What went wrong?

[Superbone]

Having said that, we did have to do something as we had those weird shutdowns in the playoffs after our record breaking regular season the year after the Finals.

Here's something we can do: learn from experience about the pitfalls of the "We have to do something" mentality.

There's an area between "do something" and "do nothing". How about rephrase it to "make positive, incremental changes to address areas of weakness"? But that's when you have something good which we don't have at the moment. So more drastic measures are now needed.

[Cap]

Having said that, we did have to do something as we had those weird shutdowns in the playoffs after our record breaking regular season the year after the Finals.

Here's something we can do: learn from experience about the pitfalls of the "We have to do something" mentality.

There's an area between "do something" and "do nothing". How about rephrase it to "make positive, incremental changes to address areas of weakness"? But that's when you have something good which we don't have at the moment. So more drastic measures are now needed.

Trading away a decade's worth of picks and rising talent while picking up a $50M NTC were "drastic measures." One good thing is that our hands are now too tied to make that drastic a fuckup again. Given the legal limits on drasticness we have now incurred, let's please avoid the "We should go as drastic as we can" mentality.

[Split T]

We will eventually survive this disappointing era of Suns basketball. But for God's sake I hope we -learn- from it. Don't trade away a decade's worth of draft picks, nor abandon promising young players as throw-ins on trades. Don't ever give a player a no-trade clause nor acquire a player who has one. Don't trade for a huge contract at a redundant position with your best player. Don't overstack your team with subpar defenders or subpar athletes. Develop your talent. Teach them to play the right way. Reward effort. Hold guys accountable. I could give a shit how many games we win this season or next. I just want to see the right kind of play being worked on, cultivated, rewarded.

Right on, Marty. In hindsight, so many mistakes were made. Hard to imagine we were on top of the basketball world just four years ago. We had a great team that played basketball the right way. Now we have KD and this mess of frustrating basketball only played on one end of the floor. You could even see it start happening as soon as we acquired Durant with coach Williams. All of a sudden we had a lot more KD isolations and less team ball.

We would have been so much better off staying with what we had and building on it. As soon as the KD domino fell, things started falling apart. Having said that, we did have to do something as we had those weird shutdowns in the playoffs after our record breaking regular season the year after the Finals.

I think we forget how bad that team was playing in 22-23. We were under .500 for a good part of the season. We weren’t going anywhere…remember we were 8-0 when KD played in the regular season…37-37 otherwise

[Cap]

We will eventually survive this disappointing era of Suns basketball. But for God's sake I hope we -learn- from it. Don't trade away a decade's worth of draft picks, nor abandon promising young players as throw-ins on trades. Don't ever give a player a no-trade clause nor acquire a player who has one. Don't trade for a huge contract at a redundant position with your best player. Don't overstack your team with subpar defenders or subpar athletes. Develop your talent. Teach them to play the right way. Reward effort. Hold guys accountable. I could give a shit how many games we win this season or next. I just want to see the right kind of play being worked on, cultivated, rewarded.

Right on, Marty. In hindsight, so many mistakes were made. Hard to imagine we were on top of the basketball world just four years ago. We had a great team that played basketball the right way. Now we have KD and this mess of frustrating basketball only played on one end of the floor. You could even see it start happening as soon as we acquired Durant with coach Williams. All of a sudden we had a lot more KD isolations and less team ball.

We would have been so much better off staying with what we had and building on it. As soon as the KD domino fell, things started falling apart. Having said that, we did have to do something as we had those weird shutdowns in the playoffs after our record breaking regular season the year after the Finals.

I think we forget how bad that team was playing in 22-23. We were under .500 for a good part of the season. We weren’t going anywhere…remember we were 8-0 when KD played in the regular season…37-37 otherwise

We spent a decade's worth of picks and the futures of some good young players to trade one mediocre team for another mediocre team. Good, we did something instead of mediocrely settling for mediocrity.

[ShelC]

The team wasn't playing bad in 22-23, it was decimated with injuries. CP and Book missed a bunch of time in the first half of the season. Cam Johnson was out with the quad injury he had against the Knicks, Jae was away from the team. We went 2-12 during one stretch between Dec and Jan and were starting Duane Washington Jr. It was when Mikal was our #1 option and looked to be finally coming into his own as a scorer. Then the trade happened. Here's a boxscore of what our lineups looked like. But it wasn't like we were fully healthy and just playing poorly and needed to break up the team.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/bo ... 30MIN.html

[Cap]

The team wasn't playing bad in 22-23, it was decimated with injuries. CP and Book missed a bunch of time in the first half of the season. Cam Johnson was out with the quad injury he had against the Knicks, Jae was away from the team. We went 2-12 during one stretch between Dec and Jan and were starting Duane Washington Jr. It was when Mikal was our #1 option and looked to be finally coming into his own as a scorer. Then the trade happened. Here's a boxscore of what our lineups looked like. But it wasn't like we were fully healthy and just playing poorly and needed to break up the team.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/bo ... 30MIN.html

30-26 when the trade happened, so 28-14 outside that 2-12 stretch.

[Split T]

We will eventually survive this disappointing era of Suns basketball. But for God's sake I hope we -learn- from it. Don't trade away a decade's worth of draft picks, nor abandon promising young players as throw-ins on trades. Don't ever give a player a no-trade clause nor acquire a player who has one. Don't trade for a huge contract at a redundant position with your best player. Don't overstack your team with subpar defenders or subpar athletes. Develop your talent. Teach them to play the right way. Reward effort. Hold guys accountable. I could give a shit how many games we win this season or next. I just want to see the right kind of play being worked on, cultivated, rewarded.

Right on, Marty. In hindsight, so many mistakes were made. Hard to imagine we were on top of the basketball world just four years ago. We had a great team that played basketball the right way. Now we have KD and this mess of frustrating basketball only played on one end of the floor. You could even see it start happening as soon as we acquired Durant with coach Williams. All of a sudden we had a lot more KD isolations and less team ball.

We would have been so much better off staying with what we had and building on it. As soon as the KD domino fell, things started falling apart. Having said that, we did have to do something as we had those weird shutdowns in the playoffs after our record breaking regular season the year after the Finals.

I think we forget how bad that team was playing in 22-23. We were under .500 for a good part of the season. We weren’t going anywhere…remember we were 8-0 when KD played in the regular season…37-37 otherwise

We spent a decade's worth of picks and the futures of some good young players to trade one mediocre team for another mediocre team. Good, we did something instead of mediocrely settling for mediocrity.

Irrelevant to my point.

[Split T]

Sorry, I’m not going to pretend like that team was going anywhere. Half of us wanted to pull the plug and tank for Wemby. We weren’t good…yes we were decimated by injuries, but we weren’t that good when healthy either. We went 64-18 the year before. We were nowhere close to that team.

I’m not even trying to justify the KD trade right now…just that that team without KD wasn’t going to do anything. 2nd round ceiling and likely a 1st round exit.

[Cap]

Sorry, I’m not going to pretend like that team was going anywhere. Half of us wanted to pull the plug and tank for Wemby. We weren’t good…yes we were decimated by injuries, but we weren’t that good when healthy either. We went 64-18 the year before. We were nowhere close to that team.

I’m not even trying to justify the KD trade right now…just that that team without KD wasn’t going to do anything. 2nd round ceiling and likely a 1st round exit.

I don't think anyone's claiming that the team was a contender. The question is whether "This team isn't a contender" should lead to "We have to do something, so let's trade the future and this non-contender for a different one because, who knows, the different one might contend."

The team that was 28-14 outside that injured stretch may not have been a contender, but it was at least as good as what we have now, and younger, and endowed with a normal supply of future picks, and not shackled by an NTC on a horrible contract.

[Superbone]

Having said that, we did have to do something as we had those weird shutdowns in the playoffs after our record breaking regular season the year after the Finals.

Here's something we can do: learn from experience about the pitfalls of the "We have to do something" mentality.

There's an area between "do something" and "do nothing". How about rephrase it to "make positive, incremental changes to address areas of weakness"? But that's when you have something good which we don't have at the moment. So more drastic measures are now needed.

Trading away a decade's worth of picks and rising talent while picking up a $50M NTC were "drastic measures." One good thing is that our hands are now too tied to make that drastic a fuckup again. Given the legal limits on drasticness we have now incurred, let's please avoid the "We should go as drastic as we can" mentality.

No kidding. I thought we were talking about learning from mistakes and how to better proceed?

[Superbone]

We will eventually survive this disappointing era of Suns basketball. But for God's sake I hope we -learn- from it. Don't trade away a decade's worth of draft picks, nor abandon promising young players as throw-ins on trades. Don't ever give a player a no-trade clause nor acquire a player who has one. Don't trade for a huge contract at a redundant position with your best player. Don't overstack your team with subpar defenders or subpar athletes. Develop your talent. Teach them to play the right way. Reward effort. Hold guys accountable. I could give a shit how many games we win this season or next. I just want to see the right kind of play being worked on, cultivated, rewarded.

Right on, Marty. In hindsight, so many mistakes were made. Hard to imagine we were on top of the basketball world just four years ago. We had a great team that played basketball the right way. Now we have KD and this mess of frustrating basketball only played on one end of the floor. You could even see it start happening as soon as we acquired Durant with coach Williams. All of a sudden we had a lot more KD isolations and less team ball.

We would have been so much better off staying with what we had and building on it. As soon as the KD domino fell, things started falling apart. Having said that, we did have to do something as we had those weird shutdowns in the playoffs after our record breaking regular season the year after the Finals.

I think we forget how bad that team was playing in 22-23. We were under .500 for a good part of the season. We weren’t going anywhere…remember we were 8-0 when KD played in the regular season…37-37 otherwise

I'm talking pre-KD.

ETA: OK, I see from following conversations that you were too but you didn't make it very clear here.

[Superbone]

Sorry, I’m not going to pretend like that team was going anywhere. Half of us wanted to pull the plug and tank for Wemby. We weren’t good…yes we were decimated by injuries, but we weren’t that good when healthy either. We went 64-18 the year before. We were nowhere close to that team.

I’m not even trying to justify the KD trade right now…just that that team without KD wasn’t going to do anything. 2nd round ceiling and likely a 1st round exit.

Not playing Crowder was a mistake and that was on Williams.

[Cap]

Having said that, we did have to do something as we had those weird shutdowns in the playoffs after our record breaking regular season the year after the Finals.

Here's something we can do: learn from experience about the pitfalls of the "We have to do something" mentality.

There's an area between "do something" and "do nothing". How about rephrase it to "make positive, incremental changes to address areas of weakness"? But that's when you have something good which we don't have at the moment. So more drastic measures are now needed.

Trading away a decade's worth of picks and rising talent while picking up a $50M NTC were "drastic measures." One good thing is that our hands are now too tied to make that drastic a fuckup again. Given the legal limits on drasticness we have now incurred, let's please avoid the "We should go as drastic as we can" mentality.

No kidding. I thought we were talking about learning from mistakes and how to better proceed?

Let's learn from mistakes that "Do something drastic because we're not a contender" is a bad mindset and proceed without it.

Or maybe what we should learn from mistakes is "We shouldn't feel a need to resort to desperation measures when we're a second-round-exit team with an average supply of future assets, but right now we're a first-round-exit team at best with almost no future assets which is a completely different situation and we should act desperate."

[Superbone]

Here's something we can do: learn from experience about the pitfalls of the "We have to do something" mentality.

There's an area between "do something" and "do nothing". How about rephrase it to "make positive, incremental changes to address areas of weakness"? But that's when you have something good which we don't have at the moment. So more drastic measures are now needed.

Trading away a decade's worth of picks and rising talent while picking up a $50M NTC were "drastic measures." One good thing is that our hands are now too tied to make that drastic a fuckup again. Given the legal limits on drasticness we have now incurred, let's please avoid the "We should go as drastic as we can" mentality.

No kidding. I thought we were talking about learning from mistakes and how to better proceed?

Let's learn from mistakes that "Do something drastic because we're not a contender" is a bad mindset and proceed without it.

Or maybe what we should learn from mistakes is "We shouldn't feel a need to resort to desperation measures when we're a second-round-exit team with an average supply of future assets, but right now we're a first-round-exit team at best with almost no future assets which is a completely different situation and we should act desperate."

I thought we had already come to that agreement. And I agree with that last statement. Now we do need to do something desperate like trading KD and revamping our roster to include defensive minded, athletic players with some size. I think we all agree the Suns put together a bad team makeup. All offense and no defense. We need a much more balanced roster.

I enjoyed our team much more pre-KD even with the average results in the 22/23 season. At least we played a solid brand of basketball on both ends of the court. It's too bad Monty Williams had the bad trait of clashing with his players. Before that, many of us thought he'd be our head coach for many years to come. But I do remember he had that reputation before he started coaching us and he was supposedly improving that aspect of his coaching.

[Split T]

I just think people like to pretend that we blew up a promising team to trade for KD…we didn’t…we blew up a team that had peaked and was heading the wrong direction. The KD trade didn’t work obviously, but we couldn’t have just kept the same team together.

Yes I agree we mishandled the Crowder situation…as well as our C at the time.

[Cap]

I just think people like to pretend that we blew up a promising team to trade for KD…we didn’t…we blew up a team that had peaked and was heading the wrong direction.

We blew up a team that was heading in the wrong direction for a no-better team heading in an even worse direction.

It wasn’t just a move that didn’t work out, it was a reckless move, it blew up, and now we’re acting in the role of doctors trying to figure out how to save the patient.

[TOO]

How many times can you guys rehash the same conversation? This all feels very Ayton again.

[Superbone]

How many times can you guys rehash the same conversation? This all feels very Ayton again.

Well, if that's any indication, infinitely.

[Kryptonic]

How many times can you guys rehash the same conversation? This all feels very Ayton again.

I feel ya…. It’s not productive and only sours our moods.

Looking forward to getting back to the days of hungry, energetic, youthful players that show promise.

[Superbone]

How many times can you guys rehash the same conversation? This all feels very Ayton again.

I feel ya…. It’s not productive and only sours our moods.

Looking forward to getting back to the days of hungry, energetic, youthful players that show promise.

The only question is how long does that take?