Victory

At the beginning of this season, while watching the Suns struggle trying to find their identity, I decided to venture into the world of "blogging."  I basically wanted to make some friends laugh and to get out my frustrations about the play of Goran Dragic so I started a little blog titled "Cut Goran Dragic."  Throughout the season I have written several posts about things I think the Suns should do to improve.  As with everything, a lot of people agreed with the things I wrote and a lot of people disagreed.  Didn't matter to me, like I said, my main goal was to make some friends laugh and throw my two cents out to the world (or the 5 people that might read it who weren't called mom).

Then, a funny thing happened during the Pistons game last night.  As I was watching, I noticed that one-by-one, the things I had written throughout the season were all being verified.  I made a quick comment to that effect to my pregnant wife who was sitting right next to me but as expected, she didn't even look up from her pregnancy book.  So, since I can't get my wife (who is, with good reason, preoccupied with more important things) to give me a pat on the back, I'm going to pat myself on the back in this space right here.  Below I have included my top four suggestions for improvement (with my thoughts on the whole "what do we do with Amare" question added as a bonus)  from the first half of this season.

1) Goran Dragic:  I've said it since the start of this season - Goran Dragic is not good at basketball!  Last night, for some inexplicable reason, Dragic got into the game.  During his 4 minutes of playing time,  Dragic refused to initiate the offense on any possession, went 0 - 2 from the field and posted the only negative +/- on the team (-3).  The guy is not an NBA caliber talent and I really don't see him ever becoming one either.  However, if the Suns are serious about using this guy in the future, they need to send him down to the D-League to see if his skills can improve when playing consistent minutes of American style ball.  See my previous posts about him here, here and here.

2) Suns offense:  A couple of weeks ago I created a post giving my thoughts on the Suns offense.  At the time, the Suns had been going into Shaq on the majority of their possessions throughout each game.  The Suns looked stagnant, there was little ball (or body) movement and everyone looked unhappy (except for Shaq, of course).  I stated that if the Suns were to be successful, they'd have to figure out better ways to utilize Shaq while keeping the other players interested in what was happening.  I said that they needed to bring some creativity and motion back into their offense and let Steve Nash be Steve Nash.  Last night, Steve Nash was freed!  The Suns stopped trying to feed Shaq on every possession (they have been building up to this and figuring it out for the last little bit) and let Nash make use of ALL of the Suns weapons.  Nash finished with 21 assists, Amare got 18 points, JRich got a beautiful 21 (yes the man-crush continues), Barbosa got 17 and Shaq was still able to get his 20 and 10.  The Suns have as much talent as any team - look at their starting five of Nash, Richardson, Hill, Stoudemire and O'Neal.  That is a whole heap of talent.  If the Suns let Nash use these different weapons, that is going to lead to a lot of success - much like it did last night.

3) Shaq's attack:  I have made several posts where I have talked about how Shaq's resurgence has been awesome.  However, I have also stated that with this resurgence has come confidence and that confidence has been both good and bad (you can see one post here).  The good is when he gets good position close to the basket where he can finish or get fouled.  The bad comes when he moves out further from the hoop but still tries to force up the shot.  Last night, Shaq shot about 44% from the field on 7 - 16 shooting.  Not bad, right?  Well, looking at the shot chart, he went 1 - 6 from 8 feet and out (17%).  Had he not taken any shots from that far, he would have gone a MUCH more efficient 6 - 9 and shot 67% on the night.  This, in turn, would have given the Suns 7 more tries to come up with better shot for a score and probably would have resulted in Shaq getting a repost closer to the hope and taking a much higher percentage shot.  Shaq needs to realize this - it would not only improve his numbers and efficiency, but help the team find some better scoring situations each game.  That being said, I'm not volunteering myself to talk to the big man about it.

Amare:  In December, I created a post about what Amare needs to do if he ever wants to be taken seriously as an MVP type of player.  Without going too much into it, I basically said that big men MVPs are much different than little guy MVPs.  If a big man wants to be the MVP of the league, he needs to dominate the glass, make a difference on the defensive end and be able to score when the team needs them to.  Look at KG when he won it with the TWolves.   Amare, every once in a while, shows flashes that he is capable of doing all three of these.  However, for some reason he never takes the next step.  Last night, his numbers weren't eye popping (18 and 7) but what I did notice was that he was having fun and smiling the whole game.  I believe this is in large part because of the way the offense was working (see #2 above).  I think that that is a good sign for him.  If Amare is having fun and interested in the game, his effort is there.  If he feels slighted (like when the Suns were running EVERY possession through Shaq), he tends to stop trying.  Last night, I thought his effort was there and enjoyed watching him play.

Now, as for the question about whether or not we should get rid of Amare, I say...maybe.  Really, I would like to see the Suns ride this out and see if we can continue to improve and compete in the West (and I have been back and forth A LOT on this).  I think Amare is too good of a talent to just let him go for money or draft picks and I have only seen a few scenarios being talked about that would give us the return we should get for Amare's talent.  However, if (and only if) a deal comes along that we just cannot under any circumstance say no to, well...then we shouldn't say no!  Amare may be the new Marbury (player with incredible numbers who just doesn't have the champion mentality), but even if this is the case, there is no way we should just get rid of him for the sake of getting rid of him.  Knowing Sarver and Kerr, you never know what they might do.  They may just give him up for an expiring and some money - however, I think this would be incredibly unfair to the team and to Steve Nash in particular seeing as he doesn't have a whole lot of time left due to the proverbial window.  We'll just have to sit back and hope for the best as we head into the All-Star break and the trading deadline.

Until then, I'll enjoy last night's win and hope for more tonight against the Sixers.  After all, this season is all about building on small victories and hoping they lead to bigger ones - both for the Suns and for this blogger.