A lot has been said on this blog over the past few days - especially after the draft. It's ranged from "Well, the draft wasn't terrible" to "Holy Cow! The ship's sinking! We better get off FAST!" I've been keeping quiet the past few days but really want to let everyone know where I stand on the issue.
I think the Suns are going to be fine. Sure, the front office wasn't able to complete a deal with Minnesota (for Kevin Garnett) or with the Bobcats (for the 8th pick). But guess what? No other team has KG yet either. So I don't know that it is as much the front office's fault as the Timberwolves wanting too much in return. We have to remember that each team is out for itself. Gone are the days where a team will give up its franchise player for a few small pieces in return. We all saw what happened when the Lakers did that with Shaq. The Heat went on to win the championship and the Lakers are now mired in their remaining star playing realizing his mistakes and wanting to be traded.
I say we give the team a chance! The Suns had the 2nd best record in the league and got stopped in 6 games to a well-traveled, much more experienced Spurs team. They also got the raw end of the deal in several calls during the series that changed it to the Spurs' favor - the most notable of which was the Stoudemire and Diaw suspensions. Without those suspensions, there was a very good chance the Suns could have pulled out the series win. We seem to forget that they were coming home after tying the series at 2 games a piece and they had home court advantage and momentum on their side. They even came within a missed 3-point shot of winning game 5 and going up 3-2 in the series.
So all of this talk about the ship sinking, about Coach D'Antoni, Robert Sarver or anyone else ruining the team is a little exaggerated. Coach D'Antoni did what he thought he had to do to get the Suns in the position they were in during the playoffs. He really couldn't win no matter what he did. If he would have played more guys and lost 5-6 more games because of it (sidenote: I don't know if many of you remember the first game against the Grizzlies where the Suns were up by about 30 points, D'Antoni put in his scrubs and they promptly gave up the ENTIRE lead, making D'Antoni have to put his starters back in. Everyone was killing him for doing that the next day...now everyone is saying the opposite. End Sidenote) everyone would have been down on the team because they didn't have a great record and were seeded 4th in the conference. In hindsight, that would have meant they would have had to play Golden St. in the 2nd round instead of the Spurs. But at the start of the playoffs, everyone would have been up in arms because D'Antoni didn't play his starters more and get a better seed so the team didn't have to play Dallas.
I say we give the team a chance. Amare and Boris are working out nearly every day to get better. Boris should come into training camp looking a lot better than he did the previous season. Amare's knees should be even stronger. Steve will obviously be in shape. Shawn Marion should be hungrier and more ready to beat up on weaker teams. And we have two new guys who will be fighting for playing time and will hopefully be a good addition to the chemistry and camaraderie that seemed to be there the year before.
I say enough with the negativity. Let's definitely figure out what we would do if we were the coach/GM/owner but realize that we don't know everything that is going on. If certain decisions were made, it is most likely for a good reason. For those of you who have been following the Suns for several years, remember when the joke was that Bryan Colangelo should be the GM of the year because he helped so many other teams get better? Yet 2 years later, the decisions he made helped the Suns get Steve Nash, Raja Bell and be able to sign Shawn Marion and Amare Stoudemire to the contracts needed to keep them.
Let's look on the bright side of things and instead of thinking the worst about the front office, figure they know what they're doing and see what the changes (or non-changes) do over the next year. I'd rather be positive about everything and be ready to root my team on in the fall instead of be negative about it all and despise the team that is out there. The players we've come to respect deserve more than that from us.