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i think even if the suns had employed avery johnson, i doubt those players would listen to his cranky voice or even bother playing defense....
Suns still can't defend an obsession
Mike Monroe - Express-News The Suns aren't the first team that changed their personnel to better compete against the Spurs.
The Hornets came to town Saturday with an active roster that was nearly 50 percent former Spurs, and the suggestion that players who have learned the “Spurs way” may help in the playoffs can not have been lost on general manager Jeff Bowers.
The Suns, however, seem dangerously obsessed with surmounting the obstacle the Spurs have erected in three of the past four years.
Under Mike D'Antoni, the Suns were a regular-season phenomenon that couldn't beat the Spurs in the playoffs. Owner Robert Sarver put a former Spurs player in charge of his team's player personnel, and GM Steve Kerr tried to give them a mind-set that resembled that of the Spurs.
There are charges and counter-charges about what led to D'Antoni's departure last summer, but losing a third playoff series to the Spurs was the final straw.
Trouble is, the new Suns still can't beat the Spurs and the reasons are the same: They can't keep Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili out of the paint, and Amare Stoudemire still can't defend Tim Duncan.
Steve Nash needs a nasty defender behind him who can make Parker pay for beating him, and so does Leandro Barbosa, victim of the slickest double-crossover I've ever seen.
Stoudemire isn't it, and Shaquille O'Neal never was quick enough to get his feet set to take a charge from Ginobili, let alone in his 17th season.
Nash no longer bothers with subtlety when he critiques his team.
“Offensive players have a hard time concentrating for long stretches defensively,” he said. “That's not necessarily what they have been asked to do. So it's second nature for them to think of other things or take their minds somewhere else when they should be rotating.”
I think if you were to insert “Amare and Shaq” for “offensive players,” you would have the true gist of Nash's lament.
Terry Porter replaced D'Antoni and it was clear he had a mandate from management: Slow the pace and stress defense.
Slowing the pace didn't sit well with players who had so much fun scoring in seven seconds or less. A six-time All-Star and two-time MVP, Nash was left off the roster for an All-Star Game that will be played in Phoenix because the new system minimized his numbers and his team isn't winning with the same regularity.
To his credit, Porter adjusted, and the Suns are trying to run more frequently. It is a work in progress, but Nash has posted two 18-assist games and one 19-assist game recently.
“We spent the first month of the season trying to be someone I don't think we are,” Nash said. “We tried to slow it down too much. Once that experiment ended, we've been on a build where we've gotten a better rhythm offensively. That's why my assist numbers are coming up. But it's more a tribute to the fact we feel better about how we're playing and have more connectivity amongst ourselves.”
There is time enough for the Suns to get their offensive act together and remain a playoff team. After Saturday night's games, they were 11/2 games behind the seventh-place Mavericks in the West.
And if they should leapfrog Dallas by season's end?
Then, they might find themselves in another playoff series against the Spurs.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/c...obsession.html
i think even if the suns had employed avery johnson, i doubt those players would listen to his cranky voice or even bother playing defense....
, I'd give AJ a shot, I was hoping they would actually get him last year. Look what happened to Dallas when he left. They would choke, but at least they had a shot. The suns right now appear to not have a shot at all with the current system. I do agree on defense needing to watch Nash's back. Everyone thought he was a ty defender and then barbosa gets smoked by one of the nastiest crossovers I've ever seen, granted nash may be the second tiest defender behind barbosa who is supposed to be quick.
Which is the reason why they end up getting beaten every year. The Suns are the defenition of insanity.
An obsession that has gone awry but not because of its rationale but its execution.
It's an argument in futility because even though Phoenix is a mess right now, something did need to be done. The old D'Antoni Suns team wasn't going to beat the Spurs (or now the Lakers) either. So while Kerr did make some curious to questionable moves, the theory is right. The actual execution of what he wanted, not so right.
But, then again, he had to realize that with the foundation pieces he had in Nash and Amare. They didn't need a Shaq type player in the middle. They needed a Tyson Chandler type player in the middle. They didn't need to trade Raja Bell, they needed to add a James Posey. They needed to add pieces that would have helped in areas they were hurting but also pieces that wouldn't completely disrupt what was already working.
The obsession was based on good reasoning. The execution has clearly failed up to this point.
Nash should be the very last to talk about defensive lapses of his teammates...
Poor Suns, walking around with a mushroom stamp in the forehead from the Spurs.
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