SL Game Day: Suns (1-0) @ Mavs (1-0), Sun 7/9/17

[ShelC]

LOL. I feel like somehow, every offseason, we return to the Amar'e/7SOL discussion. Every. Damn. Offseason.

[Indy]

LOL. I feel like somehow, every offseason, we return to the Amar'e/7SOL discussion. Every. Damn. Offseason.

I know it was nearly a decade ago, but it was the last time we were relevant.

[O_Gardino]

Here is an easy question. Knowing what we know now. Would you rather have signed Amare or signed all the crap we did instead? This magical world where we use the money saved on Amare to get another all star just didn't exist. We could have gotten slightly better crap but we weren't getting any all stars.

Your logical fallacy is: False dichotomy. Here is a page you can read to understand why your question is irrelevant.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/false_dichotomy

You guys know that you don't disagree about basketball right? You disagree about imagination. You both agree that Amare was very good when healthy, and that he was less good when injured. You both agree that 5/100 is too much for an injured Amare. You both agree that the players we brought in to replace Amare were garbage. You disagree about what you want to imagine.

Marty wants to imagine the perfect scenario of what an idea GM would have done if making the best possible moves.

EDC wants to image the best move that actual specific Suns front office could have made.

Since you are both being such internet nerds about it, I'm going to link a nerdy but helpful video.

It would be helpful to all of us to remember that most of what we do on this site is image. We imagine what the team would be like if they had made different moves. We imagine what a player will be like 5 years from now. We imagine what would have happened in the playoffs if an injury hadn't happened. And we imagine a bunch more stuff. Most of what we argue about is our imaginations not aligning.

When we imagine what we would do in a different situation as a different person, that's called role playing. This video is about the different kinds of experiences people want to get out of role playing. If you can get past the fact that he's talking about D&D, you'll see that it applies to the imagining we do here. Marty is min-maxing. EDC is role-playing as the front office.

[youtube][/youtube]

[Mori Chu]

Marty wants to imagine the perfect scenario of what an idea GM would have done if making the best possible moves.

No, I don't. GMs are flawed. I don't claim our GM would/will/should make perfect moves.

I'm just making a simple statement, which I believe to be fairly obviously true. That statement is, it was good not to pay $100,000,000 for 5 years of Amare Stoudemire in 2010. It doesn't matter what we did with that $100m instead; that is completely irrelevant to my point.

[Split T]

Marty wants to imagine the perfect scenario of what an idea GM would have done if making the best possible moves.

No, I don't. GMs are flawed. I don't claim our GM would/will/should make perfect moves.

I'm just making a simple statement, which I believe to be fairly obviously true. That statement is, it was good not to pay $100,000,000 for 5 years of Amare Stoudemire in 2010. It doesn't matter what we did with that $100m instead; that is completely irrelevant to my point.

I don't think anyone disputes this point. EDC and others just want to compare what happened with one option that could have happened. Imagine a world where our only two options were sign Amare to 5/100 or childress/Turk/warrick to whatever they got. Which would you have rather done?

While not signing Amare was the right move at the time, it seems pretty obvious that signing him would have been a better option than what we ended up doing.

[Indy]

Marty wants to imagine the perfect scenario of what an idea GM would have done if making the best possible moves.

No, I don't. GMs are flawed. I don't claim our GM would/will/should make perfect moves.

I'm just making a simple statement, which I believe to be fairly obviously true. That statement is, it was good not to pay $100,000,000 for 5 years of Amare Stoudemire in 2010. It doesn't matter what we did with that $100m instead; that is completely irrelevant to my point.

I don't think anyone disputes this point. EDC and others just want to compare what happened with one option that could have happened. Imagine a world where our only two options were sign Amare to 5/100 or childress/Turk/warrick to whatever they got. Which would you have rather done?

While not signing Amare was the right move at the time, it seems pretty obvious that signing him would have been a better option than what we ended up doing.

It would have been better for 2010-11... but after that? Not sure.

[Aztec Sunsfan]

And if we have resigned him, today we would be saying that it is pretty obvious to have done the opposite. Our imagination wouldn't imagine the current drought neither the incredible amount of bad signings, but resigning Amare must be counted as a CONSOLIDATED bad deal, equivalent to the smaller ones that actually ocurred, and that is something many around here likes to neglect.

On top of that, "What we ended up doing" must be considered in different segments:

1- Resigning Amare.
We didn't, so we ended up doing the right thing HERE.

2- Spending any remaining cap space with or without any Amare deal (must consider that resigning Amare do not prevent us from bad deals, i.e. Marcus Banks).
We used on awful way, so we ended up doing the wrong thing HERE.

I can't understand why we have to consider separate events as one.

[Cap]

Might as well rue the Nash trade while we're at it. We traded Nash for assets, then traded those assets for liabilities. It would have been better to let Nash walk for nothing than to turn him into Brandon Knight.

[Indy]

Might as well rue the Nash trade while we're at it. We traded Nash for assets, then traded those assets for liabilities. It would have been better to let Nash walk for nothing than to turn him into Brandon Knight.

Is that how it all plays out? I have actually looked back at the trade and traced the "assets."

[Split T]

Marty wants to imagine the perfect scenario of what an idea GM would have done if making the best possible moves.

No, I don't. GMs are flawed. I don't claim our GM would/will/should make perfect moves.

I'm just making a simple statement, which I believe to be fairly obviously true. That statement is, it was good not to pay $100,000,000 for 5 years of Amare Stoudemire in 2010. It doesn't matter what we did with that $100m instead; that is completely irrelevant to my point.

I don't think anyone disputes this point. EDC and others just want to compare what happened with one option that could have happened. Imagine a world where our only two options were sign Amare to 5/100 or childress/Turk/warrick to whatever they got. Which would you have rather done?

While not signing Amare was the right move at the time, it seems pretty obvious that signing him would have been a better option than what we ended up doing.

It would have been better for 2010-11... but after that? Not sure.

Might not have been better, but I can't see how it would have been worse. Maybe we don't work Amare into the ground like Dantoni did. He gave them 1.5 great years and fell apart. He was actually still productive, just couldn't play more than 20 minutes.

[AmareIsGod]

Why don't we just make a thread for "what we should have done" for every scenario. I dated a gorgeous and amazing girl several years ago and messed it all up. I let it eat me up for a couple of years but eventually I just had to move on. Why is that so hard for some people? Amare didn't get re-signed. He ended up shredding his knees. We ended up signing some hot garbage. It's 2017. LET. IT. GO.

[TOO]

Why don't we just make a thread for "what we should have done" for every scenario. I dated a gorgeous and amazing girl several years ago and messed it all up. I let it eat me up for a couple of years but eventually I just had to move on. Why is that so hard for some people? Amare didn't get re-signed. He ended up shredding his knees. We ended up signing some hot garbage. It's 2017. LET. IT. GO.

If this man who worships Amare can let it go, I think anyone can.

[Superbone]

Why don't we just make a thread for "what we should have done" for every scenario. I dated a gorgeous and amazing girl several years ago and messed it all up. I let it eat me up for a couple of years but eventually I just had to move on. Why is that so hard for some people? Amare didn't get re-signed. He ended up shredding his knees. We ended up signing some hot garbage. It's 2017. LET. IT. GO.

If this man who worships Amare can let it go, I think anyone can.

Good point!

[INFORMER]

LOL. I feel like somehow, every offseason, we return to the Amar'e/7SOL discussion. Every. Damn. Offseason.

Because the front office still sucks. If something good was happening right now, people would be able to focus on that.

[INFORMER]

Back to the game this thread was made for, Bender and Chriss looked awful. Mike James looked decent.

One thing that hurts Bender is that he has a low motor. He isn't lazy, but he is very content to not have an impact on the game. It also hurts that he just hasn't been able to hit shots at the NBA (or Summer League) level.

[Mori Chu]

Back to the game this thread was made for, Bender and Chriss looked awful. Mike James looked decent.

One thing that hurts Bender is that he has a low motor. He isn't lazy, but he is very content to not have an impact on the game. It also hurts that he just hasn't been able to hit shots at the NBA (or Summer League) level.

Bender's passiveness has been disappointing. In a SL setting he should feast on these marginal players and defenders. But he doesn't seem to have that kind of mindset, instead letting the game come to him a lot. That would be fine if he were already an expert marksman or generally more polished offensively. But, as you say, he isn't.

I do like his defense, and he seems to see the floor well. A lot of times when he's on the floor I will just watch him, and when he's on defense I find myself saying, "He made a good decision there. He anticipated that cut/pass." Etc. I do see potential.

Overall I wish Bender were given the kind of large role and minutes that Chriss got last year, and a long leash to just be out there and learn and make a few mistakes. It seemed like he got much fewer minutes from Coach Watson and got yanked much more quickly when he made a mistake.

[INFORMER]

Back to the game this thread was made for, Bender and Chriss looked awful. Mike James looked decent.

One thing that hurts Bender is that he has a low motor. He isn't lazy, but he is very content to not have an impact on the game. It also hurts that he just hasn't been able to hit shots at the NBA (or Summer League) level.

Bender's passiveness has been disappointing. In a SL setting he should feast on these marginal players and defenders.

Honestly, he really shouldn't because he really doesn't have a defined game yet. That was my issue leading up to the draft. He had flashed some skill to where he made a play here and there that could get a scout's attention, but he hadn't put altogether to establish an identity. He hadn't become a basketball player yet, just a guy with traits that some hoped could add up to a NBA-level impact player.

[In2ition]

Back to the game this thread was made for, Bender and Chriss looked awful. Mike James looked decent.

One thing that hurts Bender is that he has a low motor. He isn't lazy, but he is very content to not have an impact on the game. It also hurts that he just hasn't been able to hit shots at the NBA (or Summer League) level.

Bender's passiveness has been disappointing. In a SL setting he should feast on these marginal players and defenders.

Honestly, he really shouldn't because he really doesn't have a defined game yet. That was my issue leading up to the draft. He had flashed some skill to where he made a play here and there that could get a scout's attention, but he hadn't put altogether to establish an identity. He hadn't become a basketball player yet, just a guy with traits that some hoped could add up to a NBA-level impact player.

That's a very interesting take on Bender that I hadn't thought of. Do you think he will develop and establish an identity? And if so, how long will it take and what will that identity be? I guess I always thought he was trying to pattern his game after his hero, Kukoc.

[Superbone]

He showed quite a bit tonight if you guys were watching.

[Mori Chu]

Back to the game this thread was made for, Bender and Chriss looked awful. Mike James looked decent.

One thing that hurts Bender is that he has a low motor. He isn't lazy, but he is very content to not have an impact on the game. It also hurts that he just hasn't been able to hit shots at the NBA (or Summer League) level.

Bender's passiveness has been disappointing. In a SL setting he should feast on these marginal players and defenders.

Honestly, he really shouldn't because he really doesn't have a defined game yet. That was my issue leading up to the draft. He had flashed some skill to where he made a play here and there that could get a scout's attention, but he hadn't put altogether to establish an identity. He hadn't become a basketball player yet, just a guy with traits that some hoped could add up to a NBA-level impact player.

That's fair. I don't think I meant to disagree with you. I just meant, if he's going to be a good NBA player, he ought to already be able to beat up on these guys in SL in his second season.