Post#55 » by KaneSFFL » Wed Jul 7, 2010 8:42 am
First off screw all the people hating on amare
Amare quickly became my favorite Sun when he came out of HS...I still remember listening to the radio when we drafted him and my dad saying we should have got that jeffries guy. He proved right away he was going to be something special.
Loved the power and aggression he played with on the court, throwing down the monster dunks, rejecting shots into the 4th row, pounding his chest after making an unbelievable play...After the 2004/2005 season I was in such good spirits with the Suns. We had just made a great run with our boys, had one of the best up and coming players in the league in Amare (24 year old big man who just finished putting up 37/10 against the spurs), and seemed on our most legit path to greatness in our team's history.
Then came the first injury, which whether I want to believe or not, came within a few days of him signing his max contract with us. That was bad because of all the years in the west, that was the easiest year to make it to the finals. We took that dallas team without amare to 6 games. Part of me always wondered if that hurt Amare a little bit, knowing we got even a game farther than we did the previous year without him.
Either way it seemed like something changed about him after the knee injury. Yes he came back and beasted on the league that next year in 06/07, which i think was our best team, but his attitude towards the game seemed to change. I think partly it was because of the reaction to his knee. When he first had his surgery, everyone was saying how he was done and even if by some slight chance he did recover, he would need another surgery within a couple years. I think that hurt the relationship between Amare and the front office a lot.
As things got worse between the FO and Amare, one thing that didn't change was Amare's on court play, for better and also for worse. Although he had lost some explosiveness in his game, he was still the best finisher by far, a player who with one thunderous dunk could completely change the momentum in a game. His offensive game was becoming more polished, as his jumper continued to improve, as did his freethrow shooting. He never developed a back to the basket game, which I think could have helped him a lot. He had his moments where he could create very easily for himself, but against better defensive teams or better big men, he struggled at times. Even so, his last three years here were BEASTLY offensively, starting with the last couple months of the year when we got shaq and he averaged almost 30 a game, to last year when his play took off after the allstar break.
He always elevated his game when the playoffs rolled around, something I knew i could always count on from him. There were so many good things about this guy it became hard not to love the guy and root for him to do well. Coming from that rough background with his mom and lack of dad, brothers always in jail...amazing he steered clear of all that stuff. He was a great community guy, always doing charity events for kids and stuff.
There were a lot of things he did that bothered me though. It seems after that first knee surgery he lost some sort of trust/friendship/belief in the FO. Sarver was probably a huge ass in all of this, and amare's ego probably didn't help either. He became more occupied with trying to make himself seem like the good guy, when there really was never a need to. To me it seemed like he developed a '**** the team' mentality towards the end of his stay here, and its really not that hard to see how or why it happened, because honestly the team had been trying to get rid of him for the past few years.
But the biggest thing that bothered me about amare was his defense. Part of it was just never being taught, part of it was just bad effort. Every year we heard the same thing: "I've improved defensively" or "I want to be Ron artest" ...and every year it was the same thing- stretches where he gave a damn about blocking his man out, or rotating over, but mostly I saw myself screaming at him for letting a scrub look like an allstar. Ya he would drop 30, but what difference does it make when the other guy (nick collison is the first to come to mind) drops 20 and 20 on you? That was the most frustrating thing about Amare. Knowing he was such a MotherF*ucking Beast that could do literally whatever he wanted, yet most nights he settled for 20 and 8 with bad effort.
With all that said, I loved every moment with him. Watching him grow as a player and person was awesome. He was and still is one of the most exciting players in the league. I really hope he does well in NY, for his sake, the city's sake, and partly to screw sarver over.
Peace Amare for the great memories, and beast it in NY with lebron/wade
