the owner and the economy killed that team sarver was cheap to begin with + him losing a lot of personal wealth with the collapse of the economy i have a friend who is a big suns fan i feel bad for her she sent me an email this morning hoping amare would stay now that shaq is gone. man that 05 suns squad was sooo loaded...i would say though that losing johnson sucked but they got great value back in diaw and 3 first round picks from the hawks the problem is that then the owner got super cheap and didnt even want to pay those draft picks the suns could have been a lot better with all those first rounders they gave away for cheap. and a lot of those first rounders turned out to be legit players in the league too. i dont think kerr did much he put the finishing touches on a potential powerhouse that was already crumbling.
obviously from my name i am a suns fan.. rockets fan first though.. Yes the suns had so much potential and they are imploding now.. or exploding.. whatever you wanan call it. But it gets worse for me.. IMAGINE being a ROCKETS fan! everyyear there is talk about being contenders.. year after year we end up losing to the jazz or the mavs in the first round.. every year we have season ending injuries to one of our star players.. point is .. we are in a better position than the suns right now but it hasnt been that much easier being a rockets fan...
http://www.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=918329 I read this bit of story on realgm. Props to the true fans and Sarver and co. suck.
It is much easier to be a fan of a team that can come out, compete, have a chance to win any given night and know you will make the playoffs at least giving you a chance at glory. This is a "no comparison situation" now.
the suns reminds me of the bubble burst during the early 2000s, after only two or three years of contention, they are now back to the lottery
This is 100% Kerr's fault and nobody else. Seriously. Think about it. The suns were 1 or 2 bad calls away from winning the championship that year that Amare got suspended on that Horry cheap shot. They were better than the spurs that year, the best team in the NBA and they got screwed. So because of that, you come in and blow the team up? How stupid. They could have won it all the next year if you just kept that damn team in place and added one or two more role players. Think about it.... Kerr came from the spurs. He won championship with the Spurs. He was brainwashed at the time. In his mind, the way to win a championship was with slow, half court offense and a dominant big man. So he came to the suns and tried to turn them into the SPURS. He traded marion (their only defensive player). For fat Shaq. He then ran Mike D'antoni out of town because Mike wouldn't run that half court crap. He hired Terry Porter and INSTRUCTED him to run the half court slow down offense and focus on defense...... The team became boring, the fans were furious, and he didn't have the correct players to run this. And it didn't work. Shaq was in Nash's way. So then. He realizes he screwed up. He fires Terry Porter, and brings in D'antoni's understudy TO RUN THE SAME OFFENSE AS BEFORE BUT HE TRADED AWAY ALL THE PLAYERS WHO MADE THAT OFFENSE SUCCESSFUL TO BEGIN WITH. What an idiot. And it was actually working, if you remember before Amare's eye injury, the suns looked like the suns of old and they were on their way back to playoff contention. Hell they were scoring 140 points per game again. And Terry Porter became Kerr's scapegoat. This team started going down the tubes when Kerr tried to turn them into the Spurs. That pretty much sums it up.
you guys are dumb if you think it's kerr's fault, sarver is trying to save money and all those decisions are his.
How did he try to save money by dumping Marion's contract for Shaq's huge contract? He may be trying to save money NOW, but the debate is, after that series with the spurs when they had a championship team, what exactly did he do to try and save money? And don't bring up Joe Johnson, that happened long before what I'm talking about. Kerr changed the dynamic of the team. Did sarver try to save money by forcing the team into a half court, slow down offense, and focus on D?
Like Pop says, the best team always wins. If I remember correctly, that game was not a game 7, the Suns had opportunities to beat the Spurs, but they laid an egg after losing their last home game (Bowen knocking down the corner 3 late in the game to demolish their soul was brilliant ) Think about it.... Kerr came from the spurs. He won championship with the Spurs. He was brainwashed at the time. In his mind, the way to win a championship was with slow, half court offense and a dominant big man. So he came to the suns and tried to turn them into the SPURS. He traded marion (their only defensive player). For fat Shaq. He then ran Mike D'antoni out of town because Mike wouldn't run that half court crap. He hired Terry Porter and INSTRUCTED him to run the half court slow down offense and focus on defense...... The team became boring, the fans were furious, and he didn't have the correct players to run this. And it didn't work. Shaq was in Nash's way.[/QUOTE] Marion WAS NOT happy in Pheonix, he wasn't going to re-sign with the Suns in the off season so they got what they could out of him with the Shaq trade. Ironically Marion ended up in a worse situation and both parties failed miserably after their partings. So then. He realizes he screwed up. He fires Terry Porter, and brings in D'antoni's understudy TO RUN THE SAME OFFENSE AS BEFORE BUT HE TRADED AWAY ALL THE PLAYERS WHO MADE THAT OFFENSE SUCCESSFUL TO BEGIN WITH. What an idiot. And it was actually working, if you remember before Amare's eye injury, the suns looked like the suns of old and they were on their way back to playoff contention. Hell they were scoring 140 points per game again. And Terry Porter became Kerr's scapegoat. This team started going down the tubes when Kerr tried to turn them into the Spurs. That pretty much sums it up.[/QUOTE] They were scoring 140 against the weakest teams in the league, yes the Shaq experiment failed but that was both D'Antoni's and Kerr's problem. They both wanted in on the Shaq trade. Marion was also a huge part of the problem because he wanted to be THE MAN, when in reality he was living off of Steve Nash and D'Antoni's system. He didn't want to be there anymore so it forced the Suns into action. A lot of people can share the blame of why the wheels fell of the 'Run-and-Gun' Suns, not just Steve Kerr.
Very interesting reading some of these Monday Morning QB responses about the Shaq-to-Phoenix trade. Funny, I don't recall you experts speaking out against the deal when it initially happened. It's pretty obvious why Phoenix made that deal: their inability to beat SA made them desperate. The thinking wasn't bad either: let Shaq body up Duncan, which in theory should free up Amare to be defended by a Kurt Thomas type. You might recall a similar line of thinking we used when we acquired Barkley -- our inability to match up with Kemp/Malone had driven us nuts. You "experts" are also forgetting about how close that 4-1 SA playoff series win really was. SA needed a miracle three from Duncan to take Game 1 and Games 2/5 all went down to the last minute. That series was much closer than the 4-1 mark indicates. The difference between a team like SA and Phoenix is, and always has been, execution. Execution, coaching and intangibles has made SA what they are and Phoenix's lack thereof has always been their downfall. But to act like that this move couldn't have paid off is ridiculous. Phoenix had their window and they blew it.
