ama're stoudamire not happy with the heat

[dancing2thabeet]

I would like to have Willie Reed or Keith Benson or Amare

Sadly, Wilie Reed was signed by Nets. He provided some decent minutes to them when they had injury problems.

[Axel]

You guys have to remember, Amare has never been to a NBA Finals in his career. This is a guy who was a perennial all-star. Nash & Stoudemire were the best pick n roll combo since Stockton & Malone. He was on the All NBA 1st team in 2006-07. I'm sure he's just frustrated that he hasn't been able to contribute more, and doesn't see many opportunities to get back there in the future.

true but if he played good defense then he would have gotten more mins.

which brings me to this article:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/amar-e-stoudemire-claims-nobody-ever-taught-him-214916043--nba.html

For all his scoring talents and athletic ability, even at the pre-injury peak of his powers with the Phoenix Suns, Stoudemire has just never been an aware or adept defender, much to the consternation of the fans of the teams for which he has played.

Luckily, there is a very simple explanation for Stoudemire's defensive woes — just teach him how to play defense, dummy! (For your health.)

You see, according to the man himself, as detailed by Al Iannazzone of Newsday, nobody's ever taken the time to do so:

"Just having a defensive coach for the first time in my career is going to help," Stoudemire said. "I've never been taught defense in my whole career. To now have a coach that actually teaches defense and teaches strategies and knows positioning and posture and how to guard different plays is going to be helpful. I'm going to take it as a challenge, accept the challenge and try to improve as a player."

On its face, that seems like a reasonable (if tabloid-vitriol-heavy) response to the notion that a grown man who has played at the upper echelons of NBA basketball for more then a decade has never received any instruction on how to play defense, especially considering he played as a rookie under Frank Johnson for a team that finished 11th among 29 NBA teams in defensive efficiency, according to Basketball-Reference.com's numbers. Plus, as we've noted before, for all the derision of his defensive acumen as a pace-pushing, offensive-minded coach, the Phoenix teams that D'Antoni coached and on which Stoudemire played routinely ranked around the middle of the NBA pack; it's not like they were eternally bereft on that end or that nobody there, D'Antoni or his assistants included, knew anything about defense, Stoudemire's own well-documented shortcomings aside

What is your point?

Amare has never been a great defender, but I can assure you he would still be an NBA starter in spite of his poor defense, had he never gotten injured.

[Seabass777]

Ehhh really don't give a flip. Hated the signing anyways hope he doesent come back.

[HIF]

not mentioned in Riles interview. Was he talked about by Spo?

[GameTime_3]

A bit strange, that we talked about him all year, we got him healthy, then he got healthy, became our starter(Did a decent job) and then in the blink of an eye, he was benched and not to see any minutes. I thought Amare was GREAT this year for the minimum and I would love to have him back at that cost again. Can start at times, can play decent man to man d(Most surprising thing I saw) and give you some down low buckets.

Is he a priority? No way but he was a nice veteran piece that I think almost every team could use.

[3ballbomber]

Y'all tripping, Studmire helped us plenty from what I was expecting.

A bit strange, that we talked about him all year, we got him healthy, then he got healthy, became our starter(Did a decent job) and then in the blink of an eye, he was benched and not to see any minutes. I thought Amare was GREAT this year for the minimum and I would love to have him back at that cost again. Can start at times, can play decent man to man d(Most surprising thing I saw) and give you some down low buckets.

Is he a priority? No way but he was a nice veteran piece that I think almost every team could use.

Cats seems to forget he had Hassan sitting on that pine while he did good as a starter. Amare did a reasonably good job for us this season. I'm happy to have him back.