So, Shaq is gone, Steve Nash is having dinner with Steve Kerr but flirting with the mustachioed Italian at the next table, and Grant Hill is talking to other teams.
I have no problem with any of this.
This team was not winning a championship as currently constructed. Barring several miracles, it was not winning a championship in the next 3-5 years. Why on earth has the front office's free agent priority been to sign or extend two players who are on the wrong side of 35? Not 30, like Marion or Turkoglu, but 35, 5 years BEYOND the universally recognized "slide" age for most professional athletes. Exactly what kind of re-building process was Steve Kerr hoping to initiate with a couple of geezers running the offense?
Nash and Hill are a couple of class acts. Their presence is appreciated both on and off the court for the level of leadership and competition they bring to the game. I love watching them play and have been more than satisfied with their tours of duty for the Phoenix Suns. But it's time for them to go.
In addition to being old and in Nash's case, expensive, neither one of them is a "proven winner." Neither has played on a championship winning team or even led a team to the NBA finals. The only Suns player to have done that got traded last week. And neither one of them has the skills to miraculously transform our also-ran franchise into a winner next year. The best we could hope for from either of them is to shepherd this young and fragile squad through what is now going to be an obviously painful reconstruction while ably filling their roles at the 1 and 3.
Let Grant Hill go chase a ring with the Boston Celtics. He's earned that "right" in his star-crossed career. He should have been one of the G.O.A.T.s but injuries de-railed that dream. Steve Nash, for all his prodigious gifts as a point guard has never established himself as the alpha dog this team has sorely needed and passively torpedoed at least one head coach in the process. Despite the gaping holes they would leave on the floor, it's time for the Suns to look forward and re-configure this franchise around a more youthful core.