Suns News: The Offseason

[djy2j]

BTW. I know that Carl Landry had some injury issues and didn't play last year but why not pick him up? He's got a decent shot and is tough as nails. I am not sure if he's still under contract with the Kings or not.

[Mori Chu]

We have said this before, but the worst thing about maxing out Bledsoe isn't even that contract itself. It's that it would make it 100% necessary to also max out Dragic when his contract ends. You can't pay Bledsoe the max and then NOT do the same for Dragic, who by all accounts is a better player right now. And that is the part that I can't really stomach. I just don't want two maxed out PGs on our roster, especially if neither of them is even an All-Star player. You don't build a winning team like that.

[Shabazz]

BTW. I know that Carl Landry had some injury issues and didn't play last year but why not pick him up? He's got a decent shot and is tough as nails. I am not sure if he's still under contract with the Kings or not.

Awful contract. Doesn't address any of our needs.

[JCSunsfan]

The market is set. There is no need whatsoever to pay over the market just to make Eric or his agent happy. That is just bad business. This is what I hate about agents and players. Sometimes they are offended at reality.

[djy2j]

Didn't realize Landry was making $6.5 million per.

[Superbone]

https://twitter.com/WojYahooNBA/status/490205235189940224

[EDC]

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11246 ... babby-says

As for Phoenix's potential backcourt logjam of Bledsoe, Thomas and Goran Dragic, coach Jeff Hornacek envisions the Suns having an advantage with what he called "a three-headed monster" at point guard.

"There's going to be two of those guys on the court at all times," Hornacek said Monday. "When that happens, teams are going to really have to plan for that."

I guess Green will be getting all his minutes at small forward. If we don't make any trades that puts both Archie and TJ in a bad spot when it comes to minutes.

Bledsoe/IT/Ellis
Goran/IT/Archie
PJ/Green/TJ
Markieff/Marcus/Tolliver/Randolph
Plumlee/Len

We should sign a center but an old vet that won't mind not getting playing time if the young guys are playing well but can still give solid minutes when needed. Someone go dust off Kurt Thomas or Jermaine O'Neal.

This also begs the question why are we paying 6 mill a year to Tolliver? I don't think he is better than Marcus. So I doubt he will be getting many minutes at all.

I guess they could go with the awful idea of running Kieff at the center at times. Nothing quite like hoping you make enough three pointers to overcome the 20 rebound deficit you give up nightly.

[ShelC]

Tolliver's deal is 2 years, 6mil with only 400k guaranteed year 2. He's a much cheaper version of Frye and hopefully won't end up starting for us.

[EDC]

The problem is that the SF minutes are completely taken by PJ and Green. Which means Marcus will have to play PF. Both Morrii are better than Tolliver so we will probably see them split the PF minutes.

Tolliver's contract doesn't really hurt us but it is more of a question of was he needed and will he actually even see the court if we don't have any injuries.

I guess we could see something like this:

PF: Kieff:18 Marcus: 20 Tolliver: 10
C: Plumlee: 24 Len: 14 Kieff: 10

[Mori Chu]

Bledsoe/IT/Ellis
Goran/IT/Archie
PJ/Green/TJ
Markieff/Marcus/Tolliver/Randolph
Plumlee/Len

That depth chart tells me that Ellis, Goodwin, Warren, Randolph, and Marcus Morris probably aren't getting very many minutes. I think Tolliver will be playing some minutes at the 5 for us, too, so I'd include him there.

I like the depth chart overall, assuming we can get Bledsoe to stick around hopefully. PF is an obvious weak spot, but we have a bunch of athletic guys at that spot who can shoot from outside. So it'll at least be a spot we have consistency at in terms of the kind of guys taking those minutes. All of them are basically stretch 4s. That's what the PF position is for us right now. Not a banger, rebounder, post player among them.

I'm a little worried about the center position. I don't think Len has shown that he's ready to be a rotation NBA center yet. And while I like Plumlee a lot, I'm not sure a Plumlee-Len rotation at center is going to cut it. I foresee Tolliver becoming the primary backup center after a while if not right away, unless they sign some other veteran center to help, as EDC describes.

[In2ition]

For some reason I doubt that Ellis ever sees a minute of floor time.

[EDC]

Man if Len isn't able to handle steady minutes we are going to get destroyed on the boards. Tolliver is 6'8". I really hate getting out rebounded.

[ShelC]

Ha you guys just confused the hell out of me. It's Ennis, not Ellis.

[Wally_West]

Yep, Ellis is clearly going to be seating on the bench most of this season.


....also who is Ellis?

:Edit: ShelC beat me to it.

[EDC]

Didn't you see the news? We traded Randolph to the Mavs for Ellis.

[In2ition]

This may have been reported and isn't big news, but Alec Brown is going to be out for 3-4 months because of shoulder surgery. This year is a loss for him on the level of Nerlens Noel. Once he gets cleared, it's going to be him living in the weight room like some Bulgarian Olympic lifter.

[ShelC]

The good news is we can sit him the entire year and tank, get a good draft pick, and then bring him in next year as a rookie and dominate.

[Robot]

I'm still just .... I'm just not cool with Alex Len getting picked over Noel. Ahh. Okay, Noel may go down this year too but at regardless of their shared injury history, Noel actually looks good when he plays and Len looks like the other 90% of s-itty centers drafted on "size and potential" vomit.

- R

[AmareIsGod]

Robot, I take it you're not a big Len fan?

[Superbone]

This may have been reported and isn't big news, but Alec Brown is going to be out for 3-4 months because of shoulder surgery. This year is a loss for him on the level of Nerlens Noel. Once he gets cleared, it's going to be him living in the weight room like some Bulgarian Olympic lifter.

That's so weird. Did you guys see the play? He was just battling for rebound position and a guy pulled on his arm a little. It didn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary.