Shaq says he is very upset and ready to prove his critics wrong. The Phoenix Suns should be upset. Steve Nash now has to listen to the diesel complaign about not getting the ball and having to play defense. Plus, to give up an all-star in Shaun Marion for the over the hill center? If I am a Sun I am very disappointed in Steve Kerr in what has transpired over the last few days. Sure they are going to say all the right things about Shaq coming to the team, but behind closed doors, I am sure they are wondering what in the world is happening.
Check out this article from http://espn.com/ Marc Stein
PHOENIX -- Shaquille O'Neal's introductory news conference as a member of the Phoenix Suns -- you'll still probably need to reread that line a few times to believe it -- isn't until Thursday morning.
Yet we can fill the void by passing along Five Things You Don't Know about the Suns' stunning trade for Shaq, all of which were gleaned here Wednesday when this gargantuan transaction was officially completed … and completely overshadowed one of the greatest games you could ever wish to see. (Or so we're told).
1. The Suns pulled the trigger because of Steve Nash far more than Pau Gasol.
Nash turns 34 on Thursday. There will be no alarm bells sounded in Phoenix to commemorate the occasion, because Nash has hushed pretty much every doubt about his durability by playing at an MVP level for the past three-plus seasons, but his bosses are realistic. They know that a team relying heavily on Nash and Grant Hill will have only a couple more cracks at the championship that has eluded this franchise for four decades.
"We've got a few years here," Suns president Steve Kerr acknowledged, "where we can really make a push."
So …
The trade might look like a direct reaction to the Lakers' grand theft of Gasol from Memphis, but the Suns knew long before that heist that defending the post and surrendering second-chance points has been their downfall in the playoffs. This decision was made largely because Phoenix decided that it could no longer wait to change a locker-room dynamic that Nash has openly questioned at times, especially when a morale-booster like Shaq suddenly became available.
Nash spoke in glowing terms of Shawn Marion after the deal was announced -- "I'm a big fan of Shawn's," he said -- and has never specifically mentioned names when lamenting the Suns' occasional dips in togetherness and effort. But knowledgeable sources say that the Suns' power brokers, feeding off Nash's growing frustration and exasperation, lost confidence in the group's ability to win it all without some sort of shake-up. They stopped believing that the Suns' pre-Shaq core could overcome the behind-the-scenes negativity that typically involved either Marion or Amare Stoudemire without trading one of them away.
Now that it's finally happened? The giddy Suns instantly gave off a vibe Wednesday that O'Neal's impact on team morale might be as big as anything he'll provide on the floor, even in the unlikely event he winds up being the interior defensive force they've dreamed about. It's the sort of Shaq Effect that never would have been possible had Marion been moved in a more conservative swap for, say, Utah's Andrei Kirilenko, as the Suns and Jazz discussed early in the season.
"I just think we need a little lift," Nash conceded. "We probably can improve our chemistry. … At some point I think there needs to be a healthy balance between being excited and having a spirit about us and at the same time holding each other accountable. I don't think that balance, for the most part, has been [there]."
Said Kerr: "[O'Neal's] presence is magnetic and that is a big part of it."
2. Mike D'Antoni was the first Suns voter to push for the deal … and Kerr was actually the last one to sign off.
This will be recorded as Kerr's first major move since assuming control of the Suns' front office and maybe the biggest trade he'll ever make. He knows he's "on the line" with how it turns out.
"If it works, I'm a genius," Kerr said. "If it doesn't, I'm a moron, I guess."
Maybe that's why Kerr was the hardest to convince.
It was easy to assume that this deal was somewhat forced on D'Antoni; welcoming Shaq could be saying goodbye to a fair bit of the speed and abandon that has defined the Suns since D'Antoni and Nash hooked up for the 2004-05 season. But Phoenix privately insists -- and Kerr alluded to it publicly as well -- that D'Antoni was actually ready to make the trade as soon as it was presented to him.
It appears that Kerr was the apprehensive one, having closely followed the loud skepticism all season about how much O'Neal has left. That's why he insisted that O'Neal subject himself to a lengthy evaluation Wednesday afternoon with the Suns' doctors and training staff before the deal went through, during which those experts convinced Kerr that they can indeed nurse Shaq back to a healthy place like they've maintained with Nash and Hill.
"I wasn't going to do this," Kerr said, "unless I felt really good about it from a medical standpoint."
Said D'Antoni: "The question mark was, 'Does he have any gas left in the tank?' And I think you guys have debated it now for 24 hours and come up with 'no.' And I think you're wrong.
"I do find it kind of funny … first we can't win without a big man and once we get a big man, now we can't win with a big man. I do think he's not going to come to Phoenix and lay an egg."
3. Financial concerns? The Suns will make money from Shaq's arrival.
Suns fans are still smarting from what happened in the summer, when Phoenix gave Seattle two future first-round picks to convince the Sonics to take on the salary of its only dependable defender in the post -- Kurt Thomas -- in order to reduce the club's luxury-tax bill.
Memories of that move are a big reason so many executives and pundits around the league reacted with such skepticism when the rumblings of a Shaq-to-Phoenix deal began to spread Tuesday night. It was a reflex reaction to presume that Suns owner Robert Sarver would never sanction the acquisition of a thirtysomething 7-footer on the decline with two years and $40 million left on his contract after this season.
Yet we were all wrong. For starters, Sarver revealed that the talks between the teams originated at ownership level, stemming from conversations with Miami's Micky Arison.
There's also the not-so-small matter of the likely spike in the Suns' merchandise sales and TV ratings that comes with adding a player of Shaq's stature. Combine that with the fact that extending Marion's contract or trading him for someone else with a longer contract -- along with keeping Marcus Banks -- would have eventually cost Phoenix more than bringing O'Neal in, and you can understand Sarver's glee.
"This is money in the bank," one rival executive suggests.
4. The Suns love that so many outsiders are down on the trade.
Or so they claim.
Kerr, in particular, couldn't wait to share the story about a meeting Wednesday with D'Antoni and other Suns staffers during which O'Neal pointed up at a nearby TV that flashed some unflattering results from an ESPN.com poll.
Kerr quoted Shaq as saying: "Seventy-one percent of people in America apparently think this is a bad deal. That makes me angry. And I play better when I'm angry."
D'Antoni drew laughs with his follow-up wish that the poll figure soon increases to 80 percent, but you can understand why he was only half-kidding. O'Neal has missed 14 games already this season with a hip problem that is likely to delay his debut in a Suns uniform until next week at the earliest. As he intimated with his "egg" comment above, D'Antoni and Co. are naturally hoping that the scores of naysayers nationwide will help get Shaq into I'll-Show-You condition.
The Suns are already convinced that O'Neal will be a mentor to Stoudemire, whom he's known since Amare was 13. They know Shaq would dearly love to break his tie with Tim Duncan and win a fifth ring … and just getting out of the West would establish O'Neal as the first player in league history to take four different teams to the NBA Finals.
But they also know that Shaq has yet to prove to scores of doubters that he can find an offensive niche with a team that loves to shoot in seven seconds or less … or that he can stay out of foul trouble when the Suns absorb their usual punishment on guard penetrations … or that his body will cooperate with his 36th birthday just a month away.
"If you look at all the areas we're not good at, [O'Neal] adds a lot to those areas," Nash said. "He's an experienced champion. He's got the size we've always lacked. He can defend the post and rebound and block shots.
"I think, deep down, there's probably [Suns players] who have doubts. All of us are trying to figure this out together. … [But] I just think that [O'Neal is] a winner. I think he's got a lot of pride and I think he likes to show people what he can [still] do."
5. The Suns will nonetheless miss Marion more than they think.
My original reason for coming to Phoenix this week was seeing Chris Paul and Nash duel. I was barely able to take in a dribble Wednesday night because of all the Shaq-related hoopla, but it didn't escape my attention that the Suns tied an unwanted club record with only one steal in their epic 132-130 loss to New Orleans in double overtime.
That's one steal in 58 minutes.
Maybe Marion was indeed a handful in the locker room because of his persistent belief that he was underappreciated and underpublicized. Maybe rooting out his unhappiness and the unneeded tension it created will be addition by subtraction for the Suns, even if it takes Shaq some time to make an on-court impact.
Yet what you can't deny is that Marion was the only Sun who could guard all five positions … and that the Suns don't appear to have a perimeter defender who can comfortably replace him alongside Raja Bell … and that Phoenix seemingly had some pretty decent chemistry where it matters most. On the floor.
So we're about to find out if Marion is as critical to the Suns' success as he's been claiming (in vain, he'd argue) for all these years.
"Shawn is fantastic [defensively with] the different players he can cover and the amount of court he can cover with his quickness and athleticism," Nash said.
"There's no doubt that the jury's out. We'll see how this works. But it's pretty tough to pass up on a player like Shaq."
Yet we can fill the void by passing along Five Things You Don't Know about the Suns' stunning trade for Shaq, all of which were gleaned here Wednesday when this gargantuan transaction was officially completed … and completely overshadowed one of the greatest games you could ever wish to see. (Or so we're told).
1. The Suns pulled the trigger because of Steve Nash far more than Pau Gasol.
Nash turns 34 on Thursday. There will be no alarm bells sounded in Phoenix to commemorate the occasion, because Nash has hushed pretty much every doubt about his durability by playing at an MVP level for the past three-plus seasons, but his bosses are realistic. They know that a team relying heavily on Nash and Grant Hill will have only a couple more cracks at the championship that has eluded this franchise for four decades.
"We've got a few years here," Suns president Steve Kerr acknowledged, "where we can really make a push."
So …
The trade might look like a direct reaction to the Lakers' grand theft of Gasol from Memphis, but the Suns knew long before that heist that defending the post and surrendering second-chance points has been their downfall in the playoffs. This decision was made largely because Phoenix decided that it could no longer wait to change a locker-room dynamic that Nash has openly questioned at times, especially when a morale-booster like Shaq suddenly became available.
Nash spoke in glowing terms of Shawn Marion after the deal was announced -- "I'm a big fan of Shawn's," he said -- and has never specifically mentioned names when lamenting the Suns' occasional dips in togetherness and effort. But knowledgeable sources say that the Suns' power brokers, feeding off Nash's growing frustration and exasperation, lost confidence in the group's ability to win it all without some sort of shake-up. They stopped believing that the Suns' pre-Shaq core could overcome the behind-the-scenes negativity that typically involved either Marion or Amare Stoudemire without trading one of them away.
Now that it's finally happened? The giddy Suns instantly gave off a vibe Wednesday that O'Neal's impact on team morale might be as big as anything he'll provide on the floor, even in the unlikely event he winds up being the interior defensive force they've dreamed about. It's the sort of Shaq Effect that never would have been possible had Marion been moved in a more conservative swap for, say, Utah's Andrei Kirilenko, as the Suns and Jazz discussed early in the season.
"I just think we need a little lift," Nash conceded. "We probably can improve our chemistry. … At some point I think there needs to be a healthy balance between being excited and having a spirit about us and at the same time holding each other accountable. I don't think that balance, for the most part, has been [there]."
Said Kerr: "[O'Neal's] presence is magnetic and that is a big part of it."
2. Mike D'Antoni was the first Suns voter to push for the deal … and Kerr was actually the last one to sign off.
This will be recorded as Kerr's first major move since assuming control of the Suns' front office and maybe the biggest trade he'll ever make. He knows he's "on the line" with how it turns out.
"If it works, I'm a genius," Kerr said. "If it doesn't, I'm a moron, I guess."
Maybe that's why Kerr was the hardest to convince.
It was easy to assume that this deal was somewhat forced on D'Antoni; welcoming Shaq could be saying goodbye to a fair bit of the speed and abandon that has defined the Suns since D'Antoni and Nash hooked up for the 2004-05 season. But Phoenix privately insists -- and Kerr alluded to it publicly as well -- that D'Antoni was actually ready to make the trade as soon as it was presented to him.
It appears that Kerr was the apprehensive one, having closely followed the loud skepticism all season about how much O'Neal has left. That's why he insisted that O'Neal subject himself to a lengthy evaluation Wednesday afternoon with the Suns' doctors and training staff before the deal went through, during which those experts convinced Kerr that they can indeed nurse Shaq back to a healthy place like they've maintained with Nash and Hill.
"I wasn't going to do this," Kerr said, "unless I felt really good about it from a medical standpoint."
Said D'Antoni: "The question mark was, 'Does he have any gas left in the tank?' And I think you guys have debated it now for 24 hours and come up with 'no.' And I think you're wrong.
"I do find it kind of funny … first we can't win without a big man and once we get a big man, now we can't win with a big man. I do think he's not going to come to Phoenix and lay an egg."
3. Financial concerns? The Suns will make money from Shaq's arrival.
Suns fans are still smarting from what happened in the summer, when Phoenix gave Seattle two future first-round picks to convince the Sonics to take on the salary of its only dependable defender in the post -- Kurt Thomas -- in order to reduce the club's luxury-tax bill.
Memories of that move are a big reason so many executives and pundits around the league reacted with such skepticism when the rumblings of a Shaq-to-Phoenix deal began to spread Tuesday night. It was a reflex reaction to presume that Suns owner Robert Sarver would never sanction the acquisition of a thirtysomething 7-footer on the decline with two years and $40 million left on his contract after this season.
Yet we were all wrong. For starters, Sarver revealed that the talks between the teams originated at ownership level, stemming from conversations with Miami's Micky Arison.
There's also the not-so-small matter of the likely spike in the Suns' merchandise sales and TV ratings that comes with adding a player of Shaq's stature. Combine that with the fact that extending Marion's contract or trading him for someone else with a longer contract -- along with keeping Marcus Banks -- would have eventually cost Phoenix more than bringing O'Neal in, and you can understand Sarver's glee.
"This is money in the bank," one rival executive suggests.
4. The Suns love that so many outsiders are down on the trade.
Or so they claim.
Kerr, in particular, couldn't wait to share the story about a meeting Wednesday with D'Antoni and other Suns staffers during which O'Neal pointed up at a nearby TV that flashed some unflattering results from an ESPN.com poll.
Kerr quoted Shaq as saying: "Seventy-one percent of people in America apparently think this is a bad deal. That makes me angry. And I play better when I'm angry."
D'Antoni drew laughs with his follow-up wish that the poll figure soon increases to 80 percent, but you can understand why he was only half-kidding. O'Neal has missed 14 games already this season with a hip problem that is likely to delay his debut in a Suns uniform until next week at the earliest. As he intimated with his "egg" comment above, D'Antoni and Co. are naturally hoping that the scores of naysayers nationwide will help get Shaq into I'll-Show-You condition.
The Suns are already convinced that O'Neal will be a mentor to Stoudemire, whom he's known since Amare was 13. They know Shaq would dearly love to break his tie with Tim Duncan and win a fifth ring … and just getting out of the West would establish O'Neal as the first player in league history to take four different teams to the NBA Finals.
But they also know that Shaq has yet to prove to scores of doubters that he can find an offensive niche with a team that loves to shoot in seven seconds or less … or that he can stay out of foul trouble when the Suns absorb their usual punishment on guard penetrations … or that his body will cooperate with his 36th birthday just a month away.
"If you look at all the areas we're not good at, [O'Neal] adds a lot to those areas," Nash said. "He's an experienced champion. He's got the size we've always lacked. He can defend the post and rebound and block shots.
"I think, deep down, there's probably [Suns players] who have doubts. All of us are trying to figure this out together. … [But] I just think that [O'Neal is] a winner. I think he's got a lot of pride and I think he likes to show people what he can [still] do."
5. The Suns will nonetheless miss Marion more than they think.
My original reason for coming to Phoenix this week was seeing Chris Paul and Nash duel. I was barely able to take in a dribble Wednesday night because of all the Shaq-related hoopla, but it didn't escape my attention that the Suns tied an unwanted club record with only one steal in their epic 132-130 loss to New Orleans in double overtime.
That's one steal in 58 minutes.
Maybe Marion was indeed a handful in the locker room because of his persistent belief that he was underappreciated and underpublicized. Maybe rooting out his unhappiness and the unneeded tension it created will be addition by subtraction for the Suns, even if it takes Shaq some time to make an on-court impact.
Yet what you can't deny is that Marion was the only Sun who could guard all five positions … and that the Suns don't appear to have a perimeter defender who can comfortably replace him alongside Raja Bell … and that Phoenix seemingly had some pretty decent chemistry where it matters most. On the floor.
So we're about to find out if Marion is as critical to the Suns' success as he's been claiming (in vain, he'd argue) for all these years.
"Shawn is fantastic [defensively with] the different players he can cover and the amount of court he can cover with his quickness and athleticism," Nash said.
"There's no doubt that the jury's out. We'll see how this works. But it's pretty tough to pass up on a player like Shaq."
1 comment:
There are pros and cons with this decision...let's just hope the Suns get the most out of this decision..=]
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