Mainstreet

Some of the comments in Dan Bickley's article at azcentral dated 10-24-09 made me think retroactive.

Here are a couple:

Kerr should have thought about this before pushing DA out the door. DA created the Suns identity like it or not. I guess Kerr is finding out what bad is like without him.

The Suns do have talent but unfortunately no size or defense. Again who was the master of small ball... that's right DA. At least the Suns could pretend to be a contender and make the playoffs. Also averaging 58 wins a season over four full seasons was not bad either.

The Suns are not better without Shaq. Financially maybe but that's it. I'm not pushing for the return of Shaq or DA but what have the Suns done to improve the team without them. This is not a knock on Gentry because I like him as the Suns coach. However at least with DA the Suns sniffed of being a contender for a few seasons.

Before anyone wants to discredit DA about not winning a Championship it's wise to remember he made something out of nothing after he arrived. I guess I just wanted to point out the Suns are like a spinning top slowing down since DA left.

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mojorizen7

Good post MS.
I would argue that the reason we're staring at another illegitimate season is because the moves and decisions made(or not made) after the departure of DA....not necesarily because of his departure. I know you're a DA fan so I won't bag on him here.
Again, not a fan of DA or his brand of BB, but letting the mastermind of fun n gun walk,Kerr then talking about playing defense,then reverses that talk after one season,then wanting to get back to that fun n gun identity without DA, an old Nash, no shooters and a roster of bad draft picks and 5th tier FA's???......thats just ignorant.
I feel your pain Mainstreet. We don't see eye to eye on how to get there but this rhetoric of trying to reclaim what they let walk away is stupid.

krazyasiankid

This franchise was doomed when D'Antonii left. Not only did they let go one of the best coaches in the league, they let go the ONLY coach that knew how to get a win with this defence-less roster.

Trifecta

I see a few problems with the Suns going back to run & gun and expecting to do anywhere near as well as in our "glory years":

1. Gentry is not D'Antoni
2. Steve Nash has aged 5 years since then
3. Richardson is not Joe Johnson
4. Amare is a shadow of his former pre-microfracture self
5. We have no one who can bring anything even close to what Marion brought to the table

The only plus side I can see is that we are slightly deeper than we were back then.

At this point the best case scenario for us is that the Thunder pick a bust with our lottery pick so we aren't the laughingstock of the league for the next 5 years.

Wonder

number 4 doesn't make any sense...

Trifecta

I meant he is a shadow of what he once was before he had microfracture surgury. As in he is not as good. Did you not understand that or do you disagree with that?

Roca Dolla

one of the best coaches??? lmfao thats too funny dumbtoni is the worst coach in the nba

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BC867

Yup.

One dimensional -- SSOL offense.

Defense -- made jokes about it

Rebounding -- not a priority

Developing young players -- 'said it wasn't his job.

The Suns under D'Antoni were like a race car that could get to high speeds quickly . . . until it burned out due to lack of maintenance.

And now that old race car will try to live on its short-lived glory which, by the way, never won a race.

It was ironic that Horry sideswiped Nash, resulting in the loss of Amare at a key time, which rendered the Suns useless.

Mainstreet

I'm disappointed you agree with Roca Dolla. NBA.com disagrees.

See link: http://www.nba.com/coachfile/mike_dantoni/

Also I hope you don't condone Roca Dolla's tasteless comment of referring to D'Antoni as "dumbtoni."

For the Suns' current personnel this offense is their best chances of winning. I think having Porter as HC already proved this. Actually the Suns are trying to get back SSOL. This team does not have the right players to play defense or rebound. One can only imagine the Suns walking the ball up the court.

In the future, when the Suns get better defensive players, they may change their strategy. The Suns will need another quality big man to get there.

Yes, but even more so after DA left. Now the Suns are weaker on offense and defense.

The Suns last two drafts were supposed to address this issue so it's not just DA. It's not that easy. DA did the best with what he had. Too bad the Suns don't have Garnett, Duncan or Gasol in the middle.

No doubt DA liked more polished players but he did an excellent job with Joe Johnson. Actually the Suns FO have been using draft picks for years to save money. See the KT trade and the Suns selling picks. Also a good GM could have gotten DA proven players using the picks that were sold or bartered away.

Partially agree. Sarver and Kerr were never keen on doing routine maintenance or getting DA quality depth.

You mean a Championship I presume. In 4 1/2 years DA made it to the WCFs twice while he was with the Suns. That's a short window especially since the Suns have not won a Championship in forty years. I wonder how long it will take to make the Suns to look like a contender again without DA?

I'm not sure of your point here except the Suns had regained home court advantage in SA when this happened. They were in good position to go up 3-2 in that series until Amare and Diaw got suspended. I wonder what your thinking would be if the Suns had beat SA.

The whole point of my thread/ post is that the Suns have now done a 360 and are trying to get back to where they were. This brought me back to DA. I thought this was ironic and just wanted to point it out. If you want to keep blaming DA for all the Suns' woes, so be it. However, I will remember what DA for what he did with the Suns which is considerable... not what he didn't.

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krazyasiankid

I agree with you on that one. Dont blame DA for the sun's woes, blame the fking idiot and his best buddy who fired him

cly2tw

Well, DA was a problem, or a hurdle on the way to a title. But Kerr became even bigger problem after that, who has some good concepts but bad execution and implementation. Quite like Porter. The two of them deserve each other, unfortunately at the Suns' costs.

So, it's now back to what we were before? I guess the last year of DA is all one can hope for. It's now not even any sound concept left with Kerr. It's just some inconherent gamblings leading the franchise to nowhere.

DarenG

I don't blame Kerr one bit for getting rid of D'Antoni. The run and gun system was not going to bring titles to Phoenix IMO. It would have always been one of those we can almost get you there systems. As soon as it came down to a few plays or crucial moments where defense was needed this system always failed.

The Kerr/Sarver era has had some boneheaded moves since they got there but letting D'Antoni go was not one of them. I give kudos to Sarver/Kerr for at least realizing that all the teams that have won titles in the past decade have all had one thing in common....good to very good defense. D'Antoni was unwilling to compromise and is was so stubborn in his beliefs about not needing to focus on defense that he needed to go. Look no further then the defensive players he has traded away or benched in New York in favor of offensive guys.

The problem here is that we don't have the horses to play good defense. We don't have the right mix of guys. I think in this case Sarver/Kerr loaded up their dinner plate and found out their eyes were bigger then their stomachs. They wanted to snap the magic wand and say "now we are a defensive team" and "now we will care about defense".

This isn't Hogwarts.

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Mainstreet

I think this would be a legitimate argument if Kerr had replaced DA with a "better" HC and the Suns had gone after players that fit the new coaches style. However, Sarver and Kerr were not gong to pay a new HC the money DA was paid.

Actually the above tells the story almost by itself.

So the Suns are trying to get back to the situation DA started. See the article from azcentral.com dated 10-25-09 by Paul Coro and tell me if it's not true.

I like Alvin Gentry as HC as I did DA. However, DA nor Gentry are (or will be) the reason the Suns have not won a Championship in recent years. The Suns are where they are today because of the decisions Sarver and Kerr have made.

http://www.azcentral.com/sports/suns...-sunswoes.html

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Chaplin

That is simplifying things. You could go back to before Kerr and the last year or two of BC's reign. Remember when DA was the GM? That was a disaster.

DarenG

Well...the conventional wisdom at the time is that this team had the ability to play much better defense. Bringing in a defensive minded coach could coach this team up to a respectable defensive team simply by focus.

Sure money played into who they would hire. However, there was no defensive guru at the time that I recall that would have commanded D'Antoni like dollars. My favorite candidate was TT from Boston and he wouldn't have gotten that either.

My point was specific to letting D'Antoni go. They felt he was a hindrance to this team getting better defensively. Regardless of what their stance was on bringing in a new coach....that fact is still true.

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