Game 9 (In-Season Tournament): Lakers (3-5) @ Phoenix Suns (4-4) | Friday | 8:00 PM

[Qwigglez]

I agree and it's also a calf injury. I really don't want playing with that and then it leads to an achilles injury

No, Booker should tough it out. Who cares if it is early November and the season just started. Booker is showing that he is not mentally tough.
Booker gets any sort of boo-boo and he just sucks. Remember when Booker got hurt in Game 5 against the Nuggets? He tweaked his ankle at the end of the first quarter, he was shooting 4-5 at that point, afterwards Booker went 4/14. The following game Booker was 4/13. This is a clear indication that Booker is soft and doesn't care about winning a championship. He should be grinding through the pain like the greats do.

[MrMiyagi]

I agree and it's also a calf injury. I really don't want playing with that and then it leads to an achilles injury

No, Booker should tough it out. Who cares if it is early November and the season just started. Booker is showing that he is not mentally tough.
Booker gets any sort of boo-boo and he just sucks. Remember when Booker got hurt in Game 5 against the Nuggets? He tweaked his ankle at the end of the first quarter, he was shooting 4-5 at that point, afterwards Booker went 4/14. The following game Booker was 4/13. This is a clear indication that Booker is soft and doesn't care about winning a championship. He should be grinding through the pain like the greats do.

If his calf is failing him, he should cut it out and play without it. What a scrub.

[lilfishi22]

Sorry with all due respect that is a load of crap. Booker wants to win a championship really bad. Better to make sure an injury is 100 percent better early in the season than later.

Everyone wants to win a championship.
Everyone isn’t serious about it though.
Champions are mentally tough. They play through pain.

Pretty sure if it was the playoffs Booker would be playing right now.

There's no point reasoning with sf101. He thinks everyone is soft if they didn't play in the 90's

[lilfishi22]

I agree and it's also a calf injury. I really don't want playing with that and then it leads to an achilles injury

No, Booker should tough it out. Who cares if it is early November and the season just started. Booker is showing that he is not mentally tough.
Booker gets any sort of boo-boo and he just sucks. Remember when Booker got hurt in Game 5 against the Nuggets? He tweaked his ankle at the end of the first quarter, he was shooting 4-5 at that point, afterwards Booker went 4/14. The following game Booker was 4/13. This is a clear indication that Booker is soft and doesn't care about winning a championship. He should be grinding through the pain like the greats do.

If his calf is failing him, he should cut it out and play without it. What a scrub.

Kobe woulda done it.

#NOTLegendary

[RaisingArizona]

Don't you know that he was too busy polishing up his cars to do rehab so he could be ready too play tonight.

Yeah - and we call Anthony Davis - "Street Clothes"

Hell we now got three "Street Clothes" on our team. HOw do you rank them.

What is going to happen to Book when he turns 27, probably miss more games?

The guys is a fantastic player when available but his reliability is really in questions at this point.

Everyone blames Monty, Ayton and CP3 for our recent collapses, they ain't here, anymore.

What is the excuse now?

James Jones has to be the worst GM in the history of the NBA. How in the world could he put together this roster without at least one legit point guard. When Nurkic is you best passer, we are in real trouble and we are just getting started.

This team is awful to watch as a matter of fact it is fast becoming unwatchable.

Goodnight

He's been 27 all season and has played like 2 games out of 9. Sorry to rain on your rant.

To be clear he turned 27 on October 30th. That is after the season started.

Can't wait until he turns 28. He should have a whole line of duds to show off while sitting on the bench.

[Qwigglez]

If his calf is failing him, he should cut it out and play without it. What a scrub.

You are proving my point exactly. Booker chokes in elimination games because he is mentally soft. Champions... those guys, they are mentally tough.

[Revived]

Read on Twitter

Man this is pretty worrisome with what Vogel says at the end there. KD’s iso ball should not be the Suns “best offense”, it should be ball movement and open shots. Did he not watch how the Nuggets won a title?

I miss the 2021 Suns team that was spreading the ball around everywhere and finding the open guys. Like this current Suns team will never in their lives have a play like below

https://youtu.be/1iDQD4Mleqk?si=t_-3yMuLpy_RXPfE

It's easy to point to good teams, or great championship winning teams, and say, oh why can't we just play like them. But getting the personnel to do that is easier said than done. We have the personnel to play a certain way, it won't be like the 2021 Suns, it won't be like the 2023 Nuggets, it won't be like the 2020 Lakers, it won't be like the Warrior team that won B2B titles. You or someone else mentioned we should've hired Pringles but without an elite PG like a Nash or Harden to run his system, do you know how successful he was? Just ask NY and LA. THe teams that were successful all had dominant playmakers like Jokic, Chris Paul, Lebron, Steph/Dray etc that we just don't have. You build your system around the guys you have.

We can certainly improve on a lot of different things but the way we've played, we're very clearly playing in a system and with a roster that doesn't have an elite PG. Book could very well be that guy but he's only played 2 games. But if you watch how we play, our system has a lot of triangle offense influence. A lot of action is happening on one side of the court, with spacers/shooters on the other side. You have a big man who can pass in Nurk that operating between the high elbow and low post finding guys to pass to while you have KD primarily playing that MJ/Kobe role who can initiate action from the perimeter or create from a post position.

The issue is that the triangle offense can be complex, it can be slow paced (while we're trying to keep out pace high) and it requires familiarity with the players involved which we just don't have at a high enough level yet. The offense again will adjust as we bring Book into the fold.

C’mon man, we are not playing the triangle offense. Not at all. We’re playing the OKC Thunder offense from like 2013-2016. Which is basically just iso for superstars and everyone else gets out the way.

I can’t think of one basketball team that’s won a championship playing iso ball entirely. Even LeBron/Wade/Bosh team relied on ball movement to finally get over the jump after they failed miserably in 2011.