It's 10.30 in the morning, is the Sun already setting? This is how the Phoenix Suns off-season has gone. These were my last words in this blog after the game 5 loss against the Spurs.
"But eventually, this might end up being the start of something great and not just the end of the 2004-2005 season."
How un-prophetic these words have been rendered. First, one of my favorite player Q is gone. For some reason, I always liked Q even as a Clipper. his stupid antenna move notwithstanding. He is smart, articulate and has a fun personality. So his trade was kind of a "personal" loss for me. This was explained by saying this frees up the cap space to go after Joe Johnson and also brings us an inside presence which should help Amare and the front-court. I kind of bought this, though an old, 30+ year old Kurt Thomas doesn't sound like a great fit for the run-and-gun Suns. Still a big body is valuable in this league and Kurt is one of the under-rated ones. I just wish he was younger and more athletic. Overall, the Suns were OK at this point.
Then came the bomb-shell. Joe Johnson came out of the blue and said he wants to sign with Atlanta and he didn't want the Suns to match. This supposedly was the player the Suns said were their first priority this off-season. This was the guy they always claimed they'll match any contract offered. We don't know what happened in this soap-opera. There are rumors of how the Suns didn't want to pay. They just wanted to scare the other teams away by saying they'll match any offer. Apparently Joe was upset that the Suns tried to do this after low-balling him twice, last off-season and now. He also apparently doesn't like being the fourth option in this team, doesn't like Amare and is sick of being Nash's decoy at the corner. This last one is funny. It has gotten him the nick-name "Decoy" Johnson among Suns fans. I am not going to go in to all this though I think almost all of these stories are true.
The bottom-line is the Suns are losing their 24 year old starting shooting guard who was one of the bright young talent in the league. They get nothing in return. They still don't have any cap space. They traded both their off-guards and signed Raja Bell. Raja Bell is not a starting off-guard in a championship team and neither is Jim Johnson at this age. The draft picks they are getting in return for Joe from Atlanta are nice, but championship contenders should not be accumulating 2007 draft picks. They should be building a champion for this season. Now they are talking about bringing in Finley. Though old and shaky, he is at least talented enough to start for them with the other guards gone. But the word is, Miami will probably out-bid the Suns for Finley's services. There's also talk of getting Brian Grant with his pair of broken legs.
So basically an young and upcoming team with tonnes of talent and fresh legs at all 5 positions has been converted into a old, slow team. One web-site has ranked them 15-th in the league. Nowhere near the top of the Western conference where they finished last season. It's a really sad situation for the Suns fan. They have gone from the best Suns season ever to this nightmare in just 2 months. The whole thing is surreal and feels like a bad dream.
All is not gone yet. the Suns still have Amare and are working on signing him long-term. He looks like the future. Not just for the Suns, but may be the NBA. So they should be good as long as they have him and Nash. They also got Marion who is no joke. So there's still talent and hope, but they definitely have taken a step back and there are question marks as far as how the new pieces fit in. The fans are clearly pissed. Suns not only lost some young talent, they are not bringing in great new guys either. Kurt Thomas, Raja Bell and Brian Grant are not exciting anyone. I hope that this guy Boris Diaw is a player and performs well playing next to Nash. May be these are the kind of "no-hype all-effort" type guys championship teams are made of. But I hope they bring in some athletic, young players to help them continue this style of play which won them a tonne of games last season. If you are going to lose Q and Joe, at least throw me a Demarr Johnson, Gerald Wallace, Speedy Claxton or Michale Finley. I'll be watching the rest of the off-season closely, but I am beginning to lose hope.
Is there any way we could revoke the "GM of the year" award given to Bryan Collangello for screwing things up the very next year?
7 comments:
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