Another home loss to an Eastern Conf team

[BPNAZ]

and one without Derrick Rose playing nonetheless

color me shocked........really

rinse repeat.....nothing new here

and of course, this is AFTER Bledsoe's "we can play with anyone" comment

they can also lose to anyone...........just like they have consistently for the last 5 years

can't wait till big time changes are made, it all starts at the top

 

[johnson]

It's the year long hovering around .500 we should be used to by now. We will wait on the edge of our seats for which part of the season they inevitably fall a few too many games below average and the season is in the books.

 

[The Derski]

The Bulls are probably the second best team in the East. I don't know why this is a surprise. You guys baffle me with lack of NBA knowledge

 

[GMATCa]

While losing to a Chicago club without Rose proved disappointing, I am not sure that his absence was that significant. He is always a threat, and when he hits his jumper often enough, he is a weapon. But he is shooting .377 from the field this season, including just .413 on two-point field goal attempts. He has shot .394 from the field, including .441 on two-point attempts, since the 2012 season ended, with a terrible assists-to-turnover ratio of 1.6:1.0.

Rose has shot just .409 from the field since the 2011 season ended and just .426 from the field since the 2010 season concluded—and that figure includes his MVP year. Over the course of his career, he has constituted a terrible three-point shooter, yet despite his explosive driving ability (when healthy), he has attempted nearly as many threes (4.7) as free throws (5.5) since the start of the '10-'11 season, even though he has shot just .309 on threes compared to .837 from the foul line. To a certain extent, the guy does not know how to play the game. Even when he received the MVP Award, his game reminded me of Stephon Marbury's—with worse playmaking ability.

Derrick Rose is one of the most overrated players in NBA history, and he was never a great player or a great point guard, not even when he received the MVP Award. (The MVP Award, after all, is a media award designed to generate hype and notoriety more than anything.)

When healthy, he is a great athlete who sometimes makes great plays, but at this point, he is no better than the third or fourth-best player on the Bulls, possibly the fifth-best. He might actually be just the third-most effective point guard on his own team, in which case he might be merely the seventh-best player on Chicago.

 

[LeChuck421]

and one without Derrick Rose playing nonetheless

color me shocked........really

rinse repeat.....nothing new here

and of course, this is AFTER Bledsoe's "we can play with anyone" comment

they can also lose to anyone...........just like they have consistently for the last 5 years

can't wait till big time changes are made, it all starts at the top

We lost a game to a good team, that's going to happen. Chill out. We recovered on the back to back and that's fine. No one's expecting us to win the conference, we just have to keep making steps forward.

 

[johnson]

They are doing what they probably should be doing. The way I see it, they are 6-1 against bad teams (DET loss) and 1-4 against good teams (LAC win).

There may be hope for them yet due to some injuries on other teams, etc. Portland looks to be one of the top 8 last year that will not be there this year. Houston has been surprisingly bad, but I expect them to get it together. New Orleans, who I thought might compete this year, has been awful.

OKC is definitely in this year so maybe that 8th spot could be for PHX after all.

 

[GMATCa]

They are doing what they probably should be doing. The way I see it, they are 6-1 against bad teams (DET loss) and 1-4 against good teams (LAC win).

There may be hope for them yet due to some injuries on other teams, etc. Portland looks to be one of the top 8 last year that will not be there this year. Houston has been surprisingly bad, but I expect them to get it together. New Orleans, who I thought might compete this year, has been awful.

OKC is definitely in this year so maybe that 8th spot could be for PHX after all.

And even the Clipper win needs to be discounted because Chris Paul (who, unlike Derrick Rose, is actually a great point guard and an elite player) did not play and Blake Griffin exited the game before halftime due to a second technical foul.

As I wrote in the opening night thread, I projected that the Suns would win 41 games and earn the eighth seed. Houston has been a disaster thus far, but the Rockets should at least rebound to reach the playoffs. Portland lost four starters over the summer, so the Blazers were always likely to drop from the postseason bracket. New Orleans has been much worse than expected, but Dallas has proved better than anticipated thus far. Hence there still seems to be one 'open' spot, and the Suns' chances of filling it are as good, if not better, than anyone else's.

There has actually been quite a bit of good news so far. Brandon Knight seems to be the player that the Suns thought that they were receiving from Milwaukee last winter before he hurt his ankle, and he and Eric Bledsoe have proved that they can play together smoothly. Bledsoe has elevated his game to an All-Star level so far, Tyson Chandler has brought much-needed rebounding and leadership, and Alex Len continues to progress. And the fact that Phoenix is 7-5 despite awful play from Markieff Morris is encouraging.

Of course, even with an expected rebound, Morris is probably the player who limits this team's upside. The Suns needed an upgrade at power forward; I suggested Greg Monroe before the start of free agency, but Phoenix rolled the dice on LeMarcus Aldridge instead.

I was reflecting the other day that if the Suns had traded Steve Nash at the time of the 2011 draft, when those rumors were floating, they could have scored two high draft picks—in both 2011 and 2012 (with the latter year's high pick coming by virtue of a poor record). Instead, Phoenix ended up with Markieff Morris and Kendall Marshall while missing the playoffs both years.

Here is something else to consider: in 2011, the Suns drafted Markieff Morris with the thirteenth pick, while Indiana selected Kawhi Leonard with the fifteenth pick as part of a prearranged deal with San Antonio. Imagine if the Suns had drafted Leonard and dealt Nash by the start of the post-lockout 2012 season, perhaps to New York for Iman Shumpert, salary cap filler, and the Knicks' first-round pick in 2015. Then, with an awful rebuilding roster in 2012 (that should not have included Grant Hill), the Suns may have posted one of the league's two or three worst records and possessed a great shot at winning the Anthony Davis sweepstakes. We might, therefore, now be talking about an ability to feature the following lineup:

G Eric Bledsoe
G Brandon Knight
F Kawhi Leonard
F Kristaps Porzingis
C Anthony Davis

... plus Alex Len when the Suns wanted to go big.

Now, we obviously do not know if matters would have shaken out that way, but it could have happened, and one way or another, Phoenix's roster would probably be in better shape—with greater upside—than is currently the case. When you fail to leverage your assets and think ahead, and instead spin your wheels for a couple of years while failing to rebuild, reload, or even make the playoffs, your next phase as a franchise may never realize its potential.

I remain amused by the Suns' rationale for keeping Nash and Hill during the 66-game, lockout-compressed 2012 season: we want them to mentor the young players. Aside from Markieff Morris and possibly Robin Lopez, there were no notable young players! Besides, in Lopez's case, he had already received three years of "mentoring" from Nash and Hill, and Phoenix traded him the following summer, anyway. And as for Morris, we see what all that "mentoring" did for him.

The three years between the Steve Kerr and Ryan McDonough regimes constituted a total black hole for this organization, and the Suns still have not recovered.

 

[BPNAZ]

I wonder what the excuse is for losing to a team thats 2-11 today

Suns could be a playoff team. They have enough talent. But once again just like last 5 years they keep losing games like this all too frequently

 

[BPNAZ]

how will the idiot homers spin yet another pathetic home loss

LMAO, Pelicans are 4-11, 2 of those wins vs Suns

just pure comedy, they race out to a 39-25 lead and................that's it folks

Bledsoe continues to prove day in and day out that hes not a star, hes a guy that can have really good games here and there, but far too often shoots such a low % with idiotic decision making that he costs his teams wins

I cannot wait till guys like Bledsoe, and Marfagg Morris are gone, simply can't wait

 

[BPNAZ]

sweet loss to the 12-18 Bucks at home too

I see most of the "fans" have stopped caring also

 

[johnson]

sweet loss to the 12-18 Bucks at home too

I see most of the "fans" have stopped caring also

Yeah, I stopped watching a long time ago. I'd literally turn the TV off rather than watch them for even a few minutes. Are people still going to see them live?

I don't think there were a ton of "homers" even before the season started. The worst I saw were guys that thought they could get the 8th seed, which is hardly a vote of major confidence. I said long ago they had no chance and couldn't fathom how they made the playoffs. I will admit...I didn't see them being THIS bad though.