Adrian Wojnarowski = Satan

[Sun Scorched]

As long as the Phoenix Suns linger as that championship-free franchise in the desert, they will continue to regret making a trade for a broken-down Shaquille O'Neal. Between going for it, and sheer desperation, there is the finest line. What happened to believing in Mike D'Antoni's system? What happened to believing speed and finesse could deliver a championship?

In every way, this trade is an indictment of these D'Antoni glory years with the Suns. If Suns president Steve Kerr is thrusting Shaq onto his coach, he never bought into his coach's system. If D'Antoni is going along with this, you have to wonder whether he ever truly believed his way could win a title.

If he's willing to trade Shawn Marion for this Shaq, the architect of this system has surrendered.

"What are they (expletive) thinking?" one Western Conference executive blurted late Tuesday night.

"I have no clue what they are thinking," one Eastern Conference scout said. "Shaq retired two years ago."

"It seems like a classic clash of styles," one Western Conference GM said.

Still, there was one Eastern Conference GM who said, "I give Phoenix credit for rolling the dice and trying to make this happen."

This is beyond a roll of the dice. Shaq has to pass a physical in Phoenix on Wednesday, a source told Yahoo! Sports, and you wonder if the Suns elders might come to their senses and make sure that O'Neal "fails" the examination.

For reasons that are clear, Shaq doesn't fit offensively with the Suns. He can't run anymore. He can't shoot. He still was groaning about his touches in Miami, and you think he's going to accept life as the fourth, maybe fifth, option at times? There's little evidence to suggest Shaq simply will embrace the role of defensive stopper that the Suns so desperately want of him.

Do you think Shaq will be content with rebounding and throwing outlets to start fast breaks, never to be rewarded on the offensive end? Alonzo Mourning did it late in his Miami career, but Shaq never has come to terms with his basketball mortality. He still thinks he's the Diesel, and God bless him for it. It makes him bigger than life. Yet it doesn't make him right for the Suns.

Most of all, Shaq can't stay on the floor. He is broken down. He will be 36 next month. He always is hurt now. He has been meeting constantly with doctors this season, MRI after MRI on his hip. His knees still struggle to carry those 340 pounds on his bones. Shaq's spirit was built to endure forever, but his body is a different story.

The Suns are hoping a chance to play for a contender will motivate him to do his rehab and keep his weight down, but even that is wishful thinking. Listen, Shaq had one title left in him. Pat Riley squeezed it out of him. It's over. He doesn't bring Grant Hill's desperation to be a champion. Shaq has been there, done that four times, and you wonder how much that lure even drives him anymore.

Sure, Shaq would've made more sense for the Dallas Mavericks' half-court style, for an owner, Mark Cuban, who doesn't dump good players and future draft picks to stay out of the luxury tax. Yet that's all the Suns have done for the past year under owner Robert Sarver. If the Suns are willing to pay the $40 million owed Shaq over the next two years, they never should have traded tough-guy Kurt Thomas to the Seattle SuperSonics. He always did a good job defending Tim Duncan. He rebounded. He made shots. Most of all, he stayed on the floor.

Ultimately, Shaq can't do that anymore. How in the world is he going to make it to the end of June, through a long playoff run? Odds are he'll be wearing a suit on the bench come playoff time for the Suns.

So yes, Marion wants out of Phoenix. What does it tell you about him that he would welcome a trade to the worst team in the NBA? He wants a max-contract extension, and the Suns are unwilling to pay him. Here in Phoenix, he has a chance to win a championship, but apparently he is thrilled with taking a trip to lottery-land with the Miami Heat. Maybe Marion will opt out of the $17.8 million owed him in 2008-09 and become a free agent. Maybe Pat Riley re-signs him. Either way, Marion ought to call the Atlanta Hawks' Joe Johnson and see how life is with a loser.

Nevertheless, Kerr has played for too many championship teams to even understand a player who would want out of a system and away from a point guard who made him a star. To trade Marion is plausible for a lot of reasons, but for Shaq? Now? Without the suspensions against the Spurs in the conference semifinals, the Suns were sure they could've beaten San Antonio. Maybe they were right, but trying to change themselves because the Lakers grabbed Pau Gasol, because they fear the Mavericks will get Jason Kidd, is the wrong way.

Yes, the Suns believe they need strength in the middle. They need a defensive presence. They wanted Amare Stoudemire to move to power forward, where the league's centers no longer can destroy him on a nightly basis. Still, this trade doesn't get the Suns closer to a title, just closer to heartbreak.

"Shaq doesn't fit anything they do," one Eastern Conference assistant coach said Tuesday night. "What makes the Suns great in the half-court is that they pick and roll everybody, all of those guys can shoot it. They have everyone playing a position bigger than they are, like Amare at the five, and Matrix at the four.

[-SDU-]

hes always been a suns hater

i dont get the people who said running would never win and suns were too small, now hating on the suns for getting bigger and slower?

[Stat_Man_1838]

YA, I cant even stand going to yahoos sports page anymore, all i ever see from him are articles dissing the suns! Anyways he will eat his own words WHEN the suns win their first championship this year!

By the way im new here on this board, been a suns fan for 21 years, well maybe a lil less than that considering I am only 21 but u guys get the point.

[Big Money]

hes always been a suns hater

i dont get the people who said running would never win and suns were too small, now hating on the suns for getting bigger and slower?

well

doubt dantoni would even play his overweight non running non shooting backside

http://www.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=749947
as you can tell not too many people think itll work

[impulsenine]

Heh, I think that, if he's Satan, it'd be natural for him to play Devil's advocate....

And frankly, apart from the tone about surrender and other hyperbole, he raises a lot of the same issues I have with the trade.

[Seattlesun]

shaq has haters, suns have haters. expect alot of this type of writing from now on.

the ultimate would be to rub it in all their faces. maybe we can appoint someone to keep track of all these types of articles and do something with them after the suns win the title??

[Biff]

Meh... The guy is an idiot. Sometimes I wonder how these people get these jobs, most of them know jack **** about sport(s).

[tuncaboylu]

Wojnarowski was #1 Suns supporter in Sprus series.

Stop labelling people as Satan, Devil, Idiot who didn't like this trade. It's a very risky trade and most of these Satans have good points about their writings.

[Magz50]

I hate that guy too. As a Spurs fan i remember in the series last year how much crap spewed out of his pages about how the Spurs were done blah blah blah. He's an idiot i don't even read what he has to say anymore.

[Sun Scorched]

Wojnarowski was #1 Suns supporter in Sprus series.

Stop labelling people as Satan, Devil, Idiot who didn't like this trade. It's a very risky trade and most of these Satans have good points about their writings.

Trust me when I say that this isn't a knee-jerk reaction to this one article.

I've read countless articles that he has written about other teams. He writes amazing articles about horrible teams and truns on great teams like the Spurs, Suns and Mavs. Hell, I think I remember reading an article about the Celtics in which he said they were all too old to do anything during the regular season.

Point is, it feels like this guy gets off by writing to create the shock factor. I say this because his writing, as far as journalism is concerned, sucks.

[KJ7]

This has nothing to do with this particular article but I've never thought he was a good journo.

He had some serious egg on his face after saying that Kobe pretty much ran Shaq out of town and then when it was confirmed that it didn't happen that way he said absolutely nothing to counter his initial scathing article.

He's just a stirrer and that's fine, but he hardly ever gets it right ... that's not fine!

[-SDU-]

-= original quote snipped =-



http://www.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=749947
as you can tell not too many people think itll work

you seem to be missing my point

i WAS and AM a believer that small ball could win a title and i DIDNT believe dantoni would play him

what i am saying is that for all those fools who said small ball wouldnt work, now they are saying were dumb for getting bigger, and alot of them dont know why we didnt stay small and stay the course, when they themselves said we couldnt win like that

i never said we couldnt win like that

they are just stupid

[-SDU-]

This has nothing to do with this particular article but I've never thought he was a good journo.

He had some serious egg on his face after saying that Kobe pretty much ran Shaq out of town and then when it was confirmed that it didn't happen that way he said absolutely nothing to counter his initial scathing article.

He's just a stirrer and that's fine, but he hardly ever gets it right ... that's not fine!

some of the BS he and chad ford are putting out now is laughable

i cant even be bothered starting on the latest chad ford article

[Cash]

Wojnarowski has never stood out much to me, whether positively or negatively. I think this article is pretty spot-on. I understand that you don't like it because it paints a negative picture of the Snaq trade, but I notice that you didn't actually refute any of his points. Here's one of the parts you bolded:

"Most of all, Shaq can't stay on the floor. He is broken down. He will be 36 next month. He always is hurt now."

What part of that is false? Snaq has played 4 games in the past month, and isn't playing now. Take a look at his games played for the last 5 years. And there's not much disputing the part about him turning 36 next month.

Anyway, I'll certainly admit that this article has a strong negative slant to it. But Wojnarowski raises some good points. How does D'Antoni reconcile his enthusiasm over this trade with all his comments over the past few years about how we could win with this system? Or his comments about how playing KT "too much" supposedly cost us the Spurs series last year, because it slowed us down too much? (Solution: trade for a much slower player who's a worse defender and per-minute rebounder.)

And Wojnarowski could've been harsher. If I was tasked with writing a bash-this-trade piece, I would've brought up Sarver's declaration of a couple weeks ago that there was no way Amare or Marion would be traded. But while that does slam the Suns, it doesn't fit with the theme of the article, which is the Suns giving up on their system. We've heard a lot the past 3 years about how the team's philosophy was to have speed/quickness advantages at every position and make opponents match up to us. But Snaq gives up a speed advantage to every quality center in the league, and Amare won't have much of a quickness advantage over opposing power forwards.

We've heard a lot of spin from the Suns over the past 3 years, and now we're hearing a lot of spin in the opposite direction. If you want to ignore the previous spin or pretend it never happened, that's your prerogative. But that kind of retconning always pisses me off, so I'll pass.

[Revived]

Wojnarowski has never stood out much to me, whether positively or negatively. I think this article is pretty spot-on. I understand that you don't like it because it paints a negative picture of the Snaq trade, but I notice that you didn't actually refute any of his points. Here's one of the parts you bolded:

"Most of all, Shaq can't stay on the floor. He is broken down. He will be 36 next month. He always is hurt now."

What part of that is false? Snaq has played 4 games in the past month, and isn't playing now. Take a look at his games played for the last 5 years. And there's not much disputing the part about him turning 36 next month.

Anyway, I'll certainly admit that this article has a strong negative slant to it. But Wojnarowski raises some good points. How does D'Antoni reconcile his enthusiasm over this trade with all his comments over the past few years about how we could win with this system? Or his comments about how playing KT "too much" supposedly cost us the Spurs series last year, because it slowed us down too much? (Solution: trade for a much slower player who's a worse defender and per-minute rebounder.)

And Wojnarowski could've been harsher. If I was tasked with writing a bash-this-trade piece, I would've brought up Sarver's declaration of a couple weeks ago that there was no way Amare or Marion would be traded. But while that does slam the Suns, it doesn't fit with the theme of the article, which is the Suns giving up on their system. We've heard a lot the past 3 years about how the team's philosophy was to have speed/quickness advantages at every position and make opponents match up to us. But Snaq gives up a speed advantage to every quality center in the league, and Amare won't have much of a quickness advantage over opposing power forwards.

We've heard a lot of spin from the Suns over the past 3 years, and now we're hearing a lot of spin in the opposite direction. If you want to ignore the previous spin or pretend it never happened, that's your prerogative. But that kind of retconning always pisses me off, so I'll pass.

Agreed 100%

[GrantHill]

Adrian Wojnarowski ‏@WojYahooNBA

Phoenix has traded sunsfan88 and a future first-round pick to Charlotte for cap relief, league sources tell Y! Sports.

[Ryu]

Adrian Wojnarowski ‏@WojYahooNBA

Phoenix has traded sunsfan88 and a future first-round pick to Charlotte for cap relief, league sources tell Y! Sports.

Can we keep Kate Upton (or whoever this girl is in his avatar)?

[Kerrsed]

C'mon fellas, no need to bump 3 threads from 2008!!

[Revived]

Haha sorry, just got bored. Won't do it again.

But damn you guys should check out some of the old threads, its actually pretty fun. There is so many "Can't believe people are hating on Shaq, just wait til he wins the title with Nash" threads.

LMAO they couldn't even get past the 1st round!

[YFZblu]

Wow, terrible thread bump.