Stein backs me up in the Weekend Dime:
(
Editor's note: ESPN.com senior NBA writer Marc Stein supplies each item for this around-the-league notebook edition of the Daily Dime.) Saturday marks five months since
Amare Stoudemire underwent microfracture surgery on his left knee.
Still too soon, in other words, to say for sure that he'll be back this season.
"It's still pretty much up in the air," Stoudemire told me in Dallas last weekend.
You will not be surprised to learn that Stoudemire didn't want to hear my view.
As much as I love watching him play -- and as much as it would do for the forthcoming playoffs if the league's most remarkable blend of athleticism and power can return this month as he hopes -- I believe more than ever that Amare should sit out the year.
It's the best thing for him and these Suns.
No one with the club is about to say so publicly, and you can understand why someone as young and proud as Stoudemire wouldn't want to make that admission, either. Yet it becomes more obvious with each passing day.
This late in the season, there's simply more to risk than gain by trying to blend Stoudemire into a group that returns only three guys (
Steve Nash,
Shawn Marion and
Leandro Barbosa) who have actually played with him.
Let's say Stoudemire plays 10 or even 15 games before the start of the playoffs. Is that really enough time for Stoudemire, after just five months to get sturdy, to find a level of performance and a chemistry with his teammates that takes the Suns another notch or two higher than they are right now? At present, remember, Phoenix is winning the Pacific Division by 7 1/2 games and seeded to reach the Western Conference finals
without its future MVP.
Stoudemire, incidentally, just suffered the first brow-raising setback in his rehabilitation. A fluid buildup in his right knee, which he described as "overcompensation" from his attempts to ease pressure on the surgically repaired knee, forced the 23-year-old to wait a few extra days before joining five-on-five drills this week for the first time since the operation.
Although he has since progressed to the point that the Suns now envision Stoudemire's debut coming in two weeks or less, coach Mike D'Antoni concedes that Stoudemire looks "stiff-legged" at times and has yet to reach the point where he can "do things without thinking about the leg."
No surprise there. History says this phase is filled with setbacks and mental/psychological hurdles, and not only for those never-the-same microfracture patients like Penny Hardaway,
Terrell Brandon and
Allan Houston.
Skipping games because of knee soreness has been an all-season inconvenience for Denver's
Kenyon Martin (28) and Utah's
Matt Harpring (29). Portland's
Zach Randolph, nearly a year removed from undergoing microfracture at 23, estimates that he's playing at roughly 80 percent capacity ... with Philadelphia's
Chris Webber in the same range almost three years after his surgery.
Even for a successful microfracture alumnus like
Jason Kidd, playing-time restrictions and nights off were unavoidable at the beginning.
Which brings us back to the time element. Stoudemire is indeed younger than all of the above and, by all accounts, had the least severe injury in the group. Five months, though, is a fast turnaround for even the most otherworldly of NBA athletes ... and it would still leave less than a month before the playoffs to get Amare assimilated.
I ask again: Is it worth subjecting Stoudemire to a more significant setback than a fluid buildup when you factor in those variables?
Not with the future he and the Suns share, with Amare's 70-plus million-dollar extension starting next season.
This isn't Indiana or Cleveland, where the Pacers and Cavaliers are second-tier teams without
Jermaine O'Neal and
Larry Hughes. The Suns are
rolling without Stoudemire. Maybe they can't win the championship without him, but so what? His return doesn't automatically get them any closer to San Antonio or Detroit, so why even mess with it?
(Just for the record: O'Neal's groin and Hughes' finger injuries, while not as scary as Stoudemire's, make me just as reluctant to bring them back for the playoffs. I guess I'm just a Long-Term Outlook kind of guy.)
The good news for worriers like me? The Suns' basketball and medical staffs aren't going to let Stoudemire come back if the next couple of weeks raise more red flags. D'Antoni insists he won't even have to sit Amare down to convince him.
D'Antoni, who now doubles as the Suns' newly minted executive vice president of basketball operations, told me (A) that Stoudemire doesn't want to come back this season unless he can wow us and (B) to let the coach/GM do the worrying.
"We're only going to do this if everybody, including Amare, feels there's no problem," D'Antoni said. "He knows that if there's any kind of swelling or any kind of pain, he's going to back off it. Everyone in this organization is on the same page -- there's no alternative motives here.
"We do it when he's ready."
