3-5 - The Suns saga

Another loss for the Suns tonight. This time at Denver. No defense again. They won yesterday at Portland, which is not a bad team. But it was an ugly win as well. They are now 3-5 with Shaq and some of the games have been ugly. I am not sure whether to be happy or sad with the ugly wins. One theory says uglies are good because that means they can now play and win muck-up, defensive basketball. I am not so sure. I think they are only winning winnable games in a ugly way while they used to do it in style. I still have not seen them win a big game or games they would typically lose. They get their chance this Sunday as they play the mighty Spurs on ABC-HD. I had very low expectations from the Shaq trade, but I thought the one team he can help us with are the Spurs because the Spurs always force the Suns to go half-court. But the Suns defense has clearly taken a step back since the trade. They gave up 126 to Denver today. They could never guard Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli and it can only get worse this Sunday with this new perimeter defense or the lack thereof.

My worst fears have come through as far as missing Marion goes. I think they miss him bad on the perimeter. Raja Bell has been average at best this season at either end of the floor and Marion was the only other threat on defense. Now thats gone. Shaq can guard the paint, but he has never been that great defensively. Also you can't be a sieve on the perimeter and hope the paint will be guarded by the bigs. It doesn't work that way. The really ironic part of the whole deal is this. Can Nash be missing Marion more than Marion is missing Nash? Many people thought that Marion was dumb to want to get away from Nash and all the easy baskets he gets him. While thats true, suddenly there is a lot of talk among the Suns fans about how Nash is struggling. The MP3 was UNTOUCHABLE and he owned the city of Phoenix until 3 weeks back. But now there are some murmurs in the valley of the Sun about how his game has slipped. His turnover numbers are up and he is not spraying assists like he used to. He did get 13 dimes today but had just 4 against Portland yesterday. No wonder that win was ugly.

With Shaq in there instead of Marion, the spacing is all gone and Nash doesn't get as many assists on open 3's. It's easier to predict where the ball goes now and that explains some of the turnovers. Also, no easy fast-break dunks and alley-oops without Marion in there. My fear with the trade was that Marion did a lot for this team, for which he never got too much credit and we will miss him bad when he is gone. Even if Shaq did what he was supposed to, who's going to replace Marion? Because they are 2 entirely different players and the Suns need both those skill-sets. Shaq is actually not doing too bad. For instance, he had 12-18 today. I think this whole thing is not really about Marion or Shaq being good or bad or better than the other, it's all about who fits this team and this system better. Thats definitely Marion and not Shaq if you ask me. Shaq will help if they also get a good replacement for Marion. Now they have Gordan Giricek. Dude played 20 minutes and shot 4/8 for 11 points against Denver. Thats a good start. I think he can help, but where are the 6-Th seed Suns going this season when all is said and done? Only time will tell.