Self Assessment

Self Assessment“We swung for the fences,” Kerr said. “We knew what we had was not good enough, and we took a big swing and missed. It wasn’t because Shaq didn’t play well. It’s just that it didn’t work.”Then came the not-so-ammicable split with D’Antoni. Kerr wanted the coach to devote some practice time to defense and to use more young players off the bench.D’Antoni said no and departed for the New York Knicks, leaving the general manager to replace the likable, dynamic coach. The choice was solemn Terry Porter, not Alvin Gentry, who stayed on as an assistant.
“Alvin and I talked and I felt at the time that we needed a different voice, an outside voice, because we were trying to make a cultural shift to become better defensively, and I was wrong,” Kerr said. “I should have hired him from the beginning.”It didn’t take long for Kerr to figure out that Porter was a bad fit. The coach was fired in 2009 at the All-Star break, with Gentry getting the job on an interim basis.
entry unleashed the offense but demanded better defense, and he let the youngsters play.Phoenix won 46 games but didn’t make the playoffs. Still, Gentry’s impressive performance merited the removal of the “interim” tag.Now, Kerr said, he and Gentry have “a perfect relationship.”
entry said Kerr didn’t deserve all the early criticism.“I’ve always thought he had a huge, huge basketball IQ,” the coach said. “Everybody pre-judged everything that we did here before they gave it a chance to work out … I’m happy that we’ve been successful because he’s a great guy.”The Suns’ trade of Boris Diaw(notes) and Raja Bell(notes) to Charlotte for Jason Richardson(notes) and Jared Dudley(notes) has turned out to be a great deal, even though it backfired for a time when Amare Stoudemire went down with a season-ending eye injury just after last