Topsy-Turvy NBA West

Who would have thunk at the beginning of this season that late in to this season, the Fakers would be seeded number 1 in the mighty West with the Suns sitting at number 5. Granted, the Suns are just 2 games behind and the West is packed tight, but thats where we are now and this goes to show how quickly Championship windows can open and close. Especially with a big market team like the Lakers, they don't stay down for long. Frustrating if you are a Laker-hater like me. They are very much for real and their future only looks brighter. They were good even before the Gasol trade with their young players developing and role players on the bench stepping up. Now with the Gasol trade, the Lakers are scary good and are just blowing teams out.

I wish Mike D'Antoni knew how to use his bench. The Suns might already have a ring because they did have a bench the last 2 years. May be this is a downside of not having a system and just running and gunning. The team is like a chicken with it's head cut off as soon as Nash goes to the bench. Whereas with a system like the triangle, Phillip actually teaches and makes his bench play and produce. Bynum is still out and they may only get better when he comes back though they may not be able to get much better offensively. But Bynum might make them better defensively. Experts are beginning to pick them to win the West and thats BIG news given that this league has been about the Spurs, Suns and Dallas the last few years.

The Suns clearly are lost a little bit. Their bad performance against good teams continue. They are 2-3 since the Shaq trade, mostly because their schedule has been tough lately. They started against the Lakers at home, then Boston and Detroit at home. Then at Memphis and New Orleans. They won against Boston and Memphis. They got embarrassed by Detroit and were not much better against New Orleans. At least against the Lakers, they looked good and it was a close loss. They did look bad against Boston, but Boston was even worse and they won because of that. Essentially the Suns have been up and down and are clearly out of sync at times when Shaq is on the floor. He has actually out-performed my expectations numbers-wise. He is playing more minutes (29) scoring more per game (10.8) and rebounding more per game (10.4) than I expected, but he is still not entirely fitting in. He has not affected the bottom-line because the Suns are still losing to the better teams in the league and now the losses can get ugly because the offense is not what it used to be.

Shaq is explaining it all on the "adjustment period" and I don't think thats it. Thats part of it, but Shaq is just may not be the best fit for this team at this stage of his career. He just cannot make a move and score. Thats how offensively limited he is these days. He scores mostly on put-backs, alley hoops or open dunks and some free throws. I am yet to see him take the ball, make a move on his defender and score with authority. He is also causing spacing issues since he can't shoot from any kind of distance. Plus Tim Legler of ESPN is saying he has also made the Suns worse defensively - if thats even possible. He is saying between Amare, Shaq and Nash, they can't guard any pick-and-roll situation with any perimeter guard and there might be some truth to it. All in all, it feels like the Suns have not gotten much better and I don't know where the team goes from here in the brutal West.

Steve Kerr might get what I think he wants - firing coach D'Antoni if the Suns don't do very well this year. May be they can try next year with more of an half-court team, but this era of Suns basketball might be over unless the Suns go deep in to the playoffs this year in a difficult West. A lot of that will depend on how D'Antoni and Shaq make this whole marriage work. I sure hope time will heal things and make everything fit, but the jury is still out on this trade as of today.

Shaq seems OK, now go get Brent Barry.

Shaq's first game with the Suns against his nemesis Lakers might have proven 2 different things, both good and bad for the Suns fan. The Shaq experiment might be a big success after all, but it might still not matter because the Lakers might be the best team in the West. Even if the Lakers are not the best, they may just be better than the Suns. I sure hope the Suns can get better chemistry wise as Shaq plays every day for the next 30 games, but still the Lakers are just too good and the Suns can't stop them. And they are only going to get better when Bynumm comes back. For the Suns, I think it becomes a sightly better match-up if Bynum plays because Shaq can stay with him. I think Gasol and Odom are nightmare match-ups for both Shaq and Amare. Speaking of Amare, we could clearly see him getting freed up with Shaq out there. I feel like we are ready to see his full potential now for the first time since 2004. It's just too hard for defenses to keep an eye on both these guys.

Of course Kobe had a monstrous game. He is still the Lakers heart and soul and he is tough to defend for the entire World. The Suns tried to defend him with Raja and Hill, but couldn't do it that well. Plus Gasol looks awesome for the Lakers. He is way more than a side-kick and Kobe should love to have him by his side. Like I said before, the Suns need one more perimeter defender who can also shoot and try and defend guys like Kobe once in a while. Brent Barry anyone? Apparently the Spurs traded him hoping for the Sonics to buy him out so they can get him back. I think the Suns should get him. He can fill a couple of different roles for the Suns. This is a must. If Grant Hill gets hurt, they can't guard a single small forward in this league with this team. They need some backup there.

At the end of the day, the Suns are still playing near 500 ball against the West and until they go on a Western tear, the confidence level in this team is going to be low for some folks. But I definitely expect them to handle Boston on Friday and Detroit on Sunday at home. Should be great games, but with Shaq on the court, they should be able to handle the Eastern teams like they always did.

Enough Already!

Here's a great idea for the US congress. They should all sit and watch the Suns-Lakers game tomorrow on Capitol Hill on ESPN HD. Top-notch Shaq-V-Kobe entertainment. This would be a much better way to spend their time and our tax dollars than what those guys are doing these days. Only thing more stupid than Congress spending time on money on Clemens-V-McNamee (and spy-gate) is how partisan the whole hearing was. Are you kidding me? If democrats and republicans can't work together on a stupid steroid issue in baseball, what hope do we have in our country? Not to get too political, but as it seem to happen so often these days, the republicans were on the wrong side of things. They were supporting the Rocket - why exactly that was I really don't know. Apparently he is a close friend of both the Bushes - fellow Texans and the republicans wanted to stick by him for that. Very mature!

Seems like if you are a white guy who looks, speaks and conducts himself like a main-stream, white-bred American, the Republicans will stick with you because "you are American!". Anything American cannot be bad according to these guys. Of course if you are from the South and have a southern twang, that can't hurt either. Clemens played it perfectly and he made it a point to mention how he represented USA in the baseball World Championships. Gimme a break. He was talking about it like he went to fight the Iraq war for the US or something and some of the Congressmen drank it all in. God save us all! At least the Democrats were smart enough to see that the Rocket was lying and had no credibility whatsoever. Anyways, the experts are still saying Clemens is in a World of trouble. McNamee and Pettitte have both told the truth and Clemens only hope here might be his high-paid Lawyers.

After all this circus, Pettitte showed up at the Yankees camp and had an interview for an hour. Now the entire Sports World is debating whether or not he was believable, was he really contrite?, did he tell the truth? blah, blah, blah. Enough already! I am sick and tired of this media circus with all these cheats. Who cares about what they say and how genuine Buster Olney thinks that guy was with his apology. Nobody accepts to anything. Some of them get busted and then they cop to it. They are forced to come out and apologize and then we all go "oh what a sincere apology" and give them a standing ovation during the home opener. This is getting to be a bigger joke than the steroid era itself. I am sick and tired of all this waste of time. Just ignore these steroid cheats and let me know when one of 2 things happen - these cheats get suspended for upward of 50 games or they go to jail. In some cases, both of these things needs to happen. In every case, these guys should be suspended big-time. Unfortunately, we have a league and a commish with no powers or balls.

So we are reduced to measuring the sincerity of fake apologies and decibel levels on the subsequent standing ovations. No accountability, no punishment, no corrections, no asterix, nothing. All we get out of this steroid era is few fake apologies.

Not a bad All-Star Weekend.

All-Star games and festivities are over-rated. But I think NBA's might actually be a little under-rated. They have done a good job of coming up with a lot of events on Saturday that are half-way decent. The game on Sunday itself can be lame sometimes and people always say the baseball all-star game is the best. What the MLB all-star game has going for it is the competitive nature of it's game because it's a pitcher-V-hitter duel at it's core. But even there, the MLB all-star game is not all that competitive because top pitchers (and hitters) stay for a inning or 2 and they just keep rolling the bench guys in. Also the MLB all-star has nothing else around the game worth watching. Don't even get me started on the home-run derby.

Granted, the slam-dunk contest is not too fresh of an idea anymore, but I think the last couple of years the contestants have tried to make it interesting. This year had a lot of creativity and wrinkles mixed in with the dunks. Dwight Howard won it easily with 4 creative and fun dunks. I thought everybody got a little carried away with his superstar dunk, but I liked the other 3 better. Gerald Green blowing out the candle while in the air was a great idea too. But on this day, D12 was too hard to stop. I always like the 3-point shootout. I like to see sweet shooting that can be missing at times in the real NBA games these days. Kapono killed it this year and I was surprised to see the MP3 doing so bad. Nash scoring just 9 points? What happened there!

The real story of the All-Star weekend was the on-again, off-again Jason Kidd Trade. I thought it was funny Devean George blocked the trade in the first place. Obviously he was hoping Dallas will get someone else involved in the trade. I can't believe he would have enjoyed his stay there if Kidd never ended up in Dallas. The fans would have killed him and Dirk doesn't sound too excited either. Apparently Dirk wants Kidd in Dallas badly. He sure is missing his buddy, the other PG they did have - Steve Nash and this trade is basically Dallas accepting that it was a mistake to let Stevie go. Good PGs are HARD to find.

I was actually disappointed that Devean blocked the trade because I don't think it's a great deal for Dallas. Sure, Kidd is awesome, but they were supposed to give up Devin Harris, Jerry Stackhouse and DaSagana Diop in addition to other pieces and 2 future picks. Those 3 guys are key contributors. Diop was their only defensive presence and the other 2 guys were key cogs in their offense. I am not sure if Kidd can compensate for all of this because the Kidd still can't shoot and this team relied a lot on perimeter offense. Of course Stackhouse said he expects to be bought out and join the Mavs back after a 30 day lockout. That makes it a little better for the Mavs, but now NBA is pissed he spoke about the underground dealings so openly.

NBA is a beauty! We all know NBA trades are all about matching salaries, dumping veterans with high salaries, buyouts, re-signing them for veteran minimum etc. We have seen it many times. But NBA still want to pretend like Stack shocked the World with his revelation. So now apparently Dallas have to replace both Devean and Stack from the trade. So they are now digging up Keith Van Horn from the dead, asking him to un-retire, and use his salary to consummate the trade. How is this any more credible than Stack going back and forth? They are saying NBA might have a problem with Van Horn as well, but it's widely believed this trade will go through. If I was the NBA, I would rather let Stack be open about something thats legal rather than un-retire a big salary!

Anyways, seems like Kidd will be in Dallas and now on to the stretch run. Should be fun in the West. Atlanta did itself a favor in the East by getting Mike Bibby. That should help them big. Too bad, the Cavs couldn't get Bibby. The Hawks can make the playoffs now and Joe Johnson can finally smile. The Kings got a bunch of expiring contracts in return and if they can dump Ron Artest and Brad Miller's salary as well, they will be in good shape. I sure can trust Geoff Petrie with all that cap space. He can fix that team. When NBA games resume this week, all eyes will still be on Shaq when he makes his Suns debut, hopefully against Kobe and the Fakers. That should be electric.

Shaq already has a new nickname - the Big Cactus. I like it!

It's all about the Diesel now

Now that THE TRADE is done and the initial wave of criticisms are done, it's time to look at it again. I think this needs to be called THE TRADE, especially for the Suns. Blockbusters are dime a dozen in the NBA these days and even for Shaq, this is his 4-Th stop in his career. But this one was still special because it was bold, it was done by a team that was leading the West and was widely considered a championship contender. Steve Kerr, in some sense, ripped the blue print apart and went in a new direction right in the middle of a successful season. Suns got a huge superstar in Shaq and lost one of their key pieces in the Matrix. So this is a big trade for the Suns any way you look at it.

I would say the second wave of reaction pretty much is in favor of THE TRADE. A lot of people like ESPN's Scoop Jackson are saying this is a genius move and only Kerr and D'Antoni get it. Granted, Scoop Jackson should not be quoted like an expert, but he is not alone in the approval of the trade. Many people think this can work. And of course as a Suns fan, I am always hoping these trades work out like a charm. I still have my doubts, but I can't wait to see Shaq run with these Suns. Shaq is very interesting if not anything else and he was his usual charming self in his introductory presser. It was awesome when he said "I'm very upset. You just don't want to get me really upset. When I'm upset, I'm known to do certain things . . . like win championships." Only Shaq!

It will be very interesting to see what Shaq brings to this team. Like I said, D'Antoni and Shaq both have to adjust to make it work and Nash is the glue who can make it all happen. "I've never had a point guard like him," O'Neal said. "As I was telling Steve, I haven't got an easy bucket in six years." He is now practicing with the team and all the talk is about when he will make his Suns debut. Suns are on national TV for the foreseeable future! Their next 5 games are on national TV and now the speculation is that he'll play on Thursday at home against Dallas on TNT instead of the front-end of the back-to-back at Golden State on ESPN. I want him to play if he's ready. Winning is more important than making a splash at home. Plus the Suns have trouble these days in Oakland. They need help. Nash can't guard Baron or Monta and without Marion, I am not sure how they are going to stop the W's. Monta scored 15 straight the last time the Suns were in Oakland. Nelly kills Nash on the defensive end by constantly going at him with either the bigger Baron or the quicker Monta. Of course Shaq can't guard either, but the point is, the Suns can use any defensive help they can get without Marion.

At the end of the day, I am also willing to give Kerr the benefit of the doubt. I am not sure how this'll work and defensively their perimeter got even worse now with Marion gone - who guards Nowitzki now?. But I do realize that the team pre-trade was not going anywhere. They have a glitzy record to lead the West, which is pretty impressive, but they are 21-2 against the East and just 15-13 in the West. Thats not going to get it done in the playoffs unless David Stern decides to move the Suns to the Eastern conference to atone for his sins against the Suns during last year's playoffs. And with the Lakers getting Gasol, the Suns life only got tougher in the West. So they had to do something. Is this the right move?, time will tell, but at least it's a big move. They finally went out and got a hall of fame center and it's worth the risk. May be it's just wishful thinking, but I am going to watch this with great expectations. I would just feel a little more comfortable if they pick up another solid perimeter defender who can also shoot the 3 a little bit. I would say those are the 2 deficiencies as of now.

Strap on your seat-belts. The Diesel powered Ferrari might just got started.

Panic Orange!

The Suns world officially went from Planet Orange to Panic Orange. Last week was a real bad week for the Suns. I wanted to blog about it, but got distracted by the other game called the Super Bowl. First, they lost to the Spurs at home. Never fun losing to those guys, but seems to happen all the time. This time they were without Tony Parker. More than losing, the issue was the way they lost even without Parker who kills the Suns usually. It was another drag-out, knock-down game played at the Spurs pace. Its amazing how often the Suns can't run their style against this team. They always talk about "how their offense was not in sync today or the shots didn't fall tonight" or whatever. Lets wake-up and smell the coffee. We are not in sync because the Spurs are VERY GOOD defensively. It's not a coincidence that this happens 8 out of 10 times we play them. So the loss was not just a bad loss, but it just made the question mark hanging over the Suns head that much bigger.

Then comes the Lakers trade. They get Pau Gasol for Kwame Brown, the rookie PG Jarvis Crittendon and 2 future picks. Just giving up Kwame is an upgrade for the Lakers! They also get Gasol in addition? The Lakers were also cruel enough to add his brother Mark Gasol in the trade. Why can't they let the brothers play together? Anyways, this was huge for the Lakers. With Andrew Bynum's development this season, the Lakers were already good and their future already looked bright. Now they get another young stud in Pau Gasol. Look at this starting lineup - Derek Fisher, Kobe Bryant, Lamar Odom, Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. That might be enough to make the finals this year. Imagine next year or the year after when the chemistry improves and Bynum matures. Only Kobe hogging the ball can stop this team. Otherwise they should contend for the next 4 years. Great trade for the Lakers.

So as a Suns fan, I thought they had to do something. They can't stand pat. Their window was already shrinking as I had written a few weeks back. New Orleans and the Fakers seem to be passing them by and with this trade, their window became literally 6 months. This team as currently constituted had no shot next year. So what do they do? Then press the panic button with both their hands and feet. The Suns trade Marcus Banks and the Matrix for Shaq. Great trade, just 4 years too late! Shaq is done and has been done for 18 months now. He did nothing last season. Couldn't really carry the Heat without Wade and has looked much worse this season. The dude was extended at 20 million a year and has 2 more years on it. The Suns, after trading away salaries and talented draft picks for years to save money, pick up a huge bad contract for a 36 year old, broken down has-been! Plus the Suns play an up-temp style which would not have been a good fit even for a 28-year old Shaq. So this trade makes absolutely no sense at any level.

But I am still hoping it works. It would be interesting to see Shaq-Diesel run in this offense at least for the first couple of games. The hope is, Shaq makes an impact in the half-court and on defense. It might work when the game slows down in the playoffs. They are also saying the Suns have asked him to be a defensive presence and not demand the ball too much and he has happily agreed. But the problem is, Shaq is not effective these days, period. He can't stop Duncan. So it's really intriguing to see what he can do with this team and in this offense. Plus it would suck if he is injured most of the time. Of course Steve Nash can always pepper over most of the deficiencies on offense. As always, in Nash we trust. Hopefully he can set the Diesel up better than his Miami friends.

What's happening here is that, basically Steve Kerr rolling the dice and also saying this style does not work. Kerr has always been saying the right things publicly, but he wants to change things up. He agrees with Amare that this style doesn't give him many touches. The Brazilian blur out-shoots everybody routinely in this style. I can't imagine Barbosa getting more touches than Shaq, but thats what this weird marriage is set up to do. Kerr is essentially forcing Mike D'Antoni's hand - making him play a more deliberate style and asking him to play defense in the playoffs. It would be very interesting to see how he adjusts. Everybody has to adjust in this deal - D'Antoni, Shaq, Amare and Nash. Lets see how it goes. And nobody is talking about what the Suns have lost. They lost the Matrix - one of the most versatile, athletic wings in the league. I am not sure Shaq can replace what Matrix gave this team, let alone get us a championship. If he does get another ring, his legacy will be cemented forever. I am hoping that will serve as the motivation for him and he'll give us one great season like he did in Miami. Speaking of Miami, what a deal for them? Got Shaq, won a ring and almost immediately got rid of him. Fascinating. I thought they were stuck with Shaq and mediocrity for a few years. Now it might be the Suns!

Put on the seat belt. The Suns season just got very interesting.

WOW!

There is only one word to explain today's Super Bowl game - WOW! What a game it was. End to end entertainment with not a minute of it following the script everybody including myself predicted for this game. It was surprising from the first play to the last. It was close, nail-biting and went to the last minute. And of course these games are always much more fun when the result is what you want :-) Yes the New York Giants won and shocked us all.

I am not sure how many people realized the significance of this Super Bowl. This was a HUGE game. History was at stake at many different level. The Patriots were coming of an unbeaten regular season, which only one other team has done. This win would have given them a perfect season and would have been better than the Dolphins' season because that was a 14-game regular season in the pre-free-agency era. In this day and age, what the Patriots accomplished was truly amazing. Thats just one angle. The more important ones to me were the historic positioning of this coach and QB. Both had won 3 Super Bowls and have not lost one and both were already in the conversation for the best ever. Amazing for Tom Brady because the kid is just 30 and is just entering his peak. Him and Bill Belichick were slowly but surely replacing Bill Walsh (or Lombardi or whoever) and Joe Montana as the best ever coach and QB. Joe and Terry Bradshaw were the only other QBs to have won 4 rings.

Tom and the hoody can still capture the "Best Ever" status and they probably will, but they would have clinched it if they had won their 4-Th Super Bowl today and any more wins in the future would have only cemented their legacy further. A loss at least opens the door for an argument because Walsh (or whoever) and Montana have never lost a Super Bowl. In addition to all of this, the Patriots with their unblemished record would have also been anointed as the best ever NFL team in history. Some would have even argued they were the best ever team in American sports history ahead of teams like the Chicago Bulls with MJ. I made sure I mentioned "American Sports" because a friend in my Super Bowl party reminded us that other countries also play Sports and apparently AC Milan had an impressive 56 game win streak or something in soccer and he also brought up Roger Federer. This is neither here nor there, but my point is the Pats were knocking on the door of greatness.

So I really wanted the Patriots to lose to put an end to all this conversation. Not sure why I didn't want them to enjoy this status but I just didn't. I am kind of a purist when it comes to history and I don't like greatness being redefined all the time. Plus, I don't like the whole North-East hype and I don't like anything about Bill Belichick (except his expertise at his job). In fact, I think the Hoody is probably the best coach of all-time, I just don't want him to be universally recognized as such :-) As for Tom, I seriously think he is incredibly lucky to be in the "best ever" conversation. He is good, may be even great, but he was just the right guy at the right time who got a whole bunch of breaks and a great coach and franchise-head in the Hoody. I still wonder where Brady would be if Drew Bledsoe was not injured that season. So "Best ever" to a 30-year old Brady is just not acceptable to me.

Thanks to the Giants we don't have to worry about any of this now. They come to play tonight and Eli was as cool as the other side of the pillow. He was completing 3-Rd downs all night like nobody's business. He moved the ball pretty impressively in their first possession and I immediately knew something was up. Giants are always good if the Good Eli shows up and you could tell Eli was on today. The guy was totally untouched by the Super Bowl hype. His oft-maligned stoic demeanor and lack of emotion became his strength. He was completely unaffected by this game or his opponent and not many QBs can pull that off. The Giants got just 3 points out of that impressive drive, but then their defense took over. I seriously thought they were playing 12 men instead of 11 because I have never seen this kind of pressure on pretty boy Tom Brady. He was on his back every time you looked and it clearly affected his long ball. It's amazing how QBs just are not the same when you bring serious pressure that can get to there in time. The Giants got there today. Got there early, got there often and got there in time.

It was their defense that won this game for them. The Giants offense struggled for a while, but their defense made sure the Pats offense struggled even more. The game was 7-3 forever and then the Giants scored in the 4-Th quarter for a 10-7 lead. Then came the usual Tom Brady 4-Th quarter comeback where he led the Pats to a long time-consuming TD drive. The Giants D looked a little tired and Randy Moss scored to give the Pats a 14-10 lead with less than 3 minutes to go. Wes Welker was a pest the entire second half and the Giants double teamed him and let Moss score on one-on-one coverage. With less than 3 minutes left, I was not sure what to expect from Eli Manning. I was thinking even the Great Peyton has not had great success under similar circumstances against this team. Even this season, Peyton was in the exact same situation against the Pats and he threw a game-ending interception.

What we all saw in the next 2+ minutes was a birth of a super-star. Eli was poised and on-target. The play where he somehow got away form 3 Pats who seemed to have their hands on him at one time or the other was surreal. The only thing more impressive than Eli's escape and the long bomb was David Tyree's catch, who grabbed it over his head using both his hands and his helmet. This was the play of the game and will probably be remembered forever. This play put the Giants in striking distance and made the clock more manageable. Eli then Hit Plaxiglass for the TD and there was still 35 seconds left. The only concern was, is it too much time for Brady with the score at 17-14. But not on this day with this Giants D. They sacked Brady one more time and made sure his hail Marys fell on the ground. A stunning end to a special Super Bowl. Brady, Moss and the Hoody should have a lot of frustration to deal with this off-season. Plaxico predicted a 23-17 Giants win and Brady openly laughed at him for saying his Pats will score only 17. Guess what, they scored only 14 and Brady looks like an arrogant fool right now.

A bitter pill to swallow for the entire Chowd-Nation. At least they got the Celtics to look forward to. And of course their Sox will be in Spring training anytime now.

New York State of Mind!

I am posting this an hour before the Super Bowl. We have all heard the hype and analysis for 2+ weeks. It's a really a simple call. The Patriots are way better and they are 18-0. I can't see them losing now. So I think the Pats will win, but I want the Giants to win. Not that I am a Giants fan or anything, but I hate the Hoody and the Pats. Brady is a nice guy, but can't stand the hype. A loss would shut all the Boston apologists up for a long time and that silence would be golden. But I don't see that happening.

All I hope for is a great Super Bowl Party and a relatively close game. A Giants win is way too much to ask for, but if it happens, I'll take it gleefully like of most of America would. More on the game later.