Should we have signed Amare to the max?

[bwgood77]

Yes, they could have started the rebuild when they did anyway... but my point is that they would not have. With over 60 million still left on Amare's deal they would have kept plugging away. The only reason they finally let Nash go was because his contract ran out, and even then their answer was more vets, only the front office was so grossly incompetent that the team bottomed out anyway.

I'm one of the more positive posters in general, but even I cannot see them simply swallowing Amare's disaster of a contract via amnesty or stretch... no, they would have been stuck with it. As far as his PER goes... wonderful, he still put up decent individual offensive numbers... while hardly playing and being worse defensively than he ever was here. They had no interest in rebuilding, they SHOULD have started it right then in 2010 when Amare left, but instead they delayed 2 years trying to make it work with Nash. Had Amare still been there they would have dragged it on another 3.

People are fine with Amare leaving because that team had clearly peaked, had virtually no way of improving itself and then Amare's career went off a cliff, his new franchise became a joke and he was the punchline.

If I had a time machine would I go back and do it all the same? Heeeeeell no, but I'd still take the misery I know over the obvious misery and potentially far worse in the long term (which is where we now are) that 5 years of the team limping around, literally and figuartely, in an effort to build around a player who's career was toast.

There was no way they were going to do a rebuild the year after nearly winning the WCF with an incredibly deep team. I get it, you wanted to blow it up after 2010 and that WCF run, but that would have likely not gone over well with 99% of the fans and would have been inexplicable to most of the team.

It could be years until we ever even get close to the WCF again, and could have been if we started the rebuild back then. I would have surveyed the landscape to see if there were any worthy free agents to replace Amare, and if there wasn't a solid plan in place, taken another couple of swings at a championship, since you only build a team that good about every 20 years if you are lucky.

We luckily had a finals run in 76 and made it to the WCF a couple of years later (these were not great teams..they luckily got as far as they did)and then we had a team get to the WCF three times between 89-93, and then three times between 2005-10.

So in close to 50 years, we've had three teams get to the WCF 2-3 times each. It's not an easy place to get to by any means. Even if we blow the last three years, like we did anyway, two years at a chance for a championship, or at least a memorable time getting close would have without a doubt been worth it to me.

It amazes me how many just want to blow up a VERY good team just because they failed against a better team. I see Hawks posters saying blow it up because they can't beat the Cavs though they had the best record in the east two years ago and lost in the ECF and lost to the eventual champions this year as well. Sure they got swept, but they are a LeBron injury away from possibly getting to the finals either year and maybe this year (though I think they do take a step back depending on what Howard brings).

Back to us, if Amare did really suck in year 3, it wouldn't have mattered, because even if we had Nash, he would have gotten injured, played in 50 games and even if we were trapped with contracts on both of them, we would have been forced to rebuild through the draft and gotten high picks anyway, and likely not had the money to spend on players like Beasley, etc.

[phrazbit]

No, I'm not at all saying that they should have blown up a good team because they didn't win it all, if they'd gotten Amare to agree to a 3 year deal with team options in the 4th and 5th years I woulda been fine with that. I'm saying that once they decided to let Amare walk THEN they should have blown it up because it wasn't the same team anymore.

And, as I said before, I don't think they start the rebuild in year 3, not with all that money locked in. Even after letting Nash go they STILL resisted actually tearing down and starting over, instead we got the patchwork abomination that was the 2013 Suns... sure, it ended up getting us a top 5 pick, but not by design, it was pure incompetence that created that awful team. IMO the rebuild would not have started until, at the soonest, 2014/15, possibly later depending on what type of moves they'd made over the years in a desperate attempt to get the Nash/Amare combo to stay relevant.

[GMATCallahan]

And even though he missed over 30 games in his second season with the Knicks, he still played from Christmas through late March, and then came back for the last week of the season and the playoffs.

Stoudemire actually missed only 19 games in his second season with the Knicks, as that year ('11-'12) featured the 66-game lockout-shortened schedule. I seriously doubt, though, that the Suns would have been serious title contenders that season, with Stoudemire and Grant Hill breaking down. They perhaps could have constituted championship contenders in '10'-11 with Stoudemire, but the chances of them breaking through were likely remote (for the reasons that I detailed earlier in the thread).

Since I don't want to go through all the numbers, he wasn't that bad of a player throughout those years, and likely would have been MUCH better playing with Nash and Bledsoe than playing with Felton or whoever else and Melo taking 20 shots a night.

Bledsoe is less of a point guard, and a worse playmaker, compared to Felton; I do not see Stoudemire as being better off with Bledsoe at all.

Nash is obviously a different story, but the crux of the concern was never Stoudemire's scoring. Rather, the concern was his availability due to injury, his defense, his rebounding, his passing, and his turnovers.

o those two years where Nash and the Suns fell a game or two short of the playoffs, with Amare and the WCF team intact we not only make the playoffs, but probably get a high seed since we nearly made the finals those last two years.

Plus the team had depth, with Dragic, Barbosa, Dudley, Frye and Amundson off the bench.

I understand why the decision was made at the time, and was disappointed but ok with it, but I hated everything that happened after that.

I can't believe with the hindsight we have, and knowing we were as close to the finals as we have been since 93, that people are good with all that went down, or at least would have still made that decision if they could go back five years and give us two more years with a chance at the title, and possibly a quicker rebuild instead of those two years with a bunch of crappy vets fighting for the 8th seed.

The question, though, is whether that Western Conference Finals team would have really remained intact even with Stoudemire back in the fold. As I noted earlier in the thread, Barbosa requested a trade due to his diminished playing time and role, and given management's incompetence after Steve Kerr moved on, the Suns probably would have granted that request, imagining that Barbosa was expendable given Dragic's emergence. One has to question, too, whether the new management team (or just the old owner, Robert Sarver) would have brought back Louis Amundson, who of course Phoenix did not re-sign in free agency. And without Amundson and Barbosa to help spark the running game, Dragic and the second unit were not nearly the same.

Either way, the Suns certainly would not have possessed two more legitimate chances at a championship had they re-signed Stoudemire, not with him and Hill breaking down in 2012. They may have still made the playoffs the second year (2012) as a low seed, but they would have likely been erased in the First Round. In '10-'11, the Suns might have again won 50-plus regular season games, but especially without Barbosa (a probable scenario) and possibly Amundson, Phoenix likely would have finished no higher than fifth in the West (the top four teams all won at least 55 games that season, compared to only two Western clubs the previous year). In that case, the Suns probably would have faced Oklahoma City in the 2011 First Round, with a thirty-seven-year old Nash or a thirty-eighty-year old Hill trying to guard a twenty-two-year old Russell Westbrook—not to mention Stoudemire trying (or hardly trying) to deal with him in pick-and-rolls.

As I noted earlier, for as exciting and thrilling as that 2010 team happened to be, a championship formula really was not in place. The defense was too porous (twenty-third in Defensive Rating), the historic three-point shooting and phenomenal team chemistry probably would have diminished (at least somewhat) the next season, and the two leading scorers (Stoudemire and Jason Richardson) constituted subpar ball-handlers and passers, thus limiting the club's offensive flexibility and versatility in half-court situations. A championship with that roster structure (especially a roster with an altered second unit) would have been highly improbable, and even a similar playoff run would have been unlikely. The best that one could have said probably would have been that the Suns gave it a try and let matters run their natural course.

[Big NBA Fan]

I think the 2010 Suns were the best team in the SSOL era and one of the best teams in NBA history to never win a title.

If they beat the Lakers that year, they would have crushed the Celtics in the Finals.

Other than a mediocre defense, the Suns had everything that year. Their offense was so damn good that it made up for the mediocre defense.

[Suns2k5]

I rarely disagree with you, but why break up the team after a WCF appearance that was close? Obviously most of us agreed with the decision, but another time I disagreed with you was when you felt Shaq without Amare could make us a better team (remember that from the espn forum). I thought that sort of team wouldn't have had a chance with an aging roster. Amare had his faults and this is mostly hindsight talk, and I don't think either way we get to the finals by keeping either one of them, but it would have been fun to see Amare play out two more years with Nash, especially in hindsight seeing what we decided to help Nash.

I would not have supported breaking up that team just for the sake of it, but given the roster's structural limitations and the economics at play, doing so may have represented Phoenix's most prudent move—had the process been handled intelligently and coherently, which obviously was not the case.

In terms of O'Neal and Stoudemire, I guess that you are referring to the 2009 season when Stoudemire went down shortly after the All-Star break? I do not recall saying that Phoenix would be a better team as a result, although I cannot disprove that I might have said it. (Perhaps WiseOldSun said it? He was the one who wanted to see Nash, Hill, and O'Neal playing together through at least the 2012 season, and he still wanted Nash back beyond 2012, although most fans agreed with him there. Personally, I felt that Phoenix should have let Hill leave and traded Nash after the 2011 lockout.) Of course, I was an advocate of trading Stoudemire circa 2009—not in losing him for nothing, though.

I do feel, though, that the Suns never would have gone anywhere of note with O'Neal and Stoudemire playing together, and I will address that matter shortly in your "Suns History" thread.

I am almost positive you were pro Shaq and anti Stoudemire and thought we had a legit chance at that point, but I may be wrong and it is in the past so deciding who said what is an unworthy exercise. WiseOldSun, who I enjoyed reading his posts was so pro ownership to the point I felt he had some connection with Sarver and it would be interesting to see his posts, and I think I would recognize them if they showed up here.

LOL. Poor Child