Phoenix Suns Stand in Way of Warriors

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting shapecity:</div><div class="quote_post">
Would Warrior fans be willing to trade Fisher or Foyle + the 1st Round Pick for Gadzuric and Joe Smith?</div> <font color="Navy">Nice to see you injected a little humor into the post. I think the writer was off on his assumptions. We found a way to beat Phoenix... and it didn't involve stopping Amare... it involved shutting down Steve Nash. Baron Davis absolutely out muscled Nash... kept him from getting in the lanes where he does most of his damage. Amare will always get his... hell, he got 40 and 16 in the last game against the Warriors... but that didn't bring them a victory.</font>

 

^
The Mavs had a different idea...let Nash get his, and shutdown Amare and the rest of the team. Though with Joe Johnson another ball handler and playmaker, I'm not sure if that strategy would've worked.

 

Team defense is the answer. Not a certain player.

 

I agree with W. Redux, we've stopped the Suns before, and it involved playing a little team D (that means sealing off the dribble penetrator and block off the passing lanes and playing with energy). With a guy like Baron Davis he can prevent Nash from getting into the lane and draw fouls on him or anybody inside. The one thing I think Amare is overrated on is his defense. He's a double edged sword. He'll score 40 on you at a high % and draw fouls, but might even allow more points from various players because he's undersized for the center spot and he doesn't play much defense (yet). Sometimes when he tries to play D, he picks up fouls and the bulk of the scoring load goes to everyone else. I think the article is putting more emphasis on Amare than they should when it's more about how Steve Nash delivers the ball where he and the rest of his teammates like it, so they can score an insane fg%. A guy like Q-rich is explosive. A guy like Joe Johnson is explosive. Marion is explosive. The catalyst is Steve Nash, not Amare. Amare may score a lot and rank high in fg effiency but he doesn't even have much of a post game, he's all about cuts, oops, fastbreaks, and putbacks and if you seal him off properly by having good transition defense, you can prevent him from scoring easily, maybe even have him draw offensive fouls and maybe you can run back and score on them and get the Suns all flustered they can't get the ball inside.

On the Dallas win over the Suns last night: I think Dallas' big problem was since they couldn't find a way to stop Nash (he's got 20 lbs more on every guard that the Mavs had and he's got quickness and shot range to boot, they had to focus on stopping Amare and force the other team to go perimeter. The mavs have tough enough perimeter defense and adequate transition D to force tough shots and slow things down a little. The Suns were 8 of 21 from downtown, which is kind of bad when they allow the other team to shoot 55% overall in the playoffs, but that's what happens when one team plays small and the only choice is to go perimeter because they got team D designed to force Nash into shooting it. The mavs played it efficiently from the field, not taking too many 3's unless they were sure it was going in.

The Warriors team D: You need good defenders to be able to play good team defense just like you need real gold to make a real gold watch. You can try to make a "fake gold" watch, but it's not the same, obviously. We need to find at least one good perimeter defender or inside defender that can start or we need to have Troy Murphy and Dunleavy on opposites sides from each other. If you're an athletic ballhandler, you don't fear driving against those two because the defense will be like a house of cards. You knock one over, the rest will fall. And that's pretty much the case where we allow 50% fg's and we win depending on how we score, not on how we play defense and how we score. I can see what Cliff Robinson was getting frustrated about when it came to Mike Dunleavy Jr. getting burned. I'm sure Adonal doesn't like having to work a lot harder because of Murphy's lack of defense, but Adonal can't complain because he's getting paid big bucks to do what Troy Murphy doesn't do which is play defense.

 

I would not want to give much for Gadzuric or Smith,both have plenty of weak areas at best...and their "A" game often does not show. I'd much rather take my chances on Foyle-Biedrens for D. Most "bigs" seen as top picks either lack the quick reactions,the power,or the defensive instincts to offset Amare. Amare will lose a big but slower defender,you'd do better putting a guy on him who matches his quickness,even if you give Amare a size advantage.
The W's won this year,challenging the Suns to an uptempo shootout-and the Sun's D had their hands full.

The sort of 6-11 mega-talent to outplay a Duncan,Garnett,Amare may not be available,unless it is in the long term future of a guy like Blatche. Dwayne Jones is 6-11,real good D. Had he entered this draft,Sheldon williams would be a guy to defend Amare,but Amare's not a guy you shut down,he's too versatile.

 

Phoenix won't win against San Antonio. Their one dimensional and play crappy defense. Dallas tied up the series and easily could have won that series if some of the guys like Finley and Terry took smarter shots.

Mohammed is going to murder Phoenix on the boards. Pop will get those guys to defend the pick & roll. Phoenix is talented but their a one trick pony and elite basketball teams play defense and rebound the basketball. Phoenix isn't one of them.

 

The Suns get away with a very small lineup because they all board. Amare and Marion are double figurer rebounders,Q Rich out boards some big guys,and Nash had about 20 boards the last 2 games.
The Spurs do RBD and play good D,they are'nt a slow team,but are not used to the Suns tempo. The Suns don't milk the clock much,it's a run + gun game and both sides get more possessions and shots. The Suns D isn't great, but the numbers are deceptive,and it will be a real good series.

 

I'm glad Shapecity posted this article, because it's one of the dumbest things I've read in awhile and wanted to bashe it. But as a general rule, I won't post articles just to tear them apart.

I've got 3 big problems with this guy's argument (and a few small ones):

1) (the main argument): I will never understand the copycat attitude of certain writers, fans, gm's, or whoever. They point to the team that won the NBA championship and say, "we need to be just like those guys! It's the ONLY way to WIN!!!" and they're very adament about it. The problem is that if Phoenix wins it all (I have them losing to Miami in the finals, but it all depends on how quick they can get Johnson back), you've got two teams with completely different styles winning the chamionship in consecutive years.

Why people can't see that copycatting isn't a good strategy is one of the great mysteries to me whenever I thin about sports.

2) As it has been pointed out before, the W's are 2-0 against Phoenix since Baron's arrival. Why the heck would they want to change ANYTHING much less push the panic button, because the Suns are tearing it up in the playoffs?

The Suns should be the least of their concerns right now.

3) God I get tired of saying this one in response to, "the Warriors ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY NEEEEEEED to get an athletic big man who can defend and score in the low post!!!!" The Warriors already HAVE that guy! His name is Andris Biedrins and has as far or further along than any big man in the draft not named Bogut and he has more star potential.


Small points
4) This is sort of along the same lines as my view that it's a bad idea to try and copycat another team. It's also a bad idea to build your team around stopping another team. For years I heard on message boards that the W's needed a Shaq stopper. No, they didn't. They saw him 4 times a year in the regular season (and usually did pretty well) and never in the playoffs.

They don't need an Amare stopper either (even though they already have one...they don't need another)because they already play the Suns well and, well, it's just stupid to run your team that way.

 

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting wtwalker77:</div><div class="quote_post">I'm glad Shapecity posted this article, because it's one of the dumbest things I've read in awhile and wanted to bashe it. But as a general rule, I won't post articles just to tear them apart.

I've got 3 big problems with this guy's argument (and a few small ones):

1) (the main argument): I will never understand the copycat attitude of certain writers, fans, gm's, or whoever. They point to the team that won the NBA championship and say, "we need to be just like those guys! It's the ONLY way to WIN!!!" and they're very adament about it. The problem is that if Phoenix wins it all (I have them losing to Miami in the finals, but it all depends on how quick they can get Johnson back), you've got two teams with completely different styles winning the chamionship in consecutive years.

Why people can't see that copycatting isn't a good strategy is one of the great mysteries to me whenever I thin about sports.

2) As it has been pointed out before, the W's are 2-0 against Phoenix since Baron's arrival. Why the heck would they want to change ANYTHING much less push the panic button, because the Suns are tearing it up in the playoffs?

The Suns should be the least of their concerns right now.

3) God I get tired of saying this one in response to, "the Warriors ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY NEEEEEEED to get an athletic big man who can defend and score in the low post!!!!" The Warriors already HAVE that guy! His name is Andris Biedrins and has as far or further along than any big man in the draft not named Bogut and he has more star potential.


Small points
4) This is sort of along the same lines as my view that it's a bad idea to try and copycat another team. It's also a bad idea to build your team around stopping another team. For years I heard on message boards that the W's needed a Shaq stopper. No, they didn't. They saw him 4 times a year in the regular season (and usually did pretty well) and never in the playoffs.

They don't need an Amare stopper either (even though they already have one...they don't need another)because they already play the Suns well and, well, it's just stupid to run your team that way.</div>
Good post there Walker. I agree there. There is really no one who can stop Amare. Besides, we've beat Phoenix every time since B-Diddy got here. If we can beat themthe majoirty of the time, that's all that matters. We don't need to shut down Amare, we just need to win

 

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting wtwalker77:</div><div class="quote_post">I'm glad Shapecity posted this article, because it's one of the dumbest things I've read in awhile and wanted to bashe it. But as a general rule, I won't post articles just to tear them apart.

I've got 3 big problems with this guy's argument (and a few small ones):

1) (the main argument): I will never understand the copycat attitude of certain writers, fans, gm's, or whoever. They point to the team that won the NBA championship and say, "we need to be just like those guys! It's the ONLY way to WIN!!!" and they're very adament about it. The problem is that if Phoenix wins it all (I have them losing to Miami in the finals, but it all depends on how quick they can get Johnson back), you've got two teams with completely different styles winning the chamionship in consecutive years.
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Good post Walker! I don't see anything wrong with sports writers or teams suggesting to emulate a certain aspect of a championship team's best strengths. But you've good points: you don't absolutely need to follow another team's blueprint to be successful and you just can't copy and be something that your team isn't. But I think Phoenix is one way to gauge our own future success because we are a lot like them in terms of the point guard running the offense to create shots for others. But yes, I agree writers go with hyping up the trends in newly assembled playoff teams much like they do with the nba drafts that brought us such players as T-Mac, Kevin Garnett and Dirk Nowitzki.

I think the article does have a significant feature and it is that we are so much like the Suns in many ways that the writer goes far as to suggest we need either an Amare Stopper or an Amare of our own. The only real differences between the Warriors team with Baron Davis and the Suns with Steve Nash is that
1.) We're bigger (if we're not getting killed in transition or getting decimated by foul trouble, the bigs can post up or shoot right over smaller opponents for high %'s)
2.) We have more depth whereas the Suns rely more on their starting 5 than we do. (Zarko, Pietrus, Biedrins are just a pain to guard for older veterans or undersized/slow players with the right setup guys on the floor). Outside of a few flashes of Jim Jackson and Steven Hunter, the Suns bench is not that impressive defensively or offensively.
3.) We have a little more defensive presence coming from our middle and our backcourt both starting and off the bench, whereas the Suns are a little undersized inside to be a threat defensively against our regular matchups. On the perimeter, I'd say the Baron Davis/Jason Richardson duo are much better than any combination of Steve Nash and shooting guard. As long as we have Baron move the ball, we're outpacing or slowing the other team's high scoring, and we play physical and smart defense we'll win a majority of the time against a team such as the Suns who rely on their starting 5 to do the majority of the work. They also don't have a serviceable backup point that can make better decisions than Derek Fisher, who has averaged 4 assists a game despite shooting some ill advised shots.

What I think writers and our team (behind closed doors) should be addressing is that we're not equipped to handle most teams who have found a good balance on the spectrum between playing a solid all around game on defense and offense inside and out/ open court or half court. We need to create our own identity, but we have to accept we're probably not going to win a championship or go far in the playoffs unless we have something that very few teams can matchup with. We either need to find some way to get at least two players that will spread the floor and get doubled or have one player that is shooting insanely high fg%'s and getting the opposing frontline in deep foul trouble or we have a starting 5 that crushes everyone on defense and scores in a balanced way. I don't care what we do as long as the majority of the good teams we play have no answer for it. We can lose to the Bobcats every single time, just as long we make the playoffs, beat the guys we face in rnd 1, rnd2 and rnd3. Thank goodness we don't have to play all the playoff teams. But if we face the suns, Warriors should have a better chance than Dallas against the Suns, than the Warriors have against Dallas where Nowitzki gets all the flop and no-charging calls.

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting wtwalker77:</div><div class="quote_post">
2) As it has been pointed out before, the W's are 2-0 against Phoenix since Baron's arrival. Why the heck would they want to change ANYTHING much less push the panic button, because the Suns are tearing it up in the playoffs?

The Suns should be the least of their concerns right now.
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I agree. Suns, I felt shouldn't have even been projected to win the championships or have gotten this far IMO. If Dirk had been regular superstar Dirk, Suns should have been edged out eventually. But still, Dallas isn't all that impressive on D, even though they could be with Dampier inside, Finley, Daniels, Terry, Josh Howard on the perimeter. Nowitzki's also managed to get tougher, but he's still sort of soft as a defensive player. Dallas also needed a playmaker to get Damp involved, make everyone else better and they really didn't have that whereas Phoenix does. If they didn't have that, they needed a consistent inside outside threat and at least two of them to worry about double teaming (Shaq/Wade or Shaq/Kobe or Duncan or any combo of Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili)

Also defense... Championship Teams like San Antonio, Los Angeles Lakers, Detroit Pistons have had a variety of ways to kill you on both ends of the floor. With San Antonio, it's their team defense, their starting 5's ability to play excellent individual all around D and ability to control the tempo by running in the open court or the half court set. With the LA Lakers it was the one two punch, with one guy on the inside and one guy on the outside that you had to throw double teams at and foul constantly to prevent the easy bucket. Those two players also were NBA all defensive first team and they had guys like Rick Fox, Derek Fisher, Robert Horry who could play some D and make big shots. The Spurs had an imposing presence in their twin towers lineup and all their starting 5 played tough enough defense to control the tempo and they were athletic and organized/talented enough to just run out and score on the break or shoot off the screen.

Without taking away what we have already, we must find a way to control the tempo like those teams do. Having a strong/quick defensive small forward that can match up with those 6'8", 230-240 lb guard/forward terrors on offense might be helpful in case we come across them. Rick Fox was known for his D and his ability to shoot jumpers, Bruce Bowen was known for his D and ability to shoot jumpers if he's uncontested, Tayshaun Prince has some great D and ability to hit jumpers. Those teams also had some big presences in the middle either defensively or offensively. Shaq, Duncan, the Wallace duo change the way the game is played when you have to worry about them offensively and defensively. Shaq will pound his way inside for insanely high fg%'s, Duncan has a variety of ways to score with his fundamentals and he's got a great consistency, Ben Wallace snags the offensive rebounds, Rasheed can post up and shoot over opponents, both can beat most bigs down the court for the easy dunk/layup.

We need one of these things that few teams can match with us on their end. Like I said earlier, Dallas could have won if Dirk Nowitzki was putting his money where his mouth was and stopped blaming like it was all Dampier's fault all the time. It pretty much the inconsistency of both Dampier/Nowitzki mixed with the weak depth at the middle and the power forward spot to begin with. Who else could pick up the slack if the franchise's leader and "2nd best center in the league" isn't consistent enough on defense and can't set the tone offensively like they were supposed to every game.

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting wtwalker77:</div><div class="quote_post">
3) God I get tired of saying this one in response to, "the Warriors ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY NEEEEEEED to get an athletic big man who can defend and score in the low post!!!!" The Warriors already HAVE that guy! His name is Andris Biedrins and has as far or further along than any big man in the draft not named Bogut and he has more star potential.
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Agree. Andris is constantly compared to the athletic upside and talent of guys like Chris Bosh and to some extent Jermaine O'neil. He may not have much meat on his bones but he's pretty strong and like Jermaine O'neil, could fill out nicely and still maintain good lateral quickness. He did average a double double in his first start and racked up some pretty good bench stats in limited minutes for such a weak (by nba standards) 18 year old. He overachieved, never complained, listened to his coach/teammates and was aggressive. You can't teach his size, quickness, reflexes and soft touch around the basket.

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting wtwalker77:</div><div class="quote_post">
Small points
4) This is sort of along the same lines as my view that it's a bad idea to try and copycat another team. It's also a bad idea to build your team around stopping another team. For years I heard on message boards that the W's needed a Shaq stopper. No, they didn't. They saw him 4 times a year in the regular season (and usually did pretty well) and never in the playoffs.

They don't need an Amare stopper either (even though they already have one...they don't need another)because they already play the Suns well and, well, it's just stupid to run your team that way.</div>
I think some forget it's all about balance, but some GM's probably care about winning more than they lose, so they'll design a team that does one thing well like score a lot from everywhere, while sacrificing defense for offense. The suns definitely went beyond expectations and it's partly due to Steve Nash, the Suns Brass, and the coach who wanted to go with teh smaller lineup when most thought it was crazy. I think it is ludicrous that we worry about this team when out of 30 teams in the NBA, half of which go to the playoffs, half of those that belong to our conference, 1-3 teams which we'll face in the post season and we're worried about one we've already found a way to beat twice with Baron Davis and one that went into overtime without? The first time we had lost to Phoenix we didn't even have one decent shotblocker to make driving at the basket harder than Clif Robinson could. Foyle got no minutes, Dale Davis got 9 minutes.

 

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting shapecity:</div><div class="quote_post"> Source

It is a great question of debate, who is the best player to go after to slow down Amare?

Last year Amare played his worst against the following teams...

v. CLE 20.5 PPG Matched Up against Varejao & Ilgauskas
v. DET 21.0 PPG Matched Up against the Wallaces & McDyess
v. MEM 18.8 PPG Matched Up against Swift & Gasol & Wright
v. MIL 19.5 PPG Matched Up against Joe Smith & Dan Gadzuric
v. ORL 17.5 PPG Matched Up against Kelvin Cato & Dwight Howard
v. WAS 17.0 PPG Matched UP against Haywood & Brown & Wright

All those teams have a common duo of a tall center who can score inside, and a tall athletic power forward. Teams without an athletic powerforward and/or ineffective center, Amare destroys. I was surprised to see how much he struggled against the Bucks last year, not only did he score under 20PPG, he only managed to average 5RPG against them.

Would Warrior fans be willing to trade Fisher or Foyle + the 1st Round Pick for Gadzuric and Joe Smith?</div> That's very interesting. Too bad there's no stats to figure out which players guarded which individually and their points allowed from that specific player. I would also think Zaur Pachulia is athletic enough to stay with Amare and is a lot stronger now than when he entered the draft. He is tough on defense and is a physical player, but really isn't known that well because he was a 2nd rounder that needed to be developed in order to unlock that potential. Personally, I wish Mullin made a deal to grab him from the Bobcats when they had the chance, but I guess you use that playing time to develop Biedrins instead who has way more scary potential.

Also, which games might not have involved Steve Nash feeding Amare the ball? Amare has trouble creating his own offense since he is not a low-post player nor one that can deal with most true centers, anyway. Personally, I would love to see how his scoring production would go without Stephon Marbury or Steve Nash as his team's point guard.

Also I noticed those player lineups are all shotblockers and might be stronger than Amare and defensively aware and quick enough to deny him a pathway to the hoop. It definitely is intimidating to go at the basket in the air when you try to dunk it and the other guy is stronger/bigger/longer than you, plays you physically and puts his hand on the ball to swat the dunk attempt away. It definitely forces you to go more perimeter since it's easier to do and less risky. As the W's played Foyle a lot more it definitely gave the the team more of an edge at keeping Amare out of the equation. Baron Davis can also stop Nash pretty well. Baron is younger and has the same quickness as Nash even when not 100% healthy but has more athleticism/more weight/more strength/more wingspan to deal with those dribble penetration moves and hard-to-defend off-balance trick shots that Nash does. Plus, didn't Baron Davis lead the league in steals at one time? The guy frustrates a ballhandler.

 

Just like Chris Rock said during the halftime of the suns/spurs game. There is a difference between playing in the season and in the playoffs. Just because we beat them during the season does not mean we could beat them in the playoffs. I think Phoenix would win in 5 or 6 games against us...

 

Yeah, PO is different basketball then regular season, and that's why I am worrying about our front court players, because if you want, you can really exploit our front court with quickness.

I don't think we absolutely, positively land a big man at any cost, at least this season. However, we do need some sort of big and athlathic big man, not to stop Stoudmire, but to stop role players. Even with winning most of last 26 games, points we allowed against role playing PFs are quite disturbing. Those role playing PFs have no business of putting 20/10 with 50% from the field, but that's what we allowed many nights, and while we dodged bullets and win games, I don't know we can keep doing that next season. Also, it's the problem we can rather quickly fix, so we don't necessary to tear down a core of 9 men rotation to fix the problem. Like WT, I think Biedrins can eventually be that guy in the future, but we need a immidiate result next season, and i don't think Biedrins can be that guy next season. Hope we can solve that problem by draft or trade using picks or spare players...

 

Thanks BJM. But I messed up in neglecting to mention anything about Playoffs versus regular season. The suns are just one of those teams that can play with so much energy and quick movement, they could probably win by a step or two against Murphy or Dunleavy if they really wanted to. I think most top teams don't really take the Warriors seriously enough because of their decade long reputation of being mediocre. Now if we were going to the playoffs, maybe we might have seen a different Suns team go against us. They had the best record in the NBA, not just the Western Conference and we were so far out of the playoffs we were almost repeating our 1996 year. I think our chances are good though, especially if we match with something like

Baron Davis (defense)
Mickael Pietrus (defense)
Jason Richardson (gettin' better defense)
Mike Dunleavy (has the IQ for defense)
Foyle (defense)

All those guys can rebound like the Suns small lineup can and the majority can play D against their assignments.
Most likely Nash is going to struggle with Bdiddy on D and they'll probably double him
Dunleavy plays like a guard so essentially the Warriors are a 3-guard offense. He rebounds like a forward and works really well against power forwards going one-on-one with the ball in his hands and you know Shawn Marion is going to defend Richardson, not him.
Pietrus is a player Qrich or Joe Johnson can't really guard by themselves and might forget about him or focus their attention on him if he's getting to the rim too easily.
Foyle does the dirty work that Troy won't do and work hard to stop in transition buckets and try hard to get offensive rebounds against a smaller team.

I think it could go either way if they were in the playoffs, but I may be biased of course