It is safe to say that the Suns season is not going as well as anyone had attended. Most would agree that the early part of the season was going to be difficult because of the new coach and the new style. D'Antoni was let go because he and the G.M. Steve Kerr had a difference in what direction this team needed to go. Kerr wanted defence and a deeper bench rotation and D'Antoni wanted up tempo offense and control to do things his way. At the time, I thought that D'Antoni was wrong and that he should have changed, but now, I think we all would agree, that he had an insight about the team we had.
I was a big supporter of the trade that sent Shawn Marrion to the Heat for Shaquille Oneal. At the time, we were pretty close to winning the championship, and I wanted to believe that the Big Cactus could deliver us there. It is easy to see now, that is not going to happen. Consider the trade unsuccessful.
This team was still built to run, but Porter was brought in to change the philosophy of this team using the same players. Early on, Porter preached defense and patience on offense. The Suns would try to play defense and then would slow the pace down and go into the half court game. Seems logical, but you had a running team that lacked the skill to play defense well enough to succeed. A trade was made to bring in a pure shooter in Jason Richardson and send Raja Bell and Boris Diaw away. These two were a big part of the running team. Not to mention that they are not a fun team to watch anymore. About 30 games into the season, Porter and the Suns decided that maybe this style wasn't meant to be, and tried to become the running team again. But the team dynamics were altered too much. They won a few games, but soon the team imploded.
Steve Nash doesn't want to be here anymore and has publicly said he is struggling and is not enjoying this season. Amare Stoudemire is a good player on offense and refuses to play defense. He has become a problem in the locker room and has called out the team captains and the management. Shaq is playing well, but where does he fit? Clearly, Porter has lost the ability to manage the team.
What to do? Trade rumors have been aplenty. Should they trade Nash? How about Stoudemire? Can they unload Shaq's contract? Apparently not. Nash is on the fall, nobody wants to risk anything worthwhile on Stat, and Shaq's contract is too big.
The Suns are going in a different direction. My prediction is they will fire the coach Terry Porter on Monday. They will at least wait until the All Star game has left town. So come Monday, The Suns will announce their 13th coach. Most are saying the Steve Kerr will take over. But he will have the same difficulties that Porter had: lack of respect from the players. That would not make any sense (but then, these are the Suns). I think they will name Alvin Gentry as the next fall guy. He will be a fresh idea, and the Suns will then try to go back to the running game. They will be better, but still miss the playoffs.
So, coming to a headline near you:
Porter Out ! Gentry In ! No Matter !
2 comments:
Bill,
This Suns team is a dysfunctional mess and I lay the blame on Robert Sarver.
The Suns could have had Luoul Deng or Rajon Rondo or Rudy Fernandez but they traded, traded, traded. They let Joe Johnson go for nothing.
D'Antoni had a system and it worked (western conference finals), but we let go the guns to make it work.
It will be a long hard spout of mediocrity for a while.
Porter is a terrible coach by the way.
With a prediction like that being realized, I wonder why you can't get paid for some sporting job somewhere... they seem to be doing fine in this economic crisis.
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