Suns News: Week 1 10/27-11/2

[Mori Chu]

I remember going nuts watching that game. Wish we could have some how kept Finley in the Kidd trade. Kidd, Finley, McDyess would have been fun to watch for a while

Sure, but, the only reason Dallas did that trade was because we gave them Finley. He was our key piece in the deal. No way we get Kidd if we don't give up Finley.

And as much as I liked Finley, we won that trade. Jason Kidd was an amazing player, and he had some of his best years here.

[Indy]

Really, Mori? Even though none of those years were really good years? In his entire tenure, we only got out of the 1st round once. If I could go back and not do that trade, I would. I am not saying I know we would have been better off, but it would be interesting to see a team built around Finley instead of Kidd.

[Indy]

Also, just looked it up, and only one time did he lead the team in Win Share. The others were KJ, Cliffy, and Shawn (4 years in a row).

[Mori Chu]

I would say that the lack of success for the Kidd teams was due to many factors, not "just" some failing of Kidd's.

* We lost a really, really good starting PF in Antonio McDyess who might have kept us closer to contention.
* We had horrific luck with injuries to other players, particularly big men.
* We made other bad decisions about various FA acquisitions and trades over those years.
* We were always "just good enough" not to get an awesome draft pick, so we never really bottomed out to improve later.

I don't think you can blame the above on Jason Kidd. It would have been nice if Kidd had been a better shooter, but he put the team on his back and won us quite a lot of games. He always gave it 100% and played extremely hard, he was a wizard with the ball, he got a ton of rebounds, he was a great defender, etc.

When we traded him basically straight up for Stephon Marbury, we immediately got MUCH worse as a team. Ironically, that helped us because it gave us a great draft pick the next year (wasn't that Amare?).

[Indy]

I wasn't blaming Kidd. I was saying that we didn't do much with him here, so it might have been a better gamble to play out the hand we chose in the draft with Fins.

Also, none of the points you made (albeit mostly good points) address the fact that he was rarely the guy that produced the most wins for us.

[Mori Chu]

I don't really know how much stock to put in a single combined stat like Win Shares. Does it factor in defense? To me the biggest sign that Kidd absolutely led us to those wins is that you swap him for Marbury, and change little else about the team, and we stunk.

[ShelC]

Mike Finley's one of my all time favorite players and, interestingly, he never really had a chance to have a team built around him. He was always a quiet player. I never really remember him demanding shots, or wanting to be "the man". Maybe that in itself is telling. Had we built around him and made him our star, go-to player...who knows.

That said, I will say JKidd willed us to 50 win seasons. He was a triple double threat every night and made us a playoff team. We just didn't have the bigs (Cliff, Googs, <CENSORED>, Corie Blount, Mark Bryant) to make any noise in a stacked Western Conference (TrailBlazers, Spurs, Lakers, Kings).

No way to know what would've worked out. But i think BC and JC assumed they had McD locked in and wanted to pair him with a PG like Kidd. That was the vision, and once we lost McD, we never could find the right big to take his place.

[Ring_Wanted]

I don't really know how much stock to put in a single combined stat like Win Shares. Does it factor in defense? To me the biggest sign that Kidd absolutely led us to those wins is that you swap him for Marbury, and change little else about the team, and we stunk.

I think Kidd's impact on those teams was incalculable. Losing Robinson hurt that year as well.

[JCSunsfan]

I always think of Finley and Joe Johnson as similar in personality and drive. He is a classis example of a player's draft stock dropping because he stayed too long in college.

[carey]

[youtube][/youtube]

This is great. Eric Bledsoe starts running away down the hall and Archie throws his food at it. Tolliver goes "Oh crap!"

I'm pretty sure Sarver said "shit."

[Indy]

Someone needs to find the prank they played in Marion's first season. It was outstanding. He was driving fans to the game in a rickshaw, and was "pranking" the fans by having to stop every few yards because he was getting cramps. He would jump off and start stretch and saying how bad of a cramp he had. His acting was horrible (in a good way). But at the end, they pranked him by having 3 guys that had to be 230 each, and they spent the whole ride saying how they were pissed about the draft and taking this unknown kid that will never amount to much. Shawn wasn't very recognizable yet, and you could see his pain in his face, but kept saying "you wait and see. I bet he will surprise you."

[Superbone]

That was hilarious! I loved how Archie was ready to fight it.

[Shabazz]

The Morris twins were my favorite.

[SwingMan]

Someone needs to find the prank they played in Marion's first season. It was outstanding. He was driving fans to the game in a rickshaw, and was "pranking" the fans by having to stop every few yards because he was getting cramps. He would jump off and start stretch and saying how bad of a cramp he had. His acting was horrible (in a good way). But at the end, they pranked him by having 3 guys that had to be 230 each, and they spent the whole ride saying how they were pissed about the draft and taking this unknown kid that will never amount to much. Shawn wasn't very recognizable yet, and you could see his pain in his face, but kept saying "you wait and see. I bet he will surprise you."

Haven't found it yet, but did manage to stumble across this little gem :

[youtube][/youtube]

[Superbone]

The Morris twins were my favorite.

Yeah, it was pretty funny how they just started running. I wonder how they deal with a spider in their house?

[INFORMER]

The Morris twins were my favorite.

Who thought this phrase would ever be uttered?

[iLLmatic]

The Morris twins were my favorite.

Who thought this phrase would ever be uttered?

Lmao.

[iLLmatic]

Marcus shit all over Kobe in the first game INF, did you see that?

[Superbone]

http://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/n ... /18301809/

The Suns went from never trailing the Lakers in Wednesday's opener to never leading in Friday's follow-up until the final four minutes. They went from making more 3-pointers (16) than they did in any game last season to making fewer (two) than they did in any game last season.

Pretty crazy stats.

[Xylus]

Did anyone hear the Sarver interview on Burns & Gambo yesterday? He said something very interesting about the Bledsoe signing this summer.

Paraphrasing... Sarver said that there was a long four-month stalement between the two sides. When they finally met back up, they negotiated a contract fairly quickly. Sarver said there were two things he asked Bledsoe about first thing:

1. First, the Suns coaching/training staff compiled a list of things for Bledsoe to work on over the summer. Sarver asked Bledsoe if he remembered the list and if he actually worked on any of it. Bledsoe recited the list almost verbatim and had worked on all of it.

2. Second, Sarver told Bledsoe to lift up his shirt. Bledsoe went into the summer overweight, if you can believe that. Sarver said Bledsoe lifted his shirt and his midsection was absolutely shredded. It was clear that Bled had trained his ass off.