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Talk to the Coach
Posted: Feb. 9, 2004
Mike D’Antoni began a double-header of Suns radio programming Monday night when he sat down with KTAR’s Kevin Ray for the 620 Sportsline’s weekly “Talk to the Coach” program as the Suns approach a much needed break in the season for the All-Star festivities.
Kevin Ray: I know you’ve got a club that’s got some business to take care of over the next couple of days. They will be anxiously looking forward to this (All-Star) break, as well, having played more games in the NBA at this juncture of the season than anybody.
Mike D’Antoni: We want to get this thing turned around and start winning some games. Hopefully, in the next two games we can go an a little streak and go into the break in an upbeat mood. I was hoping that during the homestand we were able to do that, but things haven’t quite turned out like we expected. They’re working hard and they are playing hard. We’ve just got to get better.
Ray: It certainly started out the homestand looking as though that turnaround might start then. An impressive 20-point victory against Houston, but then following it up with losses to Portland, Seattle and then again to Utah on Saturday night off of that back-to-back. Like you say, it’s hard to argue about the effort because it has been there, but slow starts really have cost this team. They have had to fight behind double-digit deficits in each one of these last three losses.
D’Antoni: We get bogged down during the game. A lot of it we’re just searching a little bit for our lineup and trying to play the people we need to play. Putting Amaré back in, we have another rhythm, a different look, and we haven’t done very well. Now we’re playing inside-out and the ball needs to go into Amaré. We’re not doing a great job of spacing. (Monday’s) practice, hopefully we corrected some of the mistakes we were making and we’ll just have to get better as we go forward.
Ray: You made a point today at practice that I think is important for the Suns fans to understand. You talked about Amaré being back in the lineup, but more importantly, this is only his second practice in, I can’t remember how long you said, but only the second full practice you’ve had out of him in the last six weeks?
D’Antoni: No, probably more than that because he was out six weeks and then he came back for 10 days and we didn’t have any practice time. Then he was out another three weeks, so we’re talking nine weeks he has not had a practice. He’s not knocking down his outside shot right now. He doesn’t have the rhythm. So now they’re putting the 7-footers on him, they’re staying at the rim, and we’re struggling a little bit with it. We’ve kind of cured it by going little a lot and we can’t do that all the time. We have lulls in our game and we’ve got to get back to two big guys and play better with those guys. We need Jake Voskuhl on the floor. I think we’ll do that, and I think eventually we’ll be fine, but we have some rough spots right now.
Ray: You talk about Jake’s role and clearly with him not on the floor with you having to go small, you’re small lineup doesn’t give you the kind of rebounding team that you need, and really I thought that as much as anything is what you paid the price for on Saturday night.
D’Antoni: We probably did, but again, if you watch the tape, what the disappointing thing was, although I think our effort was good and we’re doing a lot of things, we didn’t concentrate real well on long rebounds. There were plenty of times where guys had magnets on their feet; they were kind of stuck to the floor. We weren’t responding to long rebounds at all. (Utah’s Andrei) Kirilenko and other guys were beating us to the punch. They weren’t rebounds above the rim. They were rebounds that anybody could have gotten. So, that was a little disappointing. And again, we’re just getting in the habit of falling behind and I don’t know if that’s a mental fatigue or physical, but it seems like then when we get down, they say, “Okay, now we got to go,” and they have responded, but that’s just not the way to play. We’re going to have to come out and we’re going to have to be a little bit more aggressive and mentally fresher to start games off and try to take a lead, or try to at least control the game. We haven’t done that the last three and that’s been disappointing.
Ray: Despite the losses, some very strong individual performances. We would be remiss if we didn’t talk about those. First off, Friday night Leandro Barbosa just scintillating on the floor, and not just his offense, he 8-for-8 at one juncture (and) came out of that ball game with 21 points, but I think what stood out as much as anything were his four steals. You could just see his potential defensively bubbling at the surface.
D’Antoni: He’s going to be good. We’re also teaching him how to be a point guard. Right now he doesn’t have great instincts to be a great point, but he is trying to learn and he’s very coachable. Probably too coachable because when I say a few things to him he kind of gets down a little bit, we try to keep him from doing that. He’s learning to play back-to-back. He had a good game on Friday and then he comes out Saturday and he was just dead. I think he was exhausted from being so emotionally high on Friday that he had nothing to give on Saturday. He’s learning how to play the NBA and at 21 years old I think he’s super. I think he’s doing a great job and something Suns fans can look forward to for a lot of years.
Caller (Johnny, Phoenix): I want to know about (Zarko) Cabarkapa. Do you ever think you’ll ever start him as a small forward?
D’Antoni: He has great potential. There’s a great definition of good potential. It goes up until now, you haven’t done anything. But, we love the guy. He’s struggled this year and he’s struggling right now with battling two major injuries that he’s overcome and probably the shock of being knocked upside down by a play that was ridiculous. And living in a new country. We’re trying to get him back to feeling comfortable on the basketball court and we’re not going to rush him back. It should be pretty soon, but we’ll see how it goes. He has the potential to start. He has the potential to turn a game around. He’s seven feet. He knows how to play. The guy can really pass the ball. He’s a good shooter, not a great shooter, he needs to improve his shooting, and he needs to get tougher. He just has to get stronger and that will come with work in the weight room. It’s going to take a little while, but again, another guy we hope is around for a long time.
Ray: I’ll say this about Zarko. He’ll get done with this season and there won’t be much that he will not have encountered. An injury in preseason, today you had hoped to get him on the practice court and he suffers an allergic reaction.
D’Antoni: He had blotches all over the place. It was ugly this morning. It’s just one of those things. He’s a little snake-bitten right now, the whole team’s kind of snake-bitten a little bit right now, but we’ll battle through it. He’s a great kid; he’s only going to get better. He’s had an interesting first year, but we’ve seen flashes of what he can be and it’s up to the coaching staff to make him that type of player.
Ray: We all know Amaré’s offensive capabilities. But defensively, 10 blocked shots in one game, and this is really where I think this kid could really separate himself from the rest of the pack.
D’Antoni: There’s no doubt about it, Kevin. We’ve talked about it and I think it’s going to define his career. He’s going to be a good offensive player. He’s working hard and he’ll get his little jump shot down. He’ll be able to go to the basket and he’ll get some big dunks in transition. But where he will win, and hopefully it will turn into titles and whatever, it’s how good he becomes defensively. The second half of the game especially, he played hard and that’s what he’s got to do. He’s got to go full board both ends and defensively if he can block shots and be an intimidator inside, then he’s going to great in years to come. He knows that. It’s going to take him a little while. He’s going to have to get the mindset that he’s going to come out and stop his man every night. Then you’re talking about a big time winner.
Ray: I thought that the other night, blocks aside, that was the other thing that I saw from him that I really hadn’t seen all season, was really trying to work to front his man when he needed to, to cut him off on the baseline, to help on the weak side, and part of that is want to and part of that is understanding the defense, and just kind of making it all work together.
D’Antoni: It is. It requires a lot of energy because we’re going to go to him a lot offensively also. If you compete on both ends of the floor, that’s going to make you a winner. That’s what we talk about. He knows. Again, it’s not going to happen overnight. He’s going to have to learn how to play defense and also learn where to expend all the energy and where he can rest a little bit. We’re going to keep him on the floor 40 minutes and he’s a major part of our fast break, and rebounding and going to the offensive boards, throwing it into the post and then blocking shots and guarding his man. So, he’ll have to develop into a guy that’s going to play 100 percent every time.
Ray: Another guy that has become pretty reliable for you, whether it was as a starter or now coming off the bench with Amaré back in the lineup is Casey Jacobsen. Casey with another strong weekend and his 3-point shooting has just continued to improve as the season has gone along, which is hard to believe when you consider he started out the year shooting at about a 44 percent clip.
D’Antoni: He’s one of those guys that in every level that he’s played, starting out in high school in California, I’m sure there’s a lot of people that have said, “Well, he doesn’t quite have it, he’s just not quite fast enough, he’s not quite this, he’s not quite that.” Every level he goes to he’s been not only successful, but super successful. He was the all-time leading high school scorer in California, becomes an All-American at Stanford. After his junior year he goes to the NBA. He’s still young. He’s figuring it out and he’s figured it out at every level, and he’s doing it now. His last two games, he’s hitting mid-range jump shots and that’s the first time in a year and a half that he’s done that. He goes to the hole without any kind of fear and sometimes he gets calls (against him) and he makes a bad play, but I think he’ll figure that out, also. When to go, when he needs to pull up for a jump shot and when he needs to kick it. Probably his best thing, which is surprising, is his defense. His defense as a team defender is awesome. Whatever we say, he does. He remembers every assignment and does it almost perfectly. Sometimes, one-on-one he can get beat because of his lack of speed, but again, they beat him one time, the second time he’s figured the angle out and they don’t do it quite as easily.
Talk to the Coach
Posted: Feb. 9, 2004
Mike D’Antoni began a double-header of Suns radio programming Monday night when he sat down with KTAR’s Kevin Ray for the 620 Sportsline’s weekly “Talk to the Coach” program as the Suns approach a much needed break in the season for the All-Star festivities.
Kevin Ray: I know you’ve got a club that’s got some business to take care of over the next couple of days. They will be anxiously looking forward to this (All-Star) break, as well, having played more games in the NBA at this juncture of the season than anybody.
Mike D’Antoni: We want to get this thing turned around and start winning some games. Hopefully, in the next two games we can go an a little streak and go into the break in an upbeat mood. I was hoping that during the homestand we were able to do that, but things haven’t quite turned out like we expected. They’re working hard and they are playing hard. We’ve just got to get better.
Ray: It certainly started out the homestand looking as though that turnaround might start then. An impressive 20-point victory against Houston, but then following it up with losses to Portland, Seattle and then again to Utah on Saturday night off of that back-to-back. Like you say, it’s hard to argue about the effort because it has been there, but slow starts really have cost this team. They have had to fight behind double-digit deficits in each one of these last three losses.
D’Antoni: We get bogged down during the game. A lot of it we’re just searching a little bit for our lineup and trying to play the people we need to play. Putting Amaré back in, we have another rhythm, a different look, and we haven’t done very well. Now we’re playing inside-out and the ball needs to go into Amaré. We’re not doing a great job of spacing. (Monday’s) practice, hopefully we corrected some of the mistakes we were making and we’ll just have to get better as we go forward.
Ray: You made a point today at practice that I think is important for the Suns fans to understand. You talked about Amaré being back in the lineup, but more importantly, this is only his second practice in, I can’t remember how long you said, but only the second full practice you’ve had out of him in the last six weeks?
D’Antoni: No, probably more than that because he was out six weeks and then he came back for 10 days and we didn’t have any practice time. Then he was out another three weeks, so we’re talking nine weeks he has not had a practice. He’s not knocking down his outside shot right now. He doesn’t have the rhythm. So now they’re putting the 7-footers on him, they’re staying at the rim, and we’re struggling a little bit with it. We’ve kind of cured it by going little a lot and we can’t do that all the time. We have lulls in our game and we’ve got to get back to two big guys and play better with those guys. We need Jake Voskuhl on the floor. I think we’ll do that, and I think eventually we’ll be fine, but we have some rough spots right now.
Ray: You talk about Jake’s role and clearly with him not on the floor with you having to go small, you’re small lineup doesn’t give you the kind of rebounding team that you need, and really I thought that as much as anything is what you paid the price for on Saturday night.
D’Antoni: We probably did, but again, if you watch the tape, what the disappointing thing was, although I think our effort was good and we’re doing a lot of things, we didn’t concentrate real well on long rebounds. There were plenty of times where guys had magnets on their feet; they were kind of stuck to the floor. We weren’t responding to long rebounds at all. (Utah’s Andrei) Kirilenko and other guys were beating us to the punch. They weren’t rebounds above the rim. They were rebounds that anybody could have gotten. So, that was a little disappointing. And again, we’re just getting in the habit of falling behind and I don’t know if that’s a mental fatigue or physical, but it seems like then when we get down, they say, “Okay, now we got to go,” and they have responded, but that’s just not the way to play. We’re going to have to come out and we’re going to have to be a little bit more aggressive and mentally fresher to start games off and try to take a lead, or try to at least control the game. We haven’t done that the last three and that’s been disappointing.
Ray: Despite the losses, some very strong individual performances. We would be remiss if we didn’t talk about those. First off, Friday night Leandro Barbosa just scintillating on the floor, and not just his offense, he 8-for-8 at one juncture (and) came out of that ball game with 21 points, but I think what stood out as much as anything were his four steals. You could just see his potential defensively bubbling at the surface.
D’Antoni: He’s going to be good. We’re also teaching him how to be a point guard. Right now he doesn’t have great instincts to be a great point, but he is trying to learn and he’s very coachable. Probably too coachable because when I say a few things to him he kind of gets down a little bit, we try to keep him from doing that. He’s learning to play back-to-back. He had a good game on Friday and then he comes out Saturday and he was just dead. I think he was exhausted from being so emotionally high on Friday that he had nothing to give on Saturday. He’s learning how to play the NBA and at 21 years old I think he’s super. I think he’s doing a great job and something Suns fans can look forward to for a lot of years.
Caller (Johnny, Phoenix): I want to know about (Zarko) Cabarkapa. Do you ever think you’ll ever start him as a small forward?
D’Antoni: He has great potential. There’s a great definition of good potential. It goes up until now, you haven’t done anything. But, we love the guy. He’s struggled this year and he’s struggling right now with battling two major injuries that he’s overcome and probably the shock of being knocked upside down by a play that was ridiculous. And living in a new country. We’re trying to get him back to feeling comfortable on the basketball court and we’re not going to rush him back. It should be pretty soon, but we’ll see how it goes. He has the potential to start. He has the potential to turn a game around. He’s seven feet. He knows how to play. The guy can really pass the ball. He’s a good shooter, not a great shooter, he needs to improve his shooting, and he needs to get tougher. He just has to get stronger and that will come with work in the weight room. It’s going to take a little while, but again, another guy we hope is around for a long time.
Ray: I’ll say this about Zarko. He’ll get done with this season and there won’t be much that he will not have encountered. An injury in preseason, today you had hoped to get him on the practice court and he suffers an allergic reaction.
D’Antoni: He had blotches all over the place. It was ugly this morning. It’s just one of those things. He’s a little snake-bitten right now, the whole team’s kind of snake-bitten a little bit right now, but we’ll battle through it. He’s a great kid; he’s only going to get better. He’s had an interesting first year, but we’ve seen flashes of what he can be and it’s up to the coaching staff to make him that type of player.
Ray: We all know Amaré’s offensive capabilities. But defensively, 10 blocked shots in one game, and this is really where I think this kid could really separate himself from the rest of the pack.
D’Antoni: There’s no doubt about it, Kevin. We’ve talked about it and I think it’s going to define his career. He’s going to be a good offensive player. He’s working hard and he’ll get his little jump shot down. He’ll be able to go to the basket and he’ll get some big dunks in transition. But where he will win, and hopefully it will turn into titles and whatever, it’s how good he becomes defensively. The second half of the game especially, he played hard and that’s what he’s got to do. He’s got to go full board both ends and defensively if he can block shots and be an intimidator inside, then he’s going to great in years to come. He knows that. It’s going to take him a little while. He’s going to have to get the mindset that he’s going to come out and stop his man every night. Then you’re talking about a big time winner.
Ray: I thought that the other night, blocks aside, that was the other thing that I saw from him that I really hadn’t seen all season, was really trying to work to front his man when he needed to, to cut him off on the baseline, to help on the weak side, and part of that is want to and part of that is understanding the defense, and just kind of making it all work together.
D’Antoni: It is. It requires a lot of energy because we’re going to go to him a lot offensively also. If you compete on both ends of the floor, that’s going to make you a winner. That’s what we talk about. He knows. Again, it’s not going to happen overnight. He’s going to have to learn how to play defense and also learn where to expend all the energy and where he can rest a little bit. We’re going to keep him on the floor 40 minutes and he’s a major part of our fast break, and rebounding and going to the offensive boards, throwing it into the post and then blocking shots and guarding his man. So, he’ll have to develop into a guy that’s going to play 100 percent every time.
Ray: Another guy that has become pretty reliable for you, whether it was as a starter or now coming off the bench with Amaré back in the lineup is Casey Jacobsen. Casey with another strong weekend and his 3-point shooting has just continued to improve as the season has gone along, which is hard to believe when you consider he started out the year shooting at about a 44 percent clip.
D’Antoni: He’s one of those guys that in every level that he’s played, starting out in high school in California, I’m sure there’s a lot of people that have said, “Well, he doesn’t quite have it, he’s just not quite fast enough, he’s not quite this, he’s not quite that.” Every level he goes to he’s been not only successful, but super successful. He was the all-time leading high school scorer in California, becomes an All-American at Stanford. After his junior year he goes to the NBA. He’s still young. He’s figuring it out and he’s figured it out at every level, and he’s doing it now. His last two games, he’s hitting mid-range jump shots and that’s the first time in a year and a half that he’s done that. He goes to the hole without any kind of fear and sometimes he gets calls (against him) and he makes a bad play, but I think he’ll figure that out, also. When to go, when he needs to pull up for a jump shot and when he needs to kick it. Probably his best thing, which is surprising, is his defense. His defense as a team defender is awesome. Whatever we say, he does. He remembers every assignment and does it almost perfectly. Sometimes, one-on-one he can get beat because of his lack of speed, but again, they beat him one time, the second time he’s figured the angle out and they don’t do it quite as easily.
