Phoenix Suns

It would be an understatement to say this season was a disappointment. By August there was genuine excitement for what the newly signed Goran Dragic could do on his return trip from Houston. Many had the Suns sitting in the early 20's of pre-season power rankings. But nobody knew what this team could do. How would Goran work with Marcin Gortat in the PnR? Would Dudley take his game to another level? Would the high risk signing of $6 million man Michael Beasley pay off? Fast forward to now and things are pretty bad. Except, well, we have the most promising young GM in the league and a competent President of Basketball Operations to help him out. Ryan McDonough was brought in as a talent scout, and that is exactly what we expect to see from him. Something the Suns have failed to find- talent. So what will pick 5 and pick 30 do to get the Suns back on track? This year's draft has been noted for its depth, but more importantly its lack of star talent. For the Suns, this is good news: the best player in the draft may drop to our pick at 5, or even 30. Here's how I see it all falling into place. Mock Draft Top 10 with explanations 1. Cleveland Cavaliers: Nerlens Noel With the first pick in the 2013 NBA draft, The Cleveland Cavaliers select......Nerlens Noel. Really there shouldn't be any surprises here. Some have Otto Porter finding his way to the Cavs but I just don't see it. The team needs a star talent to pair with Kyrie. Otto Porter is a self-proclaimed 'glue-guy'- sure, great if you're a contending team, but not when you're trying to develop a strong talent pool. Noel has immense shot-blocking capabilities and is so raw no-one really knows what his ceiling is. 2. Orlando Magic: Trey Burke Orlando did deceptively well this season. Not only did they acquire the highest lottery chance, they essentially received Harris and Lamb for J.J Redick. Their talent is on the up, yet they still lack majorly at the point. Burke would be a perfect fit to contend with Jameer Nelson for minutes- and most likely either take the starting job through his performances or an injury to Jameer. Last season he improved across the board on all key stats- showing there remains a great deal of potential for him to develop into a star talent in the league and lead the Magic to the playoffs. Expect him to dominate the pre-draft workouts and climb up the draft boards. 3. Washington Wizards: Ben McLemore The Wiz drafted Beal last season so you're probably asking why the heck McLemore is here at pick 3? Beal and McLemore played together for the St. Louis Eagles in the AAU. McLemore's game isn't one that develops directly into that of the NBA, so there'd definitely be some time for him to settle in. Whilst Beal is getting the starting minutes, McLemore can provide valuable bench minutes as he figures out his own game. Personally, I don't see his game translating well to the NBA- he has too many things he does pretty well and only one NBA ready asset: his athleticism. Time will tell if he can put it together. 4. Charlotte Hornets: Anthony Bennett Charlotte have two options: go with the safer pick of Porter or try and find some shooting, something they desperately lack. Bennett can play offensively, there is no doubting that. He does sit in the tweener range standing at 6'7", however his 7'1" wingspan more than makes up for this. He has said himself he would like to develop the game of a wing, which is a possibility seeing as he is currently a forward who gets all of his points playing a guard's game. Charlotte are begging for an offensive threat to ease the pressure on Kemba Walker. Bennett may end up being this, or he may go down the road of every other talent acquisition of the Bobcats Hornets. Who knows, new name, new luck? 5. Phoenix Suns: C.J McCollum WHAT. NOT OLADIPO? ARE YOU CRAZY? I love Dipo, he's an awesome, gritty player who has a niche for defense. However, the Suns lack both ends of the flo

Strengths One of the best pure shooters in the 2013 draft class, California Golden Bears guard Allen Crabbe played three years of efficient ball for well-respected head coach Mike Montgomery. At... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

The 2013 NBA Draft is still just over four weeks away. While NCAA games have been over for two months and the annual Draft Combine is in the books, we just figured out the draft order. Now the NBA's worst teams can start honing in on single players at their pick with full knowledge of who's ahead of and behind them. While there's plenty of talk of trading away picks and moving up and down a few spots to get the right value, the likelihood is that the top 5 picks will go to the teams who currently hold the top 5 picks. Why? Because this is the NBA, and individual talent is king. Only five guys play at one time, and a single player can mean the difference between winning and losing. Talent trumps all. You can't win with marginal players. So why would a team drafting in the top 5 trade away their pick? It's happened, but almost never to the benefit of the team that gave away that top pick. Boston traded the #5 overall pick in 2008 to acquire Ray Allen. Memphis and Minnesota swapped the 3rd and 5th picks a few years ago. Washington traded the #5 overall pick to Minnesota for a couple of role players. Sacramento traded it's #5 pick seven months later to the Rockets for a bag of beans and a lint ball. There's a couple more examples, I'm sure, but the point is that teams keep their top-5 picks almost all the time. So let's look at the team needs at the Top 5 of the Draft. I am going primarily with the adage that with a top-5 pick you don't draft a position where you're already boasting a young up-and-coming player who projects to be just as good. Cleveland Cavaliers The Cavs have gotten lucky with the ping pong balls lately, but that has yet to turn into wins. Drafting #1, let's only look at the best 6 players in the draft: C Nerlens Noel, SG Ben McLemore, SF Otto Porter, SG Victor Oladipo, PF Anthony Bennett, PG Trey Burke. Really, for the #1 pick you have to narrow down to Noel, McLemore and Porter. Maybe Burke, not probably not. With former #1 overall Kyrie Irving at PG, former #4 overall Dion Waiters at SG and former #4 overall Tristan Thompson at PF, I am guessing that the Cavs will not draft at those positions when they pick #1. This rules out SG Ben McLemore and PG Trey Burke. I assume the choice is down to two players: Noel and Porter. Noel is the better top-end talent, but he's injury-prone. Porter is more healthy and appears to be a great fit with big-time scorers already on the wings in Irving and Waiters. My pick: Nerlens Noel Orlando Magic The Magic did a huge tear-down last summer and brought in a number of young player who performed well last season, showing promise that will continue to flourish in the years to come. With young Tobias Harris and Moe Harkless at SF already, the Magic are unlikely to look hard at Otto Porter. With Nikola Vucevic and Andrew Nicholson at PF, the Magic are unlikely to zero in on Anthony Bennett. But C, SG and PG are currently being manned by veterans who won't be around when the Magic start winning again. With Noel off the board, that leaves McLemore, Oladipo and Burke as the choices for the #2 overall pick. Given McLemore's talent, youth and upside, I have to go with McLemore here. Secondary option would be PG Burke - who just may end up being the younger version of the guy already starting at PG for them: Jameer Nelson. But still, McLemore has the highest upside. Gotta take him. Washington Wizards The Wizards look to be in great shape right now. They jumped up from the #8 spot while enjoying a playoff-caliber second-half run on the backs of former #1 PG John Wall and former #3 SG Bradley Beal. With those two already on hand, I will rule out McLemore, Oladipo and Burke. Otto Porter would be a great fit at the SF, just like he would have been for the Cavs. Putting Porter in there to do everything except dominate a game would be a nice compliment to scorers Wall and Beal. A secondary option for this team would be PF Anthony Bennett. The Wiz need front court scorin

Arguably the Phoenix Suns most thrilling playoff run was twenty years ago. We relive the run with game-by-game recaps as the Suns down the Lakers, Spurs and Sonics before falling to the Bulls in the NBA Finals. Since the current iteration of the Phoenix Suns is on vacation during these playoffs, we at Bright Side thought it would be fun to relive the Suns' exciting 1993 playoff run with recaps of each game, starting with Game 5 of the Western Semis. Revisit yesteryear while we wait for the Suns to rise again. After a thrilling come-from-behind first round series win over the Los Angeles Lakers ("and everyone's gonna say what a great series it was"), the Phoenix Suns faced an equally big opponent in the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs had just beaten defending Western Champ Portland Trailblazers in round one, and saw the smaller Suns as their next step on a Finals run of their own. David Robinson was a beast surrounded by role players that made them greater - and more frustrating - than the sum of their parts (where have I heard this one before). Avery Johnson. Sean Elliot. J.R. Reid. Antoine Carr. Dale Ellis. All good players, but all role players around a Hall of Fame center. The smaller Suns had led the league in scoring, by a wide margin, and boasted a passable defense (9th in efficiency vs. 18th in points allowed) to win a club record 62 games before the playoffs started. (again, where have I heard all this before?) Charles Barkley was the Suns Hall of Famer in 1993, putting up 25.6 points, 12.2 rebounds, 5.1 assists and 1.6 steals per game, along with a block for a good measure. Charles had truly an historic season, one that has not been topped in the valley - either in terms of raw stats or raw impact - since. You could argue that Steve Nash made the same, if not bigger, impact (and certainly a more long-lasting one) but Nash never guided the Suns to the Finals and never in the way that Charles did. The Suns supporting cast was a who's who for Suns fans: PG Kevin Johnson (MIP, 3-time All-Star, 5-time All-NBA). SG/SF Dan Majerle (3-time All-Star, 2-time All-Defensive). F Tom Chambers (4-time All-Star, 2-time All-NBA). Danny Ainge (1-time All-Star). Ced Ceballos (1-time All-Star). Mark West. Oliver Miller. Richard Dumas. Tim Kempton. 4th-quarter Frank Johnson. Man, that was an exciting team. The Suns painted the town orange that year. Chambers, Kempton and West still work for the Suns to this day. Ceballos was their in-game entertainer for years. Majerle was a TV guy, then coach. Barkley still lives in the valley. In many ways, the 1993 team is still part of the franchise fabric. May 18, 1993: Suns beat Spurs 109-97, take 3-2 series lead Boxscore - courtesy of basketball-reference.com The Suns returned home for Game 5 after letting the series get tied up 2-2. "It's never very hard to play on the road," shooting guard Danny Ainge quipped. "It's just hard to win on the road." Feasting on home cooking and a rocking home crowd, the Suns muddled through three tight quarters before Charles Barkley lit up the night with 19 fourth-quarter points, including 16 in a 6-minute stretch. Barkley put the Suns on his back and carried them home when they needed it the most. Barkley finished the game with 36 points (on 16 shots and 15 free throws) and 12 rebounds. He got great support from Kevin Johnson (15 points, 12 assists, 6 rebounds) and Dan Majerle (17 points, 4 rebounds). As a team, the Suns shot 59.7% for the game, a huge improvement over shooting less than 42% in each of the losses in San Antonio. The crowd was electric. The Suns attendance ranked 5th in the league that year, with every single game sold out and playoff tickets really hard to come by. My dad went to every game and will never forget that series. Up next: another showdown in the Alamo for Game 6. Could Barkley and the Suns step up on the road?

Since the current iteration of the Phoenix Suns is on vacation during these playoffs, we at Bright Side thought it would be fun to relive the Suns' exciting 1993 playoff run with recaps of each game. Today, the Suns and Charles Barkley begin an epic Western Conference Finals series with a win at home over Shawn Kemp's Seattle Supersonics, 105-91. In a series about to go the distance, the fireworks hadn't even started yet when the Suns took down the Sonics in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals. The Sonics had just survived the Houston Rockets in their own round two series - you know, the same Rockets who would soon steal Suns hearts with the icy zeal of the wicked witch in Once Upon a Time. The Sonics came in a bit flat to game one, while the Suns had a four-day rest and were waiting to pounce on their prey. And pounce they did. Even without Barkley doing much pouncing (12 points, 14 rebounds in 36 minutes). Earstwhile Suns mainstay and recent arena entertainment emcee, Cedric Ceballos used a surprise start to tally 21 points and backup center Oliver Miller (15 points, 10 rebounds, 5 blocks, 4 assists, 2 steals) helped the Suns block a club playoff record 16 Seattle shots (second most all-time). Mark West, still a Suns mainstay in their front office, had 4 blocks of his own. That's 16 shots blocked against a loaded Seattle team, coached by George Karl, that boasted in-his-prime Shawn Kemp, lanky Derrick McKey and Sam Perkins (one of the original stretch-fours) on the front line, with all-time great Gary Payton at PG and Rickey Pierce at SG. Off the bench, the Suns' own Eddie Johnson provided offense, while Nate McMillan and Michael Cage brought the D. That I remember this lineup so clearly twenty years later is a clear sign that Seattle was really, really good. But not in game one they weren't. The Suns owned this game from the get-go, and a Suns second unit boasting future head coaches Frank Johnson and Danny Ainge kept the foot on the throat of the Sonics all night. Suns win going away, 105-91. The NBA Finals were only three wins away.

Chris Humphreys – USA Today Sports Images The Phoenix Suns need a lot of help and that’s not really a secret. They finished the 2012-2013 NBA season with the worst record in the Western Conference and the fourth worst record in the league. Considering that they don’t have a great deal of cap room this off-season, though, they are going to need to focus on being smart in the 2013 NBA Draft and developing the young talent already on their roster. They will obviously look to continue developing Goran Dragic as their starting point guard and will be looking for a bounce-back season from their center, Marcin Gortat. Phoenix will also hope to see improvement from Markieff Morris next season. However, one of their most promising prospects is somewhat being overlooked. Many people around the league are dismissing Kendall Marshall’s rookie season because he shot the ball poorly. That’s a fair point as Marshall shot just 37.1 percent from the field and just 31.5 percent from long distance this season. However, that’s not the only thing that Marshall brings to the table for the Suns. Marshall averaged just 14.6 minutes per game in the 48 games he played this season. However, over the team’s final eight games he played 18.4 minutes per game and looked solid. He averaged 3.9 points, 4.6 assists and 1.3 rebounds per game. He also raised his shooting percentages over that time, shooting 37.5 percent from the floor and 36.4 percent from three. The most impressive part about the way Marshall finished the year for Phoenix was his ability to make plays with his passing. Over the final eight games he played, Marshall’s assist-to-turnover ratio was at 4.11, the highest on the Suns. He also led Phoenix with a 46.6 assist ratio over the final eight games, meaning that 46.6 percent of the possessions when he was on the floor ended with him assisting. Marshall has a lot of work to do. He needs to get in the gym and work on his jump shot more and find ways to score more effectively at the pro level. He also, like most young players, needs to become sounder defensively. However, Marshall is more than solid at making plays with his passing. With this Suns team looking to build up from the cellar of the league, that’s a skill that they can mold and work with going forward. Cody Williams is a Senior Writer with Rant Sports. Follow Cody on Twitter @TheSizzle20 and like his Facebook page.

As the search to see who will lead the Suns next season heats up, we look back at which coaches led the Suns in previous seasons in the franchise's history. | Bordow's Suns' coaching candidates Top 20 free agents for 2013 | Look back: '92-93 Suns | NBA combine analysis | Draft early entrants

In my opinion, the best option for the Suns with the fifth pick is Victor Oladipo. But according to ESPN's Draft Dude, Chad Ford, "Oladipo is the guy that GMs love in this draft" so he very well could be gone before the Suns new GM gets to make his first-ever draft pick without training wheels. Of course, I seem to recall hearing the same thing about Damian Lillard who's stock rose quickly after being projected 13th this time last year before but wasn't selected until Portland's turn with the sixth pick. Oladipo is already slotted fourth to the Bobcats/Hornets in four out of seven mock drafts. If Oladipo (and Otto Porter) are gone before Ryan McDonough gets his turn at bat, Alex Len could be a very intriguing option. We already know the Suns have a need to a new big man and we know there are a LOT of very big men in this draft. Nerlens Noel will almost certainly be gone before the Suns turn (and truly hope that's true) so that leaves us to ponder Len who was also pondered by Paul Coro at the AZ Republic: Phoenix Suns’ draft options at No. 5 include Maryland big man Alex LenThe NBA draft lottery slotted the Suns fifth in the selection order, assuring they will not get a chance to pick Nerlens Noel without a trade. But they could take the center who dominated Noel to start the past college season. What else do we know about Len? A lot. The best prospects of the 2013 NBA Draft - Rufus on FireAlex Len is this seasons feast-or-famine pick. The seven-footer has all the potential tools: he's a great athlete for his size, has impressive foot speed, a great touch around the rim -- with both hands -- and a high basketball IQ. On the defensive end, he's already a good pick and roll defender with potential as an elite rim-protector. Well now, that's impressive! But, did you know that Alex isn't even his REAL NAME? It's Olexiy! Also... NBA Draft 2013 scouting report: Alex Len - Bullets ForeverWhether Len lived up to the hype as a sophomore probably depends on which games you saw him play. He opened the season with a dominant showing against Nerlens Noel, the top recruit in the nation, scoring 23 points and grabbing 12 rebounds in a loss to Kentucky. Unfortunately for Len, his first game of the season might have also have been his best, as the inconsistency from his freshman year carried over to 2012. [emphasis added so you would see it] Maybe, if he used his real name he would get more steals? 2013 Draft Preview: Centers - Canis HoopusFor every 1 steal that Len collects, Noel collects 8, Dieng collects 5, Adams, Plumlee, and Zeller each collect 4, Withey and Olynyk each collect 3, and Muscala collects more than 2. While ball-stealing itself is not a key part of the center position, this huge disparity between Len and men who succeed in professional basketball should be concerning. I really wonder how much of the glow about Len's "athletic potential" is failing to look past his impressive frame to the more basic dexterity, coordination, and awareness that separates successful project bigs from your annual second-round 7' stiff. [emphasis added so you would see it] Then again, somebody thinks Len is BETTER THAN Noel despite using an alias. NBA Draft 2013: Why Alex Len is a better prospect than Nerlens Noel - SBNation.comNoel is an intriguing prospect, but in my opinion, he's not even the best center, much less the best player, available in this year's draft. Maryland sophomore Alex Len is bigger and more skilled than Noel. Let's check the some tape: What do you think of "Alex" Len?

Editor’s note: This is the first entry in our 2013 NBA Draft prospect profile series. We’ll be focusing on all three of the Suns’ draft picks by alternating between in-depth... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

The NBA draft lottery slotted the Suns fifth in the selection order, assuring they will not get a chance to pick Nerlens Noel without a trade. But they could take the center who dominated Noel to start the past college season.