He went from doing the Shammgod at full speed in Game 2 to barely getting off a 15-foot set shot in Game 7.
Sounds like “choke”
Does it really matter? I mean really, it makes no difference to me if he was hurt or choked or whatever. At the end of the day he didn’t deliver when he needed him the most. He completely caspered from a personal performance standpoint and even worse from a leadership standpoint. He let his team panic. That part had nothing to do with physical injury. He failed. Excuse or no excuse.
I think it matters going forward…if he sucked because he was hurt then it means our team might not be broken. Of course it also means Monty needs to learn how to be the coach and sit his ass on the bench.
If he sucked because he choked or just wore down, then we have a different problem…one that we can’t really fix. We’re stuck with him.
I don’t know why everyone seemed to fall apart. I agree CP3 shoulders some of the blame for that. Monty too. Why we didn’t make any real adjustments baffles me. But I’m not sure we panicked…feels like maybe we could’ve panicked more, our problem is it seemed like we just froze and kept doing the same things even though Dallas had adjusted and those things weren’t working. Too full of ourselves and too confident we’d take care of business.
I just hope Monty has learned his lesson and we rest Paul as much as possible next year. I’ll happily take the 3rd seed or whatever seed it takes to be fresh and healthy coming into the playoffs. And we better get at minimum 1 more reliable shot creator, though 2 should be the goal.
He went from doing the Shammgod at full speed in Game 2 to barely getting off a 15-foot set shot in Game 7.
Sounds like “choke”
Does it really matter? I mean really, it makes no difference to me if he was hurt or choked or whatever. At the end of the day he didn’t deliver when he needed him the most. He completely caspered from a personal performance standpoint and even worse from a leadership standpoint. He let his team panic. That part had nothing to do with physical injury. He failed. Excuse or no excuse.
I think it matters going forward…if he sucked because he was hurt then it means our team might not be broken. Of course it also means Monty needs to learn how to be the coach and sit his ass on the bench.
If he sucked because he choked or just wore down, then we have a different problem…one that we can’t really fix. We’re stuck with him.
I don’t know why everyone seemed to fall apart. I agree CP3 shoulders some of the blame for that. Monty too. Why we didn’t make any real adjustments baffles me. But I’m not sure we panicked…feels like maybe we could’ve panicked more, our problem is it seemed like we just froze and kept doing the same things even though Dallas had adjusted and those things weren’t working. Too full of ourselves and too confident we’d take care of business.
I just hope Monty has learned his lesson and we rest Paul as much as possible next year. I’ll happily take the 3rd seed or whatever seed it takes to be fresh and healthy coming into the playoffs. And we better get at minimum 1 more reliable shot creator, though 2 should be the goal.
Paul was out for 4 weeks at the very end of the year recovering from hand surgery and then had another week off before the start of the playoffs……and he still wore out/quad injury or whatever.
He can’t handle the grind of a postseason playing physical ball every other night. Bound to happen again at age 38
That would be where we need another shot creator.. and we need to do a much better job of not letting teams pick on him on defense. We switched him onto Doncic without any resistance over and over.
I'll never understand the defensive strategy of putting DA or CP on Doncic throughout the series. CP should've been hidden on DFS or or Bullock the way we used to stick Nash on guys like Bruce Bowen.
It was dumb…we started him on bullock, but they just had bullock come screen for Luka. I watched GS easily defend that exact same scenario though with Curry and I’m baffled we didn’t do it. Curry would trap for about 1-2 seconds, let Wiggins recover and then the defense would zone up behind the play until Curry could return to a man. Did Monty not feel we could do that? GS did it so easily.
It was dumb…we started him on bullock, but they just had bullock come screen for Luka. I watched GS easily defend that exact same scenario though with Curry and I’m baffled we didn’t do it. Curry would trap for about 1-2 seconds, let Wiggins recover and then the defense would zone up behind the play until Curry could return to a man. Did Monty not feel we could do that? GS did it so easily.
To be fair, the Warriors did have the benefit of watching our series and seeing how much Dallas crushed us with that particular pick-and-roll, so they could plan specific counters to it. But yeah, the P&R is a staple NBA play, they should have been ready for it. Or at a minimum, after one game of getting torched by it, they should have adjusted.
We will never win a championship with Monty as our head coach and an aging Chris Paul as our #1 or #2. I feel like the team still doesn't understand that.
"I'm a Deandre Ayton guy."--Al McCoy, September 21, 2022.
We will never win a championship with Monty as our head coach and an aging Chris Paul as our #1 or #2. I feel like the team still doesn't understand that.
Monty and aging Chris Paul did get us 2 wins away from a title, and got us by a wide margin the best record in the NBA the next year. I realize that we fell short in the end both times, but a few bounces here and there and who knows how things would have turned out?
We will never win a championship with Monty as our head coach and an aging Chris Paul as our #1 or #2. I feel like the team still doesn't understand that.
Monty and aging Chris Paul did get us 2 wins away from a title, and got us by a wide margin the best record in the NBA the next year. I realize that we fell short in the end both times, but a few bounces here and there and who knows how things would have turned out?
The chances are getting lower with each year Chris Paul ages. He's 38 next playoffs, two years older than he was in the Finals.
"I'm a Deandre Ayton guy."--Al McCoy, September 21, 2022.
Nobody is going to win a championship with Ayton as their highest paid player or their #1 or #2 option.
We'll have to wait and see on that, since it hasn't been attempted.
Without Ayton, the Suns may not even make the playoffs next year and certainly won't be a top 4 seed (assuming they get typical S&T marginal value in return).
"I'm a Deandre Ayton guy."--Al McCoy, September 21, 2022.
Nobody is going to win a championship with Ayton as their highest paid player or their #1 or #2 option.
We'll have to wait and see on that, since it hasn't been attempted.
Without Ayton, the Suns may not even make the playoffs next year and certainly won't be a top 4 seed (assuming they get typical S&T marginal value in return).
OK, but he did miss a quarter of the season (before everyone started resting the last week) and we went 17-3 in those games with minimum salary or half-MLE centers replacing him.
Nobody is going to win a championship with Ayton as their highest paid player or their #1 or #2 option.
We'll have to wait and see on that, since it hasn't been attempted.
Without Ayton, the Suns may not even make the playoffs next year and certainly won't be a top 4 seed (assuming they get typical S&T marginal value in return).
OK, but he did miss a quarter of the season (before everyone started resting the last week) and we went 17-3 in those games with minimum salary or half-MLE centers replacing him.
Nobody is going to win a championship with Ayton as their highest paid player or their #1 or #2 option.
We'll have to wait and see on that, since it hasn't been attempted.
Without Ayton, the Suns may not even make the playoffs next year and certainly won't be a top 4 seed (assuming they get typical S&T marginal value in return).
OK, but he did miss a quarter of the season (before everyone started resting the last week) and we went 17-3 in those games with minimum salary or half-MLE centers replacing him.
And where was McGee against Dallas. On the bench.
While Ayton was getting cooked.
I don't know if it's just because we blew the first pick on him or because he played at Arizona, the Ayton supporters see so much more than he's actually shown. It's fascinating.
Nobody is going to win a championship with Ayton as their highest paid player or their #1 or #2 option.
We'll have to wait and see on that, since it hasn't been attempted.
Without Ayton, the Suns may not even make the playoffs next year and certainly won't be a top 4 seed (assuming they get typical S&T marginal value in return).
OK, but he did miss a quarter of the season (before everyone started resting the last week) and we went 17-3 in those games with minimum salary or half-MLE centers replacing him.
And where was McGee against Dallas. On the bench.
While Ayton was getting cooked.
I don't know if it's just because we blew the first pick on him or because he played at Arizona, the Ayton supporters see so much more than he's actually shown. It's fascinating.
You need to get over yourself. I didn’t see Bridges doing any better against Dallas on defense, but he is All-NBA first team.
There is a lot more to Ayton than is being utilized.
And for the record I hate Who of A, so again, get over yourself.
We'll have to wait and see on that, since it hasn't been attempted.
Without Ayton, the Suns may not even make the playoffs next year and certainly won't be a top 4 seed (assuming they get typical S&T marginal value in return).
OK, but he did miss a quarter of the season (before everyone started resting the last week) and we went 17-3 in those games with minimum salary or half-MLE centers replacing him.
And where was McGee against Dallas. On the bench.
While Ayton was getting cooked.
I don't know if it's just because we blew the first pick on him or because he played at Arizona, the Ayton supporters see so much more than he's actually shown. It's fascinating.
You need to get over yourself. I didn’t see Bridges doing any better against Dallas on defense, but he is All-NBA first team.
There is a lot more to Ayton than is being utilized.
And for the record I hate Who of A, so again, get over yourself.
Is there proof there is more to Ayton than what he's shown? Because unless you're going back to AAU games he's the same soft ass he's been since college.
Get over yourself? Seems oddly personal for no reason.
The pro-Ayton camp thinks his untapped potential is worth paying for in advance, while the con-Ayton camp doubts his untapped potential will ever be realized due to mental factors such as focus and work ethic.
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I don't know if it's just because we blew the first pick on him or because he played at Arizona, the Ayton supporters see so much more than he's actually shown. It's fascinating.
I support keeping Ayton. For me it's more about options and cost/benefit. I don't think we will be a better team with, say, Myles Turner and a pick. I don't think we will be better with Clint Capela. I think Ayton is still going to get better and is close to being a really dominant center. I love his defense and I love his high fg% and I think in his prime he can be the 2nd best guy on a title team. I'd rather bet on that than trade him for a puu-puu platter just because we're too cheap to pay him.
I don't know if it's just because we blew the first pick on him or because he played at Arizona, the Ayton supporters see so much more than he's actually shown. It's fascinating.
I support keeping Ayton. For me it's more about options and cost/benefit. I don't think we will be a better team with, say, Myles Turner and a pick. I don't think we will be better with Clint Capela. I think Ayton is still going to get better and is close to being a really dominant center. I love his defense and I love his high fg% and I think in his prime he can be the 2nd best guy on a title team. I'd rather bet on that than trade him for a puu-puu platter just because we're too cheap to pay him.
Ayton’s value on a max deal is great option wise. Even though I’m kinda our on him, I think Book knows he needs a real bucket getter as a postseason partner. Hopefully the tampering going around right now, JJ is sniffing out whether it’s worth signing him vs sign n trade. I doubt they’ll let him go sign offer as it limits our ability to trade him. And no way they let him walk.
