Actually I myself would not dare to rip Shaq the way I does if I weren't in Finland, hacked into the WLAN system of my neighbour with a disguised MAC, so that Shaq could not track my IP adress...

...scary thought, that was if he had my number and read what I am writing about him *shiver* .

Well...On the Sun's realgm board, most people either don't like it, or are VERY apprehensive about it. A few seem to really think Shaq isn't really that injured, but rather was simply resting and abiding by Miami's tanking wishes. The happy folks are saying he'll slow the game down, but I guess the point is that their style of play has NEVER been conducive to championships as of yet and that it allows them to better matchup with the Spurs, Lakers, Pistons, Celtics, etc. A motivated Shaq who has better defenders around him (go figure) is apparently still a good defender.

The Daddy still has no idea what's going on...

Can we just trade Craig Smith for Luther Head and McCants, Theo, Jaric, and Green for Wallace and Noah?

daddyfatsax wrote:

Thanks for the info.

Also, I wholeheartedly agree with your trade ideas...

As usual, The Daddy's insights are not only hillarious, but also very true, although I would like to add...1. Apparently, I might be a good defender if I had better defenders around me.
2. The Suns have no \"better defenders\" (as Daddy suggests) except maybe Marion - whom they are going to trade after that scenario - and Bell, who is a perimeter defender that can't make up for Shaq's nonexisting agility under the basket.
3. If I have to read any sense in that, the Suns would like Shaq to be THE defender, and not an offensive force whose defensive weakness they could masquerade with all the other great defenders they have.

4. If this was becoming reality, I will humbly aks the Daddy's pardon, because Stern really WAS fixing things in favor of LA. Next thing we'll hear will be that San Antonio, upon hearing of Shaq's return to the Western Conference releases Parker, Ginobili and Bowen to clear the roster spots for the un-retiring of Greg Ostertag, Bryant Reeves and John McIlvaine! Oh...and Dirk Nowitzki will be accidentally run over by an ice cream truck.

Sanyarin wrote:
LOL...McIlvaine was superb. all 4 pts are convincing. I am exhausting my resources looking for the upside to this. Can't wait to hear Steven A. Smith and Bill Walton analyze this trade.

daddyfatsax wrote:

Their heads would probably explode on the air, while discussing/trying to comprehend the trade lol...

\"Kobe Bryant thought Pau Gasol was taking him over the top. Now Phoenix general manager Steve Kerr has told the Western Conference, 'I see your Gasol and raise you one Shaq.' Shaq's style doesn't work in Phoenix? Taking passes from Nash kind of works for anyone. And dunking and shooting 60 percent fits just about anywhere. O'Neal either wasn't quick or healthy enough to get away from the double-teams here anymore. That won't be a problem the way Phoenix plays. O'Neal has gone from trying to play in an airplane bathroom here to playing in the open space of the airplane hangar -- if he's healthy enough to keep up with a team that plays as if on jet fuel.\" -Broussard (sic?)

Shaq in an airplane bathroom is pretty funny.

Like I said, maybe ShaQ isn't as bad as he has looked this year. Maybe he knew they were talking trades and he wanted to take it a little easy. He generally has it on cruise control a bit for the first half of the season anyway.

Also, maybe Steve Kerr just figured that Phoenix simply couldn't win it all with their current roster. Maybe he figured they had been there, done that, came up short every time, and did not have the right formula to truly contend for a championship. He thought they may lose the Matrix soon anyway (and he's a malcontent behind the scenes), and Nash is probably on his last few great years, so why not go for it right now and hope Shaq still has something in the tank.

I still think it was a poor trade, but I guess in some respects it may be understandable. I would say the chances of Phoenix being BETTER after this trade in the playoffs is lower than 50%, but maybe Kerr figured it was worth the gamble, has he had no faith in the current team truly contending.

And remember, all 3 teams Shaq have played for have made the finals....

I hope Shaq can really turn it up now, I've always loved the Diesel.

I don't really care if the trade is good/bad for the Suns or Heat, all I know is that it's GOOOOOOOOOD for the Wolves.

Short-term - having the Matrix should help put some W's in the Miami win column and could improve our draft positioning.

Long-term - the Suns window has just gotten extremely small. Nash and Shaq are both on their last legs. This trade all but assures that the Wolves will have one less team to contend with in 2-3 years when we're ready to make the leap.

DeROK wrote:

Agreed.

No matter how you look at it... I think it's a great trade for us. Mostly because it should help the Heat win more games than they would have if they had kept Shaq.

Plus, we get to see Shaq and Nash on the same team. That will be... interesting.

I also agreed. We're fighting for the worse record here and Miami beens challenging us for it. Now that they got Marion, it will definitely improve their record and leave us on the bottom of the standings where we need to be this year.

Now I'm worry that Memphis will challenge us, but if they do we'll be ready with Mark Madsen.

Ok, it's official. I still don't get it, though.

But since I basically think I have said everything I have to say about this, please check out the analysis of the \"usual suspects\":

General coverage on SI.com

An update of the first article SI's Jack McCallum I linked already yesterday.

SI's Chris Mannix thinks that it is Miami who have scored big on this trade.

Marty Burns from SI also thinks that this move by the Suns probably has \"failure\" if not \"idiocy\" written all over it

Another piece by Jack McCallum in which he evaluates Marion, his own relation to him and the Matrix' role in PHX.

Of course, ESPN.com also has some general coverage of that story.

In his article, J.A. Adance from ESPN bemoanes that the Suns have given up on their project as \"the revolution is dead\".

In ESPN's Daily Dime, Marc Stein also drops some supposedly little known facts about the trade.

General coverage on the Suns' positive opinion on Yahoo Sports.

Also on Yahoo, Adrian Wojnarowski offers some well valued insights on the Suns' state of mind before and after making this deal.

Yahoo's Johnny Ludden sees the West in turmoil after the Gasol and Shaq trades.


Additional links to beat writers of several newspapers can be found on Hery Abbott's True Hoop blog.


I guess there is plenty of more out there on the net, but I gotta get to work, so you have to check it by yourself .

Sanyarin -

Very well done compiling all the links to various articles about the Shaq-Marion trade.

Thanks!

Alright...The Daddy has read a ton on this and I have taken my private reflection period (ala White Goodman from Dodgeball with the masterPizzabating) to figure this out.

From Miami's perspective - whatever. Selfishly, I agree with you all that it's good for us, from both sides actually. Wade will have some fun with Marion and maybe Davis can get in that sixth man role where he was decent back in Boston.

Phoenix: This is about as risky as you can get. I love how one columnist compared this to allowing Ric Flair handle your finances (ricflairfinance.com), which by the way is fantastic.

Anyway, I just can't imagine Kerr being dumb enough to trade for Shaq if he had no ability to be at least 3/4's of the Shaq that brought the hardware to Miami. Kerr knows much more info on the inside than we do, so I'm just going to presume once the Diesel is healthy he'll be motivated and ready to drop 16 and 8 or so in 25-30 minutes a game.

So, assuming the above, do we all agree that the run and gun style has not proven conducive to championships? I'll assume so. the Suns will still have stretches where Shaq won't play (Until the playoffs I doubt he plays over 25-30 minutes), allowing them to push the tempo. Then when Shaq is in the game, the simple fact is that D'Antoni, Nash, Hill, Barbosa, Amare, Bell, and Diaw will have to dedicate themselves to developing a 1-2 punch of grinding it out with Shaq, and running without him. A rested Shaq MAY be agile enough to still own the paint, with Amare/Boris floating the high post, Hill cutting, Nash, Barbosa, and Bell spotting.

With all that said, I'm am nowhere near sold on the above happening. IF Shaq is still spry and healthy enough to actually play both offensively and defensively, then sure. But what evidence are we missing that proves he can? Financially, sure it makes sense. Shaq sent goos bumps up my spine when he stood up in the stands, flaunting his rings and yelling \"CAN YOU DIG IT!\" Shaq, much like KG, will bring in so much more money than you can believe just by being himself.

In the end, I think I'm right back to where I started...confused.

It is still hard for me to believe this trade actually happened, and given Shaqs continously declining performance over the last two years afte he won the Championship with Miami, I am still asking myself not only if a young Shaq (the slender, athletic one that played in Orlando) might habe been a good fit with this Suns team, but also if today's Shaq was really anything more than a really bad, faulty copy of any of the Shaqs this league has seen...

...

...but people tend to live in the past, and I guess to my generation, the name \"Shaq\" will always have that special sound, that promise of victory, if not of total domination coming along with it. And as he hinted himself (for example, check out coverage at SI.com), he might be getting REALLY angry about the way Miami has treated him and especially how the media and basically everybody thinks he has nothing left in the tank.

...

An angry Shaq...I don't know, but that has always been good for something. Maybe he just brought Miami the title because he was angry that very year about LA choosing Kobe over him. I still don't know if his body is still allowing him to channel his anger into anything...

...

...but I admit that for me, there is some eternal, undoubtable truth I might want to believe in, when Shaq says
Is there any person on this planet that actually wants Shaq to get \"upset\"?

I would not dare to .