Jason... Assistant Coach

I guess Porter didn't read about the importance of last night's game, huh? With the Suns playing two sets of back-to-backs on Thur (@DEN)/Fri (MIN) and Sun(@TOR)/Mon(@BOS), he decided to give Shaq the night off against the Nuggets. Now, I get the whole resting games bit, Shaq is old and we want to preserve him. But why sit the Denver game? They're a conference rival and seeding/home court could come down to tiebreakers. We NEEDED to win that game. If Shaq's gonna sit... sit him for MIN and TOR. He'll be even MORE rested for Boston on Monday. That's just sheer stupidity on coach Porter's fault.

And speaking of Porter's stupidity... the offense, defense, set plays, etc, I'll give him a pass on all of those. But his rotations, man, that's just absurd. I have better rotations in 2K9. For two minutes there at the start of the 2nd quarter, he had an ALL bench lineup of Lopez, Barnes, Dudley, Tucker, and Barbosa in there. WTF?!?! In the first and third quarters, he should sub for J-Rich earlier so he can play more with Barbosa and the 2nd team. If you want to play Dudley or Tucker, fine, but only play them ONE at a time, and preferably with Nash being the decision maker out there. And Robin Lopez has just been TERRIBLE. The man is 7 ft tall and he manages to snag just TWO rebounds in 22 minutes, only 1 of which was a defensive rebound. He coughed up 3 turnovers to go with that failure on the boards. Not surprisingly, he also had the worst +/- of the team at -19. Couldn't Porter had found more minutes for Amundson? Lou had been playing much better recently, was a +6 for the game, yet only got 13 minutes. Btw, he managed to grab 6 boards (4 defensive) , block 2 shots, and commit 0 turnovers during that stretch. Bench is bench, play your best guys!

Nash and Amare should play together more. Having Amare out there with the 2nd team is a bit counterproductive since Amare CAN'T create for himself (no back to the basket game) and we have no real backup PG. Play J-Rich and Hill with Barbs and the 2nd team more, since all three of them can reasonably create for themselves.

Here's what I would do... you take J-Rich and Hill out around the 5 minute mark, bring in Barbs and Barnes. Amundson comes in whenever Lopez is tired, playing crappy, and/or in foul trouble. When Nash and Amare sit at the end of the 1st or start of the 2nd, return J-Rich and Hill and go small with Amundson at the C. That's an eight man rotation. That's good enough. If you really want to, you can cheat a few of Hill, Amundson, or Barnes's minutes (while Nash is on the court) and get Dudley and/or Tucker in there for 2-3 minutes at a a time. Lopez and Amundson should be playing even minutes, if not more for Amundson since he'll combo the F-C while Lopez is stricly C. Also, tell Barbs that if his shot isn't falling (1-11 from the field, 0-5 from the 3), chucking up rainbows over Nene probably ain't the best idea. ATTACK the friggin basket!!!

Anyhoo... yeah, that's about all I have for that game. Missed the Portland game against New Jersey so I don't have much to say about that. 'Cept just 13 min w/ 2 fouls for Oden. I'm VERY disappointed. Granted he had a -9 in that brief stretch, but at least give the man a chance to redeem himself. With his recent suckage, I'm seriously contemplating dropping Oden in one of my fantasy leagues (hold him in two). Oh yeah, I did catch this SICK dunk by Bayless on the highlight reel though...