My Boy Amare looks really bad right now

[chriscringle95]

Ok well you guys can have Uber Mutumbo and I will take Shawn Kemp 2.0.

[Frank Lee]

PISS on all this Amare vrs Howard...Amare vrs ??? conversations.

Right now, it is Amare'10 vrs Amare'05. Let this cat play ball and get his legs, then pick this discussion up in January, when apples are apples. That seems to be our FO's plan too.

Fundamentally, his progression has been slow ( see RunDog's post...) and it may only marginally change... But for most here, if he began conducting DUNKATHON CLINICS once again, we'd all overlook his defensive short comings, just as we do with Nash.

[Frank Lee]

ooops doubling up

[Miklo]

PISS on all this Amare vrs Howard...Amare vrs ??? conversations.

Right now, it is Amare'10 vrs Amare'05. Let this cat play ball and get his legs, then pick this discussion up in January, when apples are apples. That seems to be our FO's plan too.

Fundamentally, his progression has been slow ( see RunDog's post...) and it may only marginally change... But for most here, if he began conducting DUNKATHON CLINICS once again, we'd all overlook his defensive short comings, just as we do with Nash.

That may be true, but I'd rather have 0 points 15 boards and 3 blocks than 27 points and 3 rebs 1 blk. Maybe I should go for Oden..WHAMMY!

But the point is, I'd rather have defense and no scoring - only D12 provides the defense AND the scoring. Maybe he relies on athleticism and has limited post moves, but that's easier to learn than defense/rebounding.

[Togo]

I thought I was a pessimist.... I was amazed he played 40 minutes. I thought for the first 3 or 4 weeks of the season he would be playing 25-30 minutes. I just hope he doesn't overdue it, and hurt himself again.

The good news is that he really hasn't put any wear and tear on his knees for over 6 months....

The bad is he is in bad basketball shape. I think it would be unrealistic to expect otherwise due to the eye injury.

Offensively, when in shape, he is the best in the business.

Defensively, his awareness is shockingly bad. The dude needs to spend some time with Olajuwon.

[Togo]

Maybe he relies on athleticism and has limited post moves, but that's easier to learn than defense/rebounding.

That is certainly debatable.

[Frank Lee]

That may be true, but I'd rather have 0 points 15 boards and 3 blocks than 27 points and 3 rebs 1 blk. Maybe I should go for Oden..WHAMMY!

But the point is, I'd rather have defense and no scoring - only D12 provides the defense AND the scoring. Maybe he relies on athleticism and has limited post moves, but that's easier to learn than defense/rebounding.

What you would rather have and what we do have are like two ends of the rainbow. We will never have DH... or the likes... he is as unique to this game as Stat was 5 yrs ago....and Shaq was 10. DHoward is a force. Just as Stat was.... If Amare can return to that, who would complain then? The guy demoralized who ever was in the way. I doubt if we will see such dominance from him again, but I'll take his 25pt, 7 rbs, and 2 blocks... because... well, thats what we have and thats what we need. wahwahwah about his D... but it is TEAM D that needs to improve.

Put Stat along side a D monster, and all is well. At least has been on record about his defensive short comings. I will give him the benefit of the doubt till he is in top BB shape. And as mentioned, if he is creating a poster child night in night out, I'll be happy with that.

Wouldn't you rather have Billups, DHarris, CPaul over Nash ??? This F-n 'Kid in candy store' mentality is silly.... at least until Stat hits the trade table.

[Miklo]

Maybe he relies on athleticism and has limited post moves, but that's easier to learn than defense/rebounding.

That is certainly debatable.

Well then debate it

I'm thinking of models from the past and you certainly see players adding scoring moves to their arsenals very frequently. Admittedly, if you have no offensive IQ/awareness then you're probably right. But for someone who CAN find the hold like D12, it's just a matter of polishing some moves and repetition through practice.

On the other hand, you can teach Amar'e positioning for defense and rebounding, but it's hard to do that and for him to get his timing down because he has NO defensive awareness. So I guess in short I agree with you for players who have NO offensive IQ a la Ben Wallace - but on the other hand I think its more common to have a little bit of offensive IQ than a little bit of defensive IQ as your secondary.

[Miklo]

What you would rather have and what we do have are like two ends of the rainbow. We will never have DH... or the likes... he is as unique to this game as Stat was 5 yrs ago....and Shaq was 10. DHoward is a force. Just as Stat was.... If Amare can return to that, who would complain then? The guy demoralized who ever was in the way. I doubt if we will see such dominance from him again, but I'll take his 25pt, 7 rbs, and 2 blocks... because... well, thats what we have and thats what we need. wahwahwah about his D... but it is TEAM D that needs to improve.

Put Stat along side a D monster, and all is well. At least has been on record about his defensive short comings. I will give him the benefit of the doubt till he is in top BB shape. And as mentioned, if he is creating a poster child night in night out, I'll be happy with that.

Wouldn't you rather have Billups, DHarris, CPaul over Nash ??? This F-n 'Kid in candy store' mentality is silly.... at least until Stat hits the trade table.

While your logic as usual is solid albeit laced with cynicism, I'm not thinking of this comparison in terms of who I'd like on the Suns..cause let's face it we are not getting D12 nor would he fit our current system as well as a healthy Amar'e does. I do however see D12's assets and intangibles as more conducive to a well-rounded monster of a player. Amar'e is a beast when healthy, but what I sort of have in mind when making this comparison is that it's harder to find a TOP NOTCH defensive big than a big who can score 20 points. Therefore I would rather get a scoring guard and a cheaper scoring PF, and pick up D12 as my primary big.

You say D12 is unique to this game...yes indeed. I would have to argue that he is more unique to this game than Amar'e was or has been at any point. Even Amar'e at his peak, however talented was not a category buster - I mean you always had your bigs who could score in the 20's. Amar'e was considered the best center in the game when he played center, but if you put him at PF for his whole career he is right up against a healthy Duncan, Brand, KG (who was better than Amar'e because of his well-rounded-ness anyway), etc.

[lilfishi22]

Defensively, his awareness is shockingly bad. The dude needs to spend some time with Olajuwon.

He needs to spend time with someone who will kick his a$$ if he doesn't work on his D. He's spent his whole career in Phoenix surrounded by yes-mens and enablers and not one person who would beat his behind if he gets lazy on D. It may be too late now, I dunno. But now is better than never.

[Frank Lee]

While your logic as usual is solid albeit laced with cynicism.........

you had me at hello.....

He needs to spend time with someone who will kick his a$$ if he doesn't work on his D. He's spent his whole career in Phoenix surrounded by yes-mens and enablers and not one person who would beat his behind if he gets lazy on D. It may be too late now, I dunno. But now is better than never

Such brilliance.... such insight........

mere mortals stand up and take notice....

we have a winna

[inyourface48]

i just love frank lee's posts. they always put a smile in my face (and sometimes in my heart, too )

[realfung]

maybe Amare is over-rated

[JohnVancouver]

I have 5 Suns' jerseys, and 3 of them are Amare's, so I really don't see how I can be classified as an Amare hater. But over the years, I have paid closer attention to his positioning on defense and rebounding. He really seems utterly clueless in those areas, which begs the question, did he ever know what he was doing in those aspects? I think his athletic freakiness he had masked many holes in his game, that one learns in college.

----- Of course it has. It's common for ferwakishly gifted athletes to get by on .. freakish ahtleticism. Amare has obviously improved his (offensive) game since coming into the league but he's consistently been voted an All-Star and paid many millions of dollars. Why woudl he really believe his game was lacking?
Under Mike D he wasn't expected to D up or understand nuances; he wasn't taught any, from the evidence. (The guy I thought we should have snapped up is McHale, when the Wolves bounced him - he could teach Amar'e and RoLo a lot.)
That said, I think Amar'e's D is looking a lot better so far.


But yeah, i know the game and it really is infuriating to watch someone with that kind of ability fail to box out or even get his arms up for a board ...

[Frank Lee]

I brought this over from the game thread... cause its about Stat.... (damn MODs are starting to condition me)

if we let amare walk.... who would we go after? bosh...?

Sarver takes the savings and runs

We resign Frye at market price too to keep this team competitive enough to get people to buy some tickets

God i hope im wrong

This front orfice has taken great measures to trim its budget to the lux tax limit. They are almost there, but have looked liked monkey-butts to do it. We won't go over the limit and pay tax. Look around the league... it is the new NBA business model. Next yr will be the first yr RSarver has completely achieved this and it earned him the 'cheap-bastard' label. Being completely in charge of the bottom line, we will not be dealing from the no-leverage-position-cost-cutting-weakness that has tainted practically every transaction we have done over the past 4 - 5 yrs.

W/o Stat, assuming Frye is resigned to about a 5 mill deal, and of course Grant Hill re-ups, we will have about 50 - 53 mill invested in 9 players. Add in a re-signed Lou at 2-3 and that puts us at 10 for <55 mill. So I guess we will have around 12-13 mill to drop on 3 guys.

Sorry Stat, if all you have is 20 non dominating pts, 8 boards and average D (assuming improvement)... 10 mill is your price tag. If the Ego doesn't get in the way (likely), nor another team goes crazy with the offers (more likely) he may stay here.

Point is, we do not need to over pay. And we certainly do not need to focus on this 3 - 4 games into the season. This team has some good, promising young players, with 2 of the classiest most respected Vets in the game holding the reigns. We have a lot of fire power and as long as Nash is here, butts will be in the seats. Its his team, period. We just all got a little intoxicated on the Amare's high light Dunks that came at about 2 - 3 per game. Do you remember post micro days, NBA.com was keeping DUNKS as a freakin statistic ?? It was neck and neck between Stat and Shaq. they were M I L E S apart from anyone else. Those days are gone.

All is not lost in a Amare-less world. This will be a humbling experience for him. Hopefully, he comes out of it with the desire to remain here at a reasonable salary that allows PHX to retain/add to what is hopefully a successful squad. Take a page from the consummate pro (GH) and don't measure respect only with the $ sign.

Stat may find his best ticket to punch is to take the 17 mill player option.... that, more than anything (IMO) will lead to a trade, as once again the tax man cometh.

[chriscringle95]

Frank you do speak the truth about 2005. STAT and Shaq were slammin it at an insane rate. STAT lead the league in dunks that year. Pre-Micro fracture STAT is Jordan/SHAQ like in his dominance. 2009 he is awesome just a little less explosive due to the surgery. He is probably holding back though so he can play a while longer.

Jordan stopped with the dunk contest and in game dunks so he could extended his career as well so that wouldn't surprise me if STAT could still do it but chooses not too. Not saying Amare is Jordan, just saying that he is similar in his desire to crush his opponents with a devastating dunk anytime the opportunity arose.

[garrick]

If Rondo can get 10 mil a year there's no way Stat is worth only 10 mil a season!

[tsherkin]

Just before we get any further...

but if you put him at PF for his whole career he is right up against a healthy Duncan, Brand, KG (who was better than Amar'e because of his well-rounded-ness anyway), etc.

I agree with most of your post, but Amare even in 04-05 was clearly inferior to Duncan and Garnett because he was literally nothing but a scorer. Scoring is awesome... but if it's all you do, it isn't enough to put you in the category of players like Garnett and Duncan, who are mid-20s scorers who happen to also be among the best defenders in league history and vastly superior passing threats.

Yeah it's a shame because if Amare never had microfracture or eye surgery he would have been a better player than Dwight. The 04-05 version of Amare could have been possibly the best player in the NBA if he never got injured, it's a shame

This is also false; Amare would have remained a better offensive weapon than Dwight, but Dwight's increase in scoring over the last few years coupled with the considerably more dominant rebounding and defense would have assured that Amare remained below him.

There's no way you take a super-efficient big man who's the most dominant rebounder in the league (has led the league in total rebounds 4 years running and in RPG three years running now) and the reigning DPOY over Amare.

No way. Volume scoring, even efficient volume scoring, isn't worth more than what Dwight brings.

Now, back on topic.

Amare.

Three games isn't a great sample size. We should really talk after 20. We will see that Amare likely remains a relatively weak rebounder, though. He's missing on the defensive glass, as usual, which is all about positioning. His offensive rebounding will come around in time, that's probably related to his legs a little and missing the feel of what it's like to play against some of the best athletes in all of basketball. The NBA game is fast as lightning. The big deal is that he's 33% below his usual defensive rebounding production and that's what's mostly killing his rebounding totals. His DREB% has dropped from a career 20% to 13.8% so far this season (18.1 last year).

But what has always been true is that Amare is a lazy defender who uses his hands instead of his feet, doesn't fight, keeps his hands down, doesn't contest shots well unless he's going for a big block and doesn't rotate well. He's a terrible defender and while he's got the physical tools to be a dominant rebounder, he isn't one. In the playoffs, he tends to rebound well, but in the regular season, he's never lived up to his potential as a rebounder. I'll give him that in 06-07, he was rebounding well by rate, and in 07-08, he was rebounding about as well as a conservative expectation might have hoped for (again, by rate), both while playing 33, 34 mpg. He did OK on the glass, but didn't really dominate except on the offensive end, because that's where he cares.

As a result, there's no reason to expect that he'll improve enough to overcome these issues. He mouths off every year about rebounding and defense and having a "complete game" and he never goes through with it. They're just words which meant nothing the first time, the second time, etc. They mean nothing now.

Fortunately, Phoenix's offense is clicking at a similar rate to where it was last year when Gentry took over. Just about 117 ppg, good efficiency, etc. For all intents and purposes, it's like Shaq hasn't left and Porter isn't ruining the team.

Richardson is going to fall off soon, though. He absolutely won't maintain 57% shooting taking 7 threes a game (half his FGA/g), but then the Suns will probably start going to Amare more frequently, and that will pick things up again. But defense-wise?

The Suns are giving up 45.9% 3P to opponents and their opponents are only making 70.5% of their FTAs. League-average FT% was 77.1% last year, so that will change.

Specific percentages, of course, are troublesome because it's only been three games, but the Suns aren't doing a good job of FG defense (47.9% OppFG) and they are giving up high-percentage threes. That 3P% will probably dip by 8-10%, but the FG% isn't likely to drop much, and the Suns are eventually going to play teams that don't suck, which will make things even worse.

Bleh.

Amare makes me so angry.

[aIvin adams]

nobody gives 100% effort on the court all the time, w players like lou amundson coming the closest. its a challenge to pick when and where to use your energy. amare is bad at it. maybe if he had been receiving focused instruction and feedback specific to his game, he would be better.. but i dont think he has received that type of feedback in his career. he'll probably get incrementally better at defense. in my opinion, he already has the last couple years. the rebounding, as tsherkin's numbers show, has been up and down.