Never Fear 33 Is Here wrote:Exactly what I was about to say and the most important factor in my opinion. Having said that, it shouldn't be Ama're who has to suffer individual stats. It should be Shaq................no ifs or buts about it.
And in reality, it should be neither, but Porter isn't arranging the offense sensibly. Mind this, Shaq's taking a hair over 11 shots a game and posting the second-lowest usage rate of his career.
Phoenix's problems are not the result of Shaq touching the ball a lot, certainly not at over 58% FG and shooting a 6-year high from the foul line on over 7 attempts a game. It's not even the offense, which is generally fine (5th in the league in pace and in ORTG). The Suns continue to be plagued by a mediocre defense with critical holes at the 1 and the 4 and (despite Shaq) a rebounding deficiency. Now, they're outrebounding teams this year, but there's a significant advantage for their opponents on the offensive glass, just about 2 extra offensive boards a game, and that means that the Suns need to man up on the defensive glass more effectively than they have done thus far. That's not a Shaq problem, that's an "everyone else" problem. For example Amare, who's posting the second-worst DREB% of his career this season.
Amare is a scorer, yes. And he's as useless as tits on a bull if he's not getting the ball... but since the team's offense is still generally doing fine without him, the answer isn't necessarily "feed Amare the ball more," though that would help in the regular season. The answer instead is "halve the number of critical failures on defense you field in your starting lineup and improve your rebounding and team play," which is more sensible in any case.
Also, I might point this out:
Loyalty to Amare is, at least in part, coming because people see him as a young guy (26) who could anchor a team as the star.
But are we forgetting that he's like 2 years away from another round of microfracture surgery? His own doctor said the surgery wasn't going to be a permanent thing, that it'd have to happen again about 3 or 4 years after the initial surgery. This is something that should be legitimately considered too, especially with issues of longevity and stardom and what-not being bandied around.
The Suns have mortgaged their future for a title window and that's fine; it worked out beautifully for the Celtics. Now Phoenix needs to stick to that plan, move Amare for the right pieces and make a real title run.
In any case, I wouldn't say Shaq needs to sacrifice much of anything. I think if anything, if the Suns plan on keeping Amare around, his role needs to be intensified in the nearly 20 minutes a game when Shaq isn't playing. There's more than enough time to give Amare the ball when Shaq's riding pine, you just have to be clever with your rotations so Amare only spends like 2/3s of his time on the floor with Shaq... which has the added effect of bolstering your offense when Shaq isn't on the floor.
Porter's just too stupid to figure this stuff out.
