Remember the good ole days when Steve Nash would lob the ball in the general vicinity of the rim and Shawn Marion or Amare Stoudemire would go up and throw it down? Remember Grant Hill lobbing the ball to Jason Richardson on a back-door cut? Remember Jared Dudley throwing down 10 vicious dunks last year? (Neither did his teammates.)
Now the Phoenix Suns appear to have brought sexy back to the court with the (reported) one-year, $3.5 million deal with guard Shannon Brown.
You know Shannon Brown, right? This guy. And this guy. And the guy who started the #LetShannonDunk movement.
Yup, that guy is going to be running in the back court with the Suns this year according to multiple reports.
Brown is more than a dunking machine, however. The problem is (and the reason he only commanded a one-year, $3.5 million deal) is that he's not shown much else.
The first few months of last season, Brown shot 44% from behind the arc through the end of December and then shot 26% for the rest of the year. Did he cool off and regress to his norm? Did he have an injury? We don't know.
More than just his three-point shooting, Brown looked like a legit basketball player early last year and not just an athletic freak. But like his hot shooting, that seemed to fall off as well. Again, we don't know why.
But it is encouraging to know that we at least saw a period of time when Brown could be a good team player. If the Suns can coax that out of him and get him to play consistent, team ball this will be a fantastic signing. If not, it's pretty low risk.
This seems like a good deal from all standpoints. The Suns want to save money for 2012 so they weren't going to make a run at Arron Afflalo or Jason Richardson (remember him?) so they nabbed Brown early in the process.
It's hard to say how much impact he'll have but there's really very little down side to the (reported) deal and a LOT of upside...like these: