I hope we keep Amare and just learn from our mistakes in regards to what kind of players you want to put around him.
His problem is he has 2-4 plays almost every game on the defensive end that just make you want to throttle him - being completely non-existent as a help defender sometimes, poor closeouts or just getting blown by when someone drives on him (this isn't all his fault though, I hope I'm not the only one who has noticed how absolutely atrocious his lateral movement is since the surgery). The plays look so bad that it's easy to point to him as being a major problem defensively. But in the grand scheme of things, that has a pretty small effect on the outcome of a game compared to things like how Shaq and Nash defend the 30~ pick and rolls that get run against them every game, how we constantly have to overcome the fact that our most important player often gets outplayed by horrible point guards (I understand getting lit up by Paul, Parker, D-Will.. but seriously, watching guys like Aaron Brooks, Raymond Felton and Brevin Knight torch this team is incredibly frustrating).
Build around Amare, get rid of either Barbosa or J-Rich because you can't win around 3 terrible defenders like those three, and get Amare players like Billups (and I'm not saying he even has to be that good, we just need to draft our own Russell Westbrook or something), Chandler, Ariza, etc. with a shooter or two thrown in and you have a team that can compete.
