glory and make everyone look good. Charismatic in the sense he always possess an aura of delicacy in his own basketball philosophy. That means with him as a suns player, there is always a certain hopes or wishful thinking as one put it, for the team to win another classic.... With Nash gone where we get some new "talent", it will be typically predictable for a game, if we lose, we can say "give them some time" and if we win, we will say "it is starting to look great for us"... Boring

2) If my memory serve me correctly, ever since Kevin Johnson retired, there wasn't any great player who will retired as our very own legend, we have great players who came and went like Jason Kidd, Shawn Marion, Stoudermire etc but they never retired (or will never retired) as a suns . It will be another memory occasion when Nash finally retired as another great legend of our own.

3)Thus far , we were not a team with a "rebuild" history, every time we thought we had draft some good players, we never perform well until we trade a star player. We once have talent like Michael Finley but we need to trade him for Jason Kidd for 2 seasons of greatness, we once have Stoudermire and Marion but we need to sign Nash for almost a decade of legendary entertaining basketball. So to get rid of Nash for a draft pick will not be logical.

4)If we want to trade for a star player, we need to have good bargaining chips, players that "LOOK" good for a trade, as we know Nash is capable of making almost everyone "look" good from the outside, we should let Nash to continue "helping" others to look as a great players the way Nash made Marion, Stoudermire and Richardson loo good, Nash can made Warrick, Frye, Morris and others to raise their stats so that they can be better baits for a trade.

Last but not least, it is not always DOOM to keep Nash with us :)

I did some work here based on the top 100 players voting done on the realgm player comparison board.

You can find the list here http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1123731 as I don't know how to embed my excel sheet here.

Avg Draft Position Top 100 9,4 ( excluding players that were not drafted )

Avg Draft Position Top 10 3,22 excludes Wilt Chamberlain
Avg Draft Position #10-20 7 excludes Moses Malone
Avg Draft Position #20-30 4,9
Avg Draft Position #30-40 21,6 -> Gilmore #117, Gervin #40, Stockton #16 and Drexler #14
Avg Draft Position #40-50 4,1
Avg Draft Position #50-60 12,3 excludes Paul Arizin
Avg Draft Position #60-70 12,3
Avg Draft Position #70-80 7,9
Avg Draft Position #80-90 9,57 excludes Connie Hawkins,Ben Wallace and Bill Sharman
Avg Draft Position #90-100 21,44 excludes Dave DeBusschere

The extremes are results of players like Gilmore at 117, Gervin at 40, Ginobili at 57, Laimbeer 65, Dandridge 45 these players stand out in terms of their draft position compared to the rest.

avg position drafts in
00s 2,86
90s 7,84 excludes Ben Wallace undrafted
80s 9,3
70s 16,27 excludes Moses Malone

Eliminating extremes here
avg position drafts in
90s minus Wallace and Ginobili 4,6
70s minus Gilmore and Gervin 10,05

Undrafted Players : 8 Ben Wallace, Moses Malone, Connie Hawkins, DeBusschere, Jerry Lucas, Chamberlain, Sharman, Arizin most of them territorial picks

So 49 out of the 92 drafted top 100 players were top 3 picks. 75 of the 92 drafted top 100 players were top 9 picks.

Drafting higher is always better everyone should have known that before. With the restriction of highschool players not being able to enter the league anymore and foreign players being scouted much more extensively since Dirk Nowitzki there are even less surprises in the draft as evidenced by the average draft position of the great players in the last 10 years.

And that trend will not change with Kevin Durant #2, Blake Griffin #1, Derek Rose #1, Russell Westbrook #4, Kevin Love #5, John Wall #1, Kyrie Irving #1, Ricky Rubio #5 and other possible candidates eventually getting in that list.

When you look back at the last 25 years and the franchise players that have been in the league the only franchise players not drafted in the top 5 were Steve Nash #15, Kobe Bryant #13, Tracy McGrady #9, Dirk Nowitzki #9 and Brandon Roy #6.
I do not consider Manu Ginobili or Ben Wallace franchise players.

Brandon Roy misses the cut by 1 spot, McGrady and Kobe were highschoolers before the hype and teams were wary plus Kobe refused to work out for almost anyone and Dirk Nowitzki was a foreign prospect at a time where oversea scouting wasn't where it is now. Dirk Nowitzki was a pioneer pick in that regard pretty much.

You have to go all the way back to 1985 Karl Malone at #13 and John Stockton in 1984 at 16 to find franchise players that were drafted outside the top 10.

I had a thought before about trading Nash - do people want to trade him because they don't think they will see many games so it won't matter? Does the number of games you expect to watch make a difference to what you want the team to do?

I bought League Pass, and I fully expected to see every game this year. The first two I missed (and didn't have Internet for a week after) but every other game I have watched live or as a replay (even Dallas - knowing we lost by 23).

Personally, I enjoy watching Suns games. The Suns are the team I am most emotionally involved in of any sport, and it is on at Midday where I am. Because of that, I hope the Suns keep Nash, so I can enjoy at least semi-competitive games, because tanking just isn't something I'd enjoy watching.

So how many Suns games do you expect to watch this season, and does that affect your desire to tank?

Do you remember the last few drafts leading up to the Suns selection of Amare Stoudemire?

Suns.com used to provide us with great coverage of the workouts. There was excitement in the fan base leading up to the draft. Ever since the Nash era began we were shut out from the draft experience. Every year we were disappointed with the unfancy pick or straight selling our pick for cash. A truly horrible experience as a fan. Remember that year they presented Amare Stoudemire to us as our draft pick after they sold our pick again because he came back from micro-fracture surgery?

Do you know the guy whose rights we sold? I give you a hint. Mike D'Antoni said he could not play that player because he could not shoot.

Anyone who played NBA 2k11 had the pleasure of consistently being reminded by the announcers that the Suns traded away draft picks for Rajon Rondo, Luol Deng, Rudy Fernandez, Nate Robinson, Serge Ibaka and so on. Good times being a Suns fan, going from great draft coverage and excitement to a strategy of pissing off the fanbase every year.

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