It's Time to talk about the Suns

[Silverfoxx]

While avoiding current advance stats, and looking at current contributing factors, the Suns are doing dominating in a early season similar to last year Orlando Magic surprising start. TBH the notion of them being a lottery team this year made too much sense.

Horrible CEO whole is considered cheap and not basketball first
Inexperienced GM with questionable decisions
Horrible first round pick selection and a injury riddled one trick old college player
Questionable free agent signings
Etc

The Suns off-season moves has been laughed at, graded with Fs and yet Monty Williams (coach who was thought of as with old school philosophies dated in the current league) is having this team who is missing their starting center from a suspension beating some of the best teams in the league.

As a Pelicans fan I'm jealous as hell, not ashamed to admit. Who wouldn't wanna be in their situation? Lighting the league on fire and shutting down haters and squashing the media darlings best favorite teams and going against every advance stats.


How the hell is going on? Monty Williams can't be that good of a coach right?

[Fedupfan]

I think Monty is that good of a coach. The players actually listen to him and play hard from the jump. He seems to have evolved as an offensive mind. I think the Suns already had the offensive pieces in Booker and Oubre and the offense has been built around them. Adding a guy like Rubio helped and Baynes plays with a tenacity that a guy like Monty can coach up. It’s just an all around good situation for that roster and a coach that deserves to win.

[Pelicanidae]

It's time?

Certain people on this forum have spent more time talking about the Suns than they have the Pels, it sometimes seems like.

The Suns are winning games because they are being coached well, are buying into it, and have some good players on the roster.

As much as some people don't like to hear it, Aron Baynes is a very good NBA player, and he's currently playing his best basketball of his career.

My question would be: what advanced stats are they 'going against'?

[luckyman]

I don't think Monty evolved offensively. He last team here, he tried to get those guys to run and up their pace. I argued that here numerous times having watched them practice. But once Jrue went down and Tyreke took over, Monty just adjusted to what worked best for his personnel.

He seems to have some the same now with the Suns. The man was never dead set against shooting 3s and have a higher pace.

[Eman5805]

He was never a bad coach. He just had a ceiling to how far he can lead a team at the time. Maybe he's grown past it.

All I know is it's early as hell. It'll be interesting to see if the Suns persist at this current level.

[Taker597]

The same coach we fired isn't that same coach now. So, it's a bad hindsight argument.

[PELICANSFAN]

Monty's biggest problem here was his GM. Dell gave him players that did not fit his style of coaching. Dell wanted a certain type of player regardless of what Monty wanted. They did not see eye to eye.

[13 - 3]

That is a real nice line up he has there. YOUNG!

[HoustonPelicans]

Very disingenuous to try to praise Monty now giving how vile some fans were to him when he was here. To the point where he had to tell his family not to come to games because fans were allowed to constantly harass him at games. He was fired after taking a bad young team to the playoffs. Monty has always been a good coach yet he received the same criticisms that Gentry is receiving today. Bad rotations, won't play young guys, can't adjust. None of which was ever necessarily true and could be said about every coach in the league, even Pop, if one was to watch 82 Spurs games. But I digress.

[luckyman]

That team he took to the playoffs here wasn't bad at all. Matter of fact Dell did a good job getting depth

Injured yes. Bad? No.

[HoustonPelicans]

That team he took to the playoffs here wasn't bad at all. Matter of fact Dell did a good job getting depth

Injured yes. Bad? No.

Only like 3 guys from that team are still in the league today. Asik, Ajinca, Cunningham, Norris Cole, Luke Babbitt were all rotation players and relied on heavily. The team was bad. I've never seen any other team relying on those kind of players make it to the playoffs.

[msusousaphone]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

This thread, right here.

[13 - 3]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

This thread, right here.

Well considering they had injuries too. Come March they may make run.

[luckyman]

Only like 3 guys from that team are still in the league today. Asik, Ajinca, Cunningham, Norris Cole, Luke Babbitt were all rotation players and relied on heavily. The team was bad. I've never seen any other team relying on those kind of players make it to the playoffs.

Yeah you just typed a load of garbage.

The only players on that list that were "heavily" relied on were Asik, with Cunningham and Cole off the bench. Babbit averaged 13 minutes and Ajinca averaged 14 minutes that year.

It's quite silly to talk about who is still in the league from that list since most of the important ones (Asik, Cole, Cunningham) were already pushing 30. Gordon is doing just fine. Tyreke got suspended for off court crap, Pondexter lost his knee that year, Anderson signed a huge contract when he left here, and Jrue is still here. Norris Cole was already 28 on that team, and had won a ring while playing a major bench role with Miami. He did the same here and was a major reason they made the playoffs.

No matter how much revision you want to do to history, that team was not "bad" by any stretch of the imagination. A heavily injured team that still won 45 games in a ridiculous western conference cannot possibly be "bad." Sorry.

[HoustonRox]

Certain people on this forum have spent more time talking about the Suns than they have the Pels, it sometimes seems like.

Well it makes sense since the Suns are like the sister team to the Pelicans. Both teams exchange coaches and staff with each other.

Suns are like a 2nd G league team for the Pelicans.

[Speakthetruth]

Monty gets revenge

Because defense

[HoustonRox]

Monty gets revenge

Because defense

Oh yeah with that 132 pts Monty’s team gave up. Not to mention 50% shooting and 42% from 3.

[Pelicanidae]

Oh yeah with that 132 pts Monty’s team gave up. Not to mention 50% shooting and 42% from 3.

Yeah, as I pointed out in the game thread, the Suns have the 19th ranked defense in the NBA. They didn't win this game because they're so good on defense. They won it because they're really good on offense and our defense is an even bigger mess than their is.

[UNO Gracias]

Do you think Monty misses us as much as we miss him? I’m just saying, I spend most nights thinking about Monty and where this love went wrong, and got us to this point where we are now on year 5 of a crap coach’s resume.