2018 Suns Offseason News

[O_Gardino]

I wouldn't give up a bag of peanuts for Conley. He destroys our cap situation for 2 more summers, and is nothing more than a solid veteran at best. If Memphis wants to dump his salary, they better call offering us assets.

[O_Gardino]

What's up with people willing to give Jackson up for cheap...

Nobody hates Suns players like phx-suns.net.

[The Bobster]

I wouldn't give up a bag of peanuts for Conley. He destroys our cap situation for 2 more summers, and is nothing more than a solid veteran at best. If Memphis wants to dump his salary, they better call offering us assets.

He's pretty good, but he does have a huge price tag. I wouldn't make a deal for him without including Anderson and would include something like the Milwaukee pick and Warren.

Conley's a good player (and a very good defender), but there's some risk involved considering his age (soon to be 31) and health issues (Achilles injury in 2017-18).

[Mori Chu]

I'm going to go:
Okobo/Harrison/Melton
Booker/Daniels/Reed
Ariza/Jackson/Bridges
Anderson/Warren/Bender
Ayton/Chandler/Holmes

Peters is in Moscow and King will be a 2 way or cut.

I think they will absolutely have Josh Jackson starting on opening night. No way they bring in two overpriced veterans from Houston and use them to bench our second-biggest young star. I think Anderson is the one who comes off the bench. Probably Jackson starts at the 3 and Ariza at the 4, but who knows.

I'm not defending Jackson and saying that I think he's a starting NBA 3. I have a lot of questions about the guy. But I think that's how the FO and coaching staff see him.

[In2ition]

I'm going to go:
Okobo/Harrison/Melton
Booker/Daniels/Reed
Ariza/Jackson/Bridges
Anderson/Warren/Bender
Ayton/Chandler/Holmes

Peters is in Moscow and King will be a 2 way or cut.

I think they will absolutely have Josh Jackson starting on opening night. No way they bring in two overpriced veterans from Houston and use them to bench our second-biggest young star. I think Anderson is the one who comes off the bench. Probably Jackson starts at the 3 and Ariza at the 4, but who knows.

I'm not defending Jackson and saying that I think he's a starting NBA 3. I have a lot of questions about the guy. But I think that's how the FO and coaching staff see him.

If Jackson shows an improved jumper and shot selection with a different role(4th or 5th option) in the preseason, I whole heartedly agree with you. If he doesn't, the Suns are trying to win this year and having Jackson, with bad shot selection and a broken jumper, won't help when they brought in a guy like Ariza and also have a 20 pt scorer and relatively efficient guy like Warren on roster too.

[Ring_Wanted]

It'd be fine with Ariza and Anderson at the 3/4

Can't say I am. Ariza at PF is still an experiment to a degree and because of his defensive deficiencies Anderson shouldn't play more than 15-18 mins (and only at PF, obviously).

We'll see what Kokoskov does, because Jackson is intense but gives up too much size to play PF and Bender is too transparent. In reality, there is no ideal candidate to play at the four, unless Bender really steps up.

Honestly, besides Bender the most interesting proposition at PF to me is TJ Warren.

At least now we don't have to put up with Knight and Chriss' dumb game.

Well I don't think we're talking about playing Jackson more than 15 minutes at the 2. Say we start (Insert PG here), Jackson, Ariza, Anderson, Ayton. At the 6 minute mark, you shuffle the lineup, moving Jackson either to the bench or to the 3. He can just play the 2 when Anderson plays.

Without Booker, who would you start at the 2? Or better yet, assuming no other changes and no Booker to start the season, what's your starting lineup?

15 minutes is more than 1/4 of a game. I believe that's not a recipe for sound play. I'd play Bridges-Reed at SG.

My 5 would be Shaq (I'd need to see more of Okobo-Melton to put them over him), Bridges (if he has untapped playmaking potential, no Booker is a perfect moment to explore it, since he can always fall back to his 3D role), Ariza (I need 3pt shooting and I don't really want to play him at PF), Warren (without Booker I trust his playmaking more than Jackson's, who doesn't really create for others anyway), Ayton.

I'd play through Warren and Ayton, surrounded by defenders and two 3pt shooters. Warren's weak defensive rebounding at PF would be much less of an issue with Ayton (and TJ is absolute elite on the offensive boards).

Then Okobo for Shaq, Reed for Bridges, Jackson for Ariza, then Anderson/Bender and Chandler/Holmes for Warren-Ayton.

Once Ayton goes out, there is no presence in the paint but that's going to happen regardless, because Chandler is done as a defender. I don't want to, but I'd have to put Tyson out there out of pure necessity, although first I'd try to see if I can extract something out of Holmes' athleticism.

No Daniels or Canaan (in the beggining at least; I need to see Okobo/Melton and absolutely refuse to give up Shaq's intensity and ability to make things happen on D). Can totally see no Anderson either if he can't make 3pt shots at a useful rate (38%+).

[Ring_Wanted]

Really, having to rely on Anderson-Bender-Chandler-Holmes for minutes at PF-C is terrifying. And the SG-SF bunch is still a mess.

Once Booker is back, I'd go with Shaq (assuming Okobo/Melton have not taken his spot), Booker, Bridges (assuming the rookie is giving me sensible 3D play at least), Warren and Ayton.

Then play Booker at point with some minutes going to another PG, to Jackson-Ariza. Bender vs Anderson and Chandler vs Holmes, but I only consider playing Anderson and Chandler if they prove they can move around on defense.

[O_Gardino]

Obviously there are no perfect lineups with this roster, but I think we are going to need shooters, especially if Booker is out. It's going to be tough to play Ayton / Warren / Harrison all at the same time.

Bender at PF provides better D, passing, and spacing. Warren gives us more second chance and fast break scoring. Anderson will shoot and stay out of the way.

I'd be tempted to start Anderson at the beginning of the season.

Canaan / Bridges / Ariza / Anderson / Ayton
Harrison / Reed / Jackson / Warren / Bender

I expect Bender and Okobo to surpass the Anderson and Canaan fairly quickly. Either Warren or Ariza will play himself out of the lineup. Holmes will be exciting, but will be an even worse defender than Chandler. Bridges will be a fan favorite, and Book will be an all-star.

Ooops. I started regular season predictions.

[jonh]

An interesting quote from McD's interview on the Bickley and Mariotta show:

In responding to whether he has confidence that he will find a starting-caliber point guard in a trade before the season point guard position "Nothing has materialized yet, so as of today, we are planning on going to training camp with the group we have."

In my experience, this suggests that there is a high probability that we will use the point guards on the roster to start the season. Its going to be a pretty interesting first few weeks of the season, and I'm going to be going into the season with pretty low expectations.

[ShelC]

Nothing's going to materialize because we have no leverage and no one is trading any PG of value for what we have to offer. I swear, McD must be a laughingstock around the league. And again, say what you want, but we could've at least had Tony Parker on the roster in place of Ariza.

[ShelC]

https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1040663395618439168

Godspeed, sir.

[Cap]

I really hope that, at some point in his career, he finds his way back here.

[O_Gardino]

Brightside has an opinion piece ranking the Suns, it's BS of course (WINK), but it got me thinking. It really is hard to say who our second best player is at this point. It's genuinely difficult to rank our players because any one of them could move up or down 3 or 4 ranks as the season goes on.

So I tried to put our player in buckets, like the A team, the B team, etc. But how would I even rank them? Well, here it is.

Franchise:
Booker

All Star:

Good role player - Very good at more than 1 thing, but with some weaknesses:
- Ariza
Jackson
Ayton

Role player - Very good at 1 thing or ok at multiple things, but with some weaknesses:
- Warren
Bender
+ Bridges
Okobo

Situational player - Very good at 1 thing or ok at multiple things, but with some glaring weaknesses:
Canaan
+ Harrison
+ Reed
- Anderson

One-dimensional players - Only one NBA skill and terrible at everything else:
Chandler
Holmes
+ Melton
Daniels

Notes: Players are not ranked at all within the buckets. I gave every rookie a weakness of "Rookie". +/- represents my second guess about guys moving up or down int he ranks.

I'm not even sure about this. Any one of those guys could go up or down a rank, but I tried to guess which ones would be more likely to move as the season goes on.

[Shabazz]

As soon as I saw that Shaq Harrison wasn't in the All Star category, I stopped reading.

[The Bobster]

- Warren is a better player than Jackson at this point.

- Booker has a ways to go before being an all-star, much less a franchise player.

- You're probably selling Melton short.

[TOO]

TJ Warren is vastly underrated here. He's significantly better than Josh Jackson and pretty much every Sun not named Booker.

[AmareIsGod]

TJ Warren is vastly underrated here. He's significantly better than Josh Jackson and pretty much every Sun not named Booker.

Is it TJ's ability to shoot 3's at such a high clip? Or is it his defense and passing? He definitely scores highly in regards to staying healthy and on the court.

He just needs to work on and learn to make 2 point jump shots and he'll be set.

[O_Gardino]

If y'all want Warren higher in the rankings, what 2 things is he Very Good at?

[Mori Chu]

TJ Warren is vastly underrated here. He's significantly better than Josh Jackson and pretty much every Sun not named Booker.

I like Warren a lot. I agree that he's better than Josh Jackson. If he could add a corner 3, he would be extremely valuable.

[The Bobster]

If y'all want Warren higher in the rankings, what 2 things is he Very Good at?

Well, what are the two things Josh Jackson is very good at then?

The argument isn't that he doesn't have holes in his game, it's that he doesn't have the huge holes that Jackson has right now.