GMATCallahan wrote:darealjuice wrote:I have toddler pictures of me wearing various Suns jerseys from the Barkley era, so pretty much since birth lol. I was probably too young to really consider myself a true fan, so I'd say I really got into the Suns on my own during the Backcourt 2000 period. We were really fun to watch when healthy, and I loved Penny and Kidd. I remember being heartbroken when we traded Kidd after the domestic abuse incident, he was my favorite player at the time and I was so disappointed in the entire situation.
My peak fandom was definitely the return of the prodigal Sun, Steve Nash. That was when I was starting to play basketball seriously in the AAU and school ball scene, and I basically idolized him and tried to emulate his game on the court, so naturally I watched a ton of Suns basketball and Steve Nash mixtapes when Youtube came about. I abstained from the Suns during the 2012-2013 season because I was heartbroken (again) that we traded him, especially to the team I was taught to fiercely hate my entire life. Then, I remember tuning into the draft after that season, and I was insanely excited because Ben McLemore AND Nerlens Noel somehow both dropped to us at #5. I thought we could do no wrong picking between those two, until Stern walked out and announced we had taken Alex freaking Len from Maryland over my 2 favorite prospects of the year, after which I went on a Twitter rant that I still completely stand by.
BMac would have been good ANYWHERE but the place prospects go to never develop and eventually leave for greener pastures: Sacramento. Yes, I'm still mad.
You probably know this information already, but just to be clear, Nash left the Suns as a free agent and basically became a Laker by choice. He then went to Robert Sarver and personally requested the sign-and-trade to Los Angeles in order to to make the cap numbers work and receive the "market value" contract that he wanted. Reluctantly, Sarver agreed to facilitate Nash's desire.
For the record, I am not blaming Nash—I thought that he cut a great deal for himself. But he and the Suns just suffered a business disagreement that caused him to depart. The Suns made a wise business decision, and Nash—like most athletes (or people in general)—could not see matters objectively. But of course, seeing matters objectively is not the goal of a free agent, either.
As for Noel and McLemore, I doubt that Phoenix would be better off today with either one of them. Cousins has developed in Sacramento, and McLemore was a "shooter" who has not shot that ball all that well in the NBA. The atmosphere around him surely has not helped, but his prospect stock probably happened to be grossly inflated. When trying to assess players after only one year of college basketball, this kind of misjudgment will occur.
Yeah I know, but it just felt wrong letting him go to the Lakers, regardless of how it happened or if we got something out of it in the end. I don't really blame him or the Suns, it just sucked a lot seeing your favorite player ever go to your least favorite team. Plus I still get the "Lakers Legend Steve Nash" jokes from some of my friends that are Lakers fans lol.
Boogie is the only guy in recent history that the Kings drafted and haven't **** up, and in my mind he's the exception, not the rule. Maybe it's because I loved his story and his game at Kansas, but I'm not ready to give up on McLemore. His biggest problem is that he never developed the ball handling skills to be a threat outside of catching and shooting. Part of that is probably his fault, but blame also has to be laid on the Kings considering their recent struggles with developing prospects. He'll never be an All Star, and probably wouldn't have been regardless of where he landed, but he is the pretty much exact same player that I saw in college and it's the franchises job to make sure their players don't stagnate. I doubt we'd be competing in the playoffs or anything right now if we took him though, that's for sure.
As far as Noel, I could see us being in a better position if we'd taken him over Len than we are now. I doubt our 2013-2014 season would be any different assuming we let Noel take the year off like the 6ers did, considering Len barely got minutes at the time anyways and was dealing with his own injuries, but to me Noel as a rookie offers more of what this team needs than Len does at this point in time. He's a very high impact defensive player, he doesn't require a bunch of touches in the post or anything like that to be valuable, and he runs the floor better than Len. His strong rookie year could have effected the direction the FO took going into last season a lot, whether it's signing Chandler, obtaining LMA, etc etc. Obviously it's all hypothetical, and I still doubt we'd be playoff contenders or anything, but I think we'd be better off in the sense that we'd have a more talented young core on the team with him than Len.
I rocked my hornets cap, Godzilla tee and KJ shoes though, was awesome having like 5000 people cheer me on, mum has the video somewhere.
