bwgood77 wrote:WeekapaugGroove wrote:I didn't have a problem trading Marion but trading him for a washed up Shaq with they system we were playing was ridiculous and seemed gimicky.
I didn't have a HUGE problem with trading him, but I certainly agree on the Shaq thing. I couldn't believe at the time when Miami gave him the 5 year 100 million contract and thought at the time "those last two years are going to be a nightmare contract for them to have" and then what happens? Sarver gets all giddy for Shaq and TRADES for those last two years. I know Kerr and D'Antoni signed off on it, but I think they kind of had to. I think Mickey Arison and Riley were savvy enough to know Sarver would be hyped at the fan mania with getting Shaq and bamboozled us to some extent. I KNEW we would end up having to give us assets to get rid of him.
We were playing well that year, and Marion was only disgruntled because Kerr told him he wasn't a max player and there were only a handful in the league. While that may have been true, I would have been fine giving him the max then, because, although he was old, so was our core. You keep that team together for AT LEAST 2 1/2 more years at least we have a CHANCE and at least can get to maybe the final four.
But if you won't give Marion HIS max, why get an over the hill Shaq at $20 million?
I know GMAT thought Shaq was a guy we could put the right assets around, but I always was a little iffy on whether or not that was possible, and one of the few things I disagreed with him on.
I was rather ambivalent about the trade. Here is what I emailed to a friend on February 7, 2008, in a message titled "Shaq on the Suns."
Do you have any thoughts on this move? It seemed incongruous, especially since Marion embodied the essence of the Suns' style whereas Shaq would seem to be antithesis. That said, a guy like that can always make contributions and should make matters more entertaining if nothing else.
Later that day, I wrote the following:
Apparently, the idea is that Shaq will sort of be like the aging Kareem on the "Showtime" Lakers in the mid-to-late eighties: controlling the paint, rebounding, out-letting the ball, starting the fastbreak, and then on those occasions when the Suns need to run a half-court set, serving as a trusty low-post option, especially in the playoffs when the game slows down. (Of course, Kareem's fitness level was much better than Shaq's.) One potential virtue is that Phoenix's half-court offense becomes more diverse, because otherwise it was basically just Nash running screen-rolls/pops with Stoudemire, Diaw, and Marion, a terrific option but one that sometimes became predictable. On the other hand, Marion was sort of the NBA's version of Randy Moss in his ability to constantly beat the defense down the court and create great passing targets for scores, and his energy, quickness, and athleticism generated turnovers and enhanced the Suns' defensive versatility. The hope is that a motivated Shaq can recover traces of his greatness, address some of the Suns' chronic weaknesses (in-the-trenches rebounding, interior defense, low-post offense), improve the clubhouse chemistry, and thus override the seeming incongruities of him playing in Phoenix's system. We'll see.
WiseOldSun was unambiguously supportive of the trade.
Offensively, the trade worked fine (until Terry Porter came in the next year and instituted more conventional ideas, but then the Suns' offense became exceptionally explosive with Shaq under Alvin Gentry). Although O'Neal obviously could not space the floor like Marion, defenders could not afford to leave him alone along the baseline, close to the basket, so the pick-and-roll with Stoudemire still functioned with hyper-efficiency. But defensively, as I noted earlier, Stoudemire and Shaq did not fit at all. Conversely, Marion and Shaq would have represented a better pairing in that regard.
The idea of trading Marion for someone else makes sense, but who knows what exactly Marion could have fetched.
