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Suns fans, this one hurts. Read this report from the Arizona Republic's Paul Coro and tell me how much faith you have right now in the front office's ability to lead this team out of the basketball desert it's current stuck in. The details are many and shocking and kind of depressing.
azcentral.com staff blogs - Coro's Orange Slices blog - PaulCoro - O.J. Mayo haunts Suns in person
Mayo returned to US Airways Center on Thursday night for the first time since he came to Phoenix in July hoping to sign with the Suns. He left that meeting without a deal after being told he would not start and that he was not the caliber of Eric Gordon. Mayo would not acknowledge that his friends and background had been questioned in the meeting but members of his new team affirmed that the questioning struck him strangely.
A couple of points that jump out:
- The Suns didn't trust Mayo's character and basically insulted him with their questioning. He's had a few public issues in Memphis including a fight with a teammate and a suspension for taking the wrong energy drink, but he's never struck me as a "problem child".
- The Suns were concerned about taking Mayo giving his potential "character issues" when they already had Beasley with his checkered past. There's an old saying about living with one bad apple, but you can't have two in the locker room. This is sound thinking, but you wonder about the Suns' ability to pick good fruit from bad.
- Mayo wanted to be a starter but the Suns told him that job was Jared Dudley's (although Gentry wasn't involved in the meetings and Dudley is now coming off the bench in favor of Brown).
- For the record, I had advocated for signing Beasley and still don't regret it. As poorly as he's played, it was a risk the Suns had to take. The sainted Daryl Morey talks about needing to gamble some times and Beasley was a good gamble. However, I don't agree with passing on Mayo just because you also had Michael.
Adding these sage words from Jim (via the comments below):
Just because we look atrociously incompetent right now doesn't mean that 20 games is the omega of the discussion.
At this point it appears the Suns may have made an egregious mistake in both talent evaluation and diplomacy, but it doesn't mean that a deviation in the current trajectory is impossible. There are always instances where situations that initially appear bleak reverse course and end up refulgent and resplendent.
Is Beasley woefully pathetic right now? Yes. Is Mayo playing like an all-star and making us look like fatuous buffoons? Yes. Do these 20 games absolutely define the remainder of these player's careers or their time with their current teams? No.
No reason to get defeatist and disconsolate or throw in the towel. Things aren't that bad. If you think we look stupid now, I would offer that we still have a chance to look much stupider in the coming days.