Game Day: Suns (14-12) @ Trail Blazers (6-19), Tues 12/19/23

[Superbone]

Vogel is the head coach. Buck stops with him. Question is are we gonna hire someone completely new out of the organization mid season like hawks or twolves awhile back or we gonna roll with Kevin young? James Jones ass can get go too. Gonna need our up coming lottery pick, his ass isn’t gonna help there.

They’re going to give the reigns to David Fizdale. How’s that for data?!

[Gladiator]

That’s much more like it. Now let’s see if we can turn one very good quarter into a complete game

Yeah that didn’t age well at all!

[Superbone]

Battle of the titans tonight!

What’s the point of posting fake stats?

Ayton won this battle tonight. Nurk totally disappeared in the 2nd half.

[Wally_West]

My main problem with the “we need a pg” argument is that it’s clearly not the main problem here. The big problem to in eyes is THEY DONT GIVE A SHIT!! So much of the problems we are seeing, especially on the defensive end is that there is just no effort, no urgency, no heart. They don’t give a shit. That’s a huge problem. This team would be a night and day difference if they just show ounce more effort than they have been. And it’s only getting worst! This whole season is just them regressing.

Would a traditional pg help our offense? Sure. But you can get prime CP3 out there and it wouldn’t mean shit if the whole team just don’t give a shit like they do now. Do the players deserve blame? Absolutely but we need to start asking why they seem not to give a shit. It just lead back to Vogel for me. These players just aren’t buying what he’s selling right now. We are not getting better in any meaningful way, only getting worst. That’s on the coach. This roster, no matter how imperfect, shouldn’t be anywhere near this bad.

[Wally_West]

Vogel is the head coach. Buck stops with him. Question is are we gonna hire someone completely new out of the organization mid season like hawks or twolves awhile back or we gonna roll with Kevin young? James Jones ass can get go too. Gonna need our up coming lottery pick, his ass isn’t gonna help there.

They’re going to give the reigns to David Fizdale. How’s that for data?!

It’ll probably be Kevin Young. He’s the highest paid assistant in the league after all.

[Shabazz]

My main problem with the “we need a pg” argument is that it’s clearly not the main problem here. The big problem to in eyes is THEY DONT GIVE A SHIT!! So much of the problems we are seeing, especially on the defensive end is that there is just no effort, no urgency, no heart. They don’t give a shit. That’s a huge problem. This team would be a night and day difference if they just show ounce more effort than they have been. And it’s only getting worst! This whole season is just them regressing.

Would a traditional pg help our offense? Sure. But you can get prime CP3 out there and it wouldn’t mean shit if the whole team just don’t give a shit like they do now. Do the players deserve blame? Absolutely but we need to start asking why they seem not to give a shit. It just lead back to Vogel for me. These players just aren’t buying what he’s selling right now. We are not getting better in any meaningful way, only getting worst. That’s on the coach. This roster, no matter how imperfect, shouldn’t be anywhere near this bad.

Yes. This. We're the Scarecrow on offense and the Tin Man on defense.

[Wally_West]

Oof

[iLLmatic]

Time to start the fire Vogel thread?

[Furlanfufi]

I wonder if there’s some drama with the coaching staff going on. Young being ignored by Vogel, or some shit like that.
Because the disfunction is very visible. If we played like the 1st quarter all game, but just missed our shots, we still would've won and looked a lot better.
But we transformed into Monster Tweet Bird. It's beyond awful.

[SunsSince92]

Vogel is the head coach. Buck stops with him. Question is are we gonna hire someone completely new out of the organization mid season like hawks or twolves awhile back or we gonna roll with Kevin young? James Jones ass can get go too. Gonna need our up coming lottery pick, his ass isn’t gonna help there.

They’re going to give the reigns to David Fizdale. How’s that for data?!

It’ll probably be Kevin Young. He’s the highest paid assistant in the league after all.

No thanks. I've seen enough of his god awful offensive scheme to know he's not the guy to lead us out of this nightmare. He was part of the previous regime, missed out in the top job and has probably been undermining Vogel since the start. Pass.

[Flagrant Fowl]

I dismissed moving Toumani Camara because I don't think he's more talented than Little or Allen. However, he consistently plays harder than anyone on the Suns right now and that seems to be the biggest issue with this team.

[Shabazz]

I dismissed moving Toumani Camara because I don't think he's more talented than Little or Allen. However, he consistently plays harder than anyone on the Suns right now and that seems to be the biggest issue with this team.

He's more or less exactly what we're missing. He's also been much better than Little this season.

[ShelC]

Postgame Quotes and Videos

Spoiler: show/hide

[In2ition]

I dismissed moving Toumani Camara because I don't think he's more talented than Little or Allen. However, he consistently plays harder than anyone on the Suns right now and that seems to be the biggest issue with this team.

He's more or less exactly what we're missing. He's also been much better than Little this season.

Yeah, I wasn't happy to see him in the trade. He's looking exactly like I thought he would.

[Mori Chu]

My main problem with the “we need a pg” argument is that it’s clearly not the main problem here. The big problem to in eyes is THEY DONT GIVE A SHIT!! So much of the problems we are seeing, especially on the defensive end is that there is just no effort, no urgency, no heart. They don’t give a shit. That’s a huge problem. This team would be a night and day difference if they just show ounce more effort than they have been. And it’s only getting worst! This whole season is just them regressing.

Would a traditional pg help our offense? Sure. But you can get prime CP3 out there and it wouldn’t mean shit if the whole team just don’t give a shit like they do now. Do the players deserve blame? Absolutely but we need to start asking why they seem not to give a shit. It just lead back to Vogel for me. These players just aren’t buying what he’s selling right now. We are not getting better in any meaningful way, only getting worst. That’s on the coach. This roster, no matter how imperfect, shouldn’t be anywhere near this bad.

I don't buy this. Whenever a team is struggling, somebody will inevitably say, "It's because they just don't want it enough," or, "They just aren't trying," or, "They just don't care." That's not what I'm seeing, and I think it oversimplifies the problem. It looks to me like Book, KD, Allen, and plenty of others are trying just fine to get a win. But every basket is a labor, every play is a chore. It's too taxing to win this way. We aren't playing smart basketball. We've managed to make multiple generational offensive players into inefficient scorers who have to hit contested midrange jumpers almost every play.

[ShelC]

If we're not at rock bottom, we're pretty close. I did think we were looking and playing a lot better in the 1st qtr. Then we dipped in the 2nd before getting the lead back. Everything kind of fell apart in the 3rd and we reverted back to ISOs and standing around. They got hot, we couldn't match or stop it. But that's how this team is until they prove otherwise. We aren't consistently good at anything.

Early in the game we were playing fast, sharing the ball and really flying around on both ends. So we are capable of doing it and it looked like it was starting to click for us. Maybe it's just the process of putting it together for 48 minutes. I don't know if anything's really broken or if it's just taking time and we've had injuries. The team will let us know when they've given up on Vogel tho.

[O_Gardino]

You guys said it. I'm gonna say it too.

We were good in the first quarter. We've been good to start the game a lot this season, mostly when we are able to play fast and play through Nurk. Then teams figure out that it's not too hard to shut down Nurk and our whole energy and style change. It seems like most of our turnovers are on passes going to or from the centers.

As for the team playing with heart and actually caring about the game - "I don't care" is often a symptom of "I don't think I can" or "I don't know what to do." It all comes back to coaching and roster construction.

We play a lot like the Lakers under Vogel, but worse. They ran sets through AD in the high post, LeBron created from the perimeter, either of the stars could post up under the basket, and the rest of the team waited for the offense to come to them. That style just won't work for this roster. We need more perimeter creation and more off-ball movement. We don't have the physical presence to play inside, and we don't have the penetrators to drive and kick. Either Vogel can't coach those things, or this roster can't do them. We end up passing to midrange shooters from the midrange. The defense doesn't have to cover much ground, and there isn't room for the offence to get creative.

I'd like to see more screens way out at 40 feet, more mismatch hunting, and more fast-breaks or shots early in the clock before the defence can set.

[Superbone]

I dismissed moving Toumani Camara because I don't think he's more talented than Little or Allen. However, he consistently plays harder than anyone on the Suns right now and that seems to be the biggest issue with this team.

He's more or less exactly what we're missing. He's also been much better than Little this season.

Well, the bright side is that our staff made an excellent pick so late in the draft.

[In2ition]

I dismissed moving Toumani Camara because I don't think he's more talented than Little or Allen. However, he consistently plays harder than anyone on the Suns right now and that seems to be the biggest issue with this team.

He's more or less exactly what we're missing. He's also been much better than Little this season.

Well, the bright side is that our staff made an excellent pick so late in the draft.

Yay for getting a 2nd round pick right! Something we rarely saw in the 10 years + prior. At the same time, boo for them seeing the talent and just quickly dismissing it as a throw in on the trade.

[Superbone]

I dismissed moving Toumani Camara because I don't think he's more talented than Little or Allen. However, he consistently plays harder than anyone on the Suns right now and that seems to be the biggest issue with this team.

He's more or less exactly what we're missing. He's also been much better than Little this season.

Well, the bright side is that our staff made an excellent pick so late in the draft.

Yay for getting a 2nd round pick right! Something we rarely saw in the 10 years + prior. At the same time, boo for them seeing the talent and just quickly dismissing it as a throw in on the trade.

I don't thinking classifying him as a "throw in" is correct. I think they really valued him but thought they had to include him to get it done. Which does lead to a trading issue this team has had since Ishbia took over where they're too willing to bend in these trade deals. We all know we gave up way too much for a 34 year old (at the time) Durant.