The problem isn’t Dragic – it’s management
Feb 25, 2011, 5:33 AM | Updated: Jul 26, 2024, 1:46 pm
Dragic for Brooks?
Don’t like it but I’ll get over it.
Dragic and a 2nd round pick for Brooks?
Somebody’s asleep at the wheel, swerved and caused an accident.
DRAGIC AND A 1ST ROUND PICK??
I stared at my e-mail this afternoon in absolute disbelief. This is a classic case of covering up an embarrassment with a screw up.
I had this crazy dream in 2010 that the Suns bench was actually feared. It must have been a drunken stupor I was in while watching last year’s bench actually win games. I remember traveling with Morgan Freeman last year through a wormhole and I saw the Suns sweep the Spurs behind Goran Dragic taking over.
The problem this year wasn’t Dragic. There was a vacuum of basketball intelligence between the kicking to the curb of GM Steve Kerr/VP David Griffin and the hiring of President Lon Babby/GM Lance Blanks. In the vacuum 3 marginal players were signed to 12 years and $82 million dollars worth of contracts.
If you were listening to the show during that time, I went on a 2 month rampage against the organization for losing Kerr/Griffin and then compounding their mistake by signing 3 average to worthless players. The king of bad signings was the Hedo contract. There’s a big difference between owning a basketball team and knowing basketball.
Just because you’ve heard of Hedo and saw him play well in the playoffs doesn’t mean he’s a good fit for your team. Hedo plays well if the offense is run through him as a point forward. He creates a match-up problem because power forwards can’t guard him up top and get into foul trouble. Small forwards get out-muscled on his way to the basket. Surround him with a good shooter and a big man — insert Magic reference from the playoffs 2 years ago — and you’ve got a serious playoff threat.
If everyone in basketball knew Hedo can only play with the ball and doesn’t move well without the ball, why would a team with one of the greatest point guards of all time sign him? Unless you try to fool the defense by playing with two basketballs, you’re going to diminish the effectiveness of either Nash or Hedo. The only place for Hedo to go was to run the second unit and that’s how the Suns screwed up Dragic.
Dragic came into the season feeling more confident than at any point in his life. The Suns completely screwed with that confidence the second they moved Hedo to the bench. Dragic had no idea what he was doing. Dragic looked like a tourist with a bad map on offense. As you saw in the Terry Porter years, Dragic’s age and origin parlayed into a lack of confidence. Last year Alvin Gentry brought out everything Goran had and it was magnificent. This year the management vacuum destroyed him and injury made the recovery painful.
If you want to give up on his upside, go ahead. I can actually understand some people wanting a little more known commodity and hoping Brooks can do some of the things he did last year. Including the draft pick is outrageous.
We were told last June by owner Robert Sarver the Suns were going to start building through free agency and put less stock in the draft. So far the team is destroying itself through free agency and won’t have a draft to worry about.
