Unbelievable

[ma_falaa_50]

the reason he is playing better because he is playing assertive, amare doe not need many touches on offense to score 20 plus points. we do not need him to score 26 point every night, we need him to rebound and play consistent defense. If Steve Nash, who is a 2 time mvp on this team can not get max... I dont think amare is going to get it either, im glad he finally realizes that. if he wants to leave, he should ask his buddy marion.. who has been in 3 teams since he left phx. how much is he getting paid again?? what a tool.

[Miklo]

Well, well look whose come crawling back through the desert of shame to the oasis of hope begging for just one sip of cool true suns fan forgiveness : THE FAKE SUNS SUPPORTERS. All of sudden you want Amare not to be traded already saying give him his max deal lol, you people are unbelievable.


SUNS 4 LIFE

same $hit I said earlier. we still got 1 or 2 that want him traded, but all of a sudden you win a few games and now we all love Amar'e again. Keep feeding him the ball down low and he'll do wonders for us. WE NEED AMAR'E in this team, don't you all see that? don't you all watch the games?

I'm not sure what you guys are saying but I do hope you aren't saying that whoever wants to keep Amar'e hasn't been watching games or is a bandwagon fan. I could make a list, including myself, of people who have been fans for life and haven't missed a game (except those damn NBATV games and the 10:30 PMs when I have an early meeting) for years.

And I would argue that if you DO know anything about Suns basketball and you HAVE been watching every game for years, you would know what kind of player Amar'e is - and not get caught up because the beginning of this season was an anomaly.

I've said since day 1 that we should keep Amar'e if at all possible and of course I got involved in trade talk but ONLY talk that involved us moving forward as an org., not just dumping Amar'e cause he isn't worth a certain dollar amount. I think the real bandwagon fans are the ones who joined in our glory days of a couple years back and are now pissed because we had like 1.25 bad seasons (and jesus it's not like we've won 3 games this season or anything). These bandwagon fans think Amar'e sucks because he had injuries right after they joined and they didn't see the R.O.Y. and the top 5 player in the league, etc.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion about the roster, the players, the record, management, etc. Anyone saying anything different is at the risk of looking ignorant at best.

[realsunsfan]

Good post Miklo, another thing of note about Amare is that he usually starts every year about the same, but right around the all star break is when he really starts to turn up the intensity. He has done that every year. He turns up the intensity for the final push of the year and going into the playoffs, I don't really like the "coasting" for the first half of the year, but you can't complain or argue his play in the second half of the year and playoffs.

[JohnVancouver]

some people just don't understand that amare NEEDS to be traded... i would love for him to stay only if he's willing to take a pay cut 12 - 15 million a year and i'll be fine with amare staying... but that ain't happening. i'm still on the trade amare wagon

Agreed - keeping him hamstrings us for adding guys who can really help set this team up for the next five years. We need to use that money elsewhere, just a fact.

[Miklo]

some people just don't understand that amare NEEDS to be traded... i would love for him to stay only if he's willing to take a pay cut 12 - 15 million a year and i'll be fine with amare staying... but that ain't happening. i'm still on the trade amare wagon

Agreed - keeping him hamstrings us for adding guys who can really help set this team up for the next five years. We need to use that money elsewhere, just a fact.

The question becomes, who are those guys? Why isn't he one of them? How do we get guys who will give us more talent than our current roster?

And of course the overarching question of, well if Amar'e opts in then we can take the monetary hit for a season and be poised to restructure based on the new CBA.

Just some "devil's advocate" thoughts.

[JohnVancouver]

some people just don't understand that amare NEEDS to be traded... i would love for him to stay only if he's willing to take a pay cut 12 - 15 million a year and i'll be fine with amare staying... but that ain't happening. i'm still on the trade amare wagon

I don't understand why Amare NEEDS to be traded. Enlighten me, please.

He has a contract that is expiring this season - it actually has one more year, but at his option. It's for $17+ million dollars.
If we wait until the end of the year, he can decide not to exercise it and we lose any compensation we could receive via trade i.e. players, draft picks

The fact that the in/out for his last year is solely at his discretion limits the number of teams who will trade for him. A team such as Philadelphia is looking to rebuild and must jettison some long-term, expensive contracts. They would give us a player like Iguodala for Amar'e but only if Amar'e were going to opt out at the end of the year. If he opt in, they are stuck with paying him.

Then again, trading him to someone who wants him, but a destination he does not want to be, means they will only have rented Amar'e for the last few moths of this years as he can opt out and leave them holding a bag full of air.

This gets complicated in the case of a team like the Warriors, who last year wanted Amar'e to add to their roster, and he scuttled the deal in part by saying he would not re-sign with them. Now they would like him as par tof their tear-down and rebuild, but only if he opts out at the end of the season.

All of this is complicated further by the fact that the NBA's CBA with its players is expiring and there's speculation that the salary cap will be reduced in the next cntract, limiting the amount Amar'e may be able to make. Right now he can sign an extension with the Suns for more than any other team is allowed to pay him, and for a longer period.

The Suns, on the other hand, are unsure if he's worth that kind of, Amar'e - at least, to this team. Despite undeniable, ferocious offensive talent Amar'e has for years promised to improve his defensive play but has never made a sustained commitment. he scores a lot of points, and gives up a lot. This is frustrating because when he does work at it, as he showed last night, he is a force on defense.

The Suns front office must fear that if they do pay him, he will go back to his normal form. It's imperative the Suns improve defensively and with the money we will have to spend on Amar'e, we can't do that, nor can we fully believe he will turn into a different player at this late date.

So, in sum - we have a valuable and very expensive asset that can walk out the door without any compensation to us after the season ends. Even if we pay the money to keep him, and at a higher price than we've been paying, he will still only proved what he's given us in the past, which is not enough to take the team to a Finals appearance.
We can't keep him and afford to improve the team.
Over the years, in order to pay players like Nash, Marion and Stat, we've sold off draft picks and now have discontinuity in the roster - instead of players at different stages of development we have very young guys and very old guys. We have no pick again this year, dealt to Seattle in the Kurt Thomas trade. We need to keep adding young players to the roster, both for economy and for the future.
Sending Stat to a team that can give us picks does both.


We have to trade him

[JohnVancouver]

we should also try to get Raja bought out and bring the kobe strangler home

I vote we form this day forth, refer to Raja as

the Hillside Strangler

[JohnVancouver]

I think Amare is playing better because the Suns have gone away from that outrageous jumpshooting approach from early in the season with Frye in the lineup.

Now Amare gets more touches again like in the past more regularly and produces at a very high level even defensively.

In the first half of the season we went with long stretches of Amare not touching the ball at all and just Channing hoisting 10 3s a game.

That jumpshooting problems includes Stat - when he takes it to the rim, like he was last night, he's pure beast. So powerful, so much finesse. He really reminds me of the Hawk at times, except he doesn't have catcher's mitts for hands

When Amar'e feels unloved, he just shoots top of the key jumpers all night

[Miklo]

Great post JVC, and I can see going by that logic - if we do though, I still maintain that we then owe to our future and to Nash an offloading of him, hopefully JRich and maybe even Barbs. Then we don't re-sign Frye. Otherwise we are ditching Amar'e only to suffer through mediocrity until we finally get everyone off the books - at which point we'd only be able to BEGIN rebuilding.

[realsunsfan]

We are a younger team, outside of Ghill and Nash, everybody is in their 20's, Amare-27, Jrich-29, everybody else are youngsters.............

[Jimmy76]

amare is great but if someone offers real assets i say deal

[eastsidecrossover]

Wow KLEON, this is a stupid thread. How about the bandwagon fans who jumped on when were at or near the top of the nba??? How about those who are jumping on the bandwagon to trade Amare at all cost??? There are two sides, people like him, others don’t.

I understand why greats like SDU and KJ7 dont come as often to read this nonsense.

[TXSun]

well well well. this thread is getting a little out of hand. Of course everyone is gonna get a little "offended" when the word "bandwagon" is mentioned in relation to ones comments. I can only stay true to myself and say that I have watched and followed the PHX Suns since my favorite player #7 Kevin Johnson joined the PHX Suns via trade from CLE in 1988. Since then I have followed this team thru the good times and the bad times. I could go on and on about this but I'm not. what's a little annoying are those non-stop "I want Amar'e traded" posts. and then we get on this nice little 4 game winning streak and everyone is in love with Amar'e including those that desperately wanted or want Amar'e traded. Yes everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but it's not even about that. It's about not being a hypocrite when participating in those "TRADE Amar'e" threads. I want Amar'e to retire a PHX Sun, but it's still ok if YOU don't, just don't be a hypocrite.

[JohnVancouver]

We are a younger team, outside of Ghill and Nash, everybody is in their 20's, Amare-27, Jrich-29, everybody else are youngsters.............

Yes, I didn't mean it was split evenly young'uns and greybeards. Just that normally a team would have some guys who were in the league a few years, some newbies and some vets, We have two guys closer to 40 than 30, Amar'e and JRich late 20s and the rest are kids.

It would be nice if we had some of those guys who were dealt off - and no need to get into why they were, we've all been over that ground many many times - so that there were a few guys on the roster just coming into their prime.

[Azsports77]

Trading Amare for the crap that will be offered is illogical. The fans have been consistent when a player doesn't satisfy them they want them traded and so far every time the trade has been terrible and made this team even worse. Now lets look at New Jersey that everyone is saying could make a trade for Amare they are 4-41 why on earth would you trade him for anything less than their first round pick with that awful record which just proves how bad the players they have really are terrible with the exception of a few of them. If the team the Suns decided to deal with is not willing to give up their best first round pick in return for Amare then there should be no deal anything less and theuns will end up a worse team than they already are for alot longer. I don't see a team trading their best first round pick for Amare when they know how deficient our GM and Sarver are the team will settle for nothing less than making those two look like idiots . So for all those saying trade Amare you have no idea how moronic that will end up being and the Suns will be bad for along time to come so keeping being ignorant and asking to trade Amare it just show you never appreciated him in the first place .