Much ado about nothing

There was a lot of noise surrounding the Suns and the trade deadline. It turned out that the Suns did nothing player-wise and stayed put, but lost Amare anyways to an eye surgery. The trade deadline was a big snooze-fest as none of the big names around the league changed addresses. Just when the team and the fans thought Amare was all set to be a productive Sun the rest of the season, he is out with an unexpected eye surgery. This guy has impeccable timing as far as his injuries and surgeries go. He signed a multi-year deal a few years back and had a knee surgery before he played the first game of the very next season. This year he was part of all kinds of trade speculation and just a day or two after the deadline, he is done for the season. Now Suns are in a bigger hole than ever as far as this season goes.

The Amare speculation was all over the place, but the most intriguing trade rumor was Shaq going to C-town. Wow! As much as I like the Suns to do well and come out of any trade with value on their side, I wouldn't have had a problem seeing Shaq alongside the King even if it meant the Suns had to take back garbage. That would have been awesome theater to say the least. He would have helped the King too given how good he has been this season. Shaq is in good shape and is doing fairly decent in the low post and on defense. In that half-court offense they run in C-town, he would have been a valuable piece for the stretch run. How ironic would it have been if he helped LeBron win a ring after having helped Kobe to 3 rings, and then gravy-trained Wade for one more? Thats three of the best wings in the game today and Shaq would have played, won and tried to steal the credit from all of them.

Kerr came out of the All-Star weekend and promptly fired Coach Terry Poter. I rarely support firing coaches after just 4 months, but this was one of those rare cases I guess. Porter didn't do much for this team and he had to go. Running selectively, or to be more precise, running randomly on a whim, and throwing the ball into Shaq on every half-court possession is not great coaching. May be Porter could have gotten away with it in 2001 when Shaq was Shaq. Plus the whole thing seems to have alienated Amare more than he would like to admit. So Kerr turned over the keys to the car to Alvin gentry and Gentry is driving it at full-speed again. The run-and-gun is back and the Suns have scored 140+ points in 3 straight games.

Of course these wins were against the Clippers (twice) and Thunder, but at least it shows that Gentry is indeed committed the to the run-and-gun and the Suns players are still alive and awake. This is no guarantee the Suns are going to be great again in the West. I mean even the Gonzaga bulldogs can probably drop 100 points on the paper-clips and the Thunder, but 140 points is still huge in the NBA and I was curious to see what happens to the Suns under the new-old regime the rest of the way. We may not get the answer we need this season because Amare is out for the rest of the season with that eye surgery. Typical Suns. One step forward, but two steps backwards.