Come on, ford. Last year's Suns were better than the 05-06 version. Those Suns were lucky to win two Game 7s and didn't have enough weapons to beat the lowly Mavericks.
Lucky, gutsy, whatever you want to call it. But if you take last year's team, which is better, by your own admission, and you only remove Kurt Thomas, I don't see how that team loses in the first round unless Duncan gets hurt early in the season and the Spurs end up as a 7 or 8 seed.
How do you figure? He averaged 26 against the Spurs, and that was with the virtual DNP in Game 1.
Honestly, I think that 20 minutes is about what D'Antoni would play him next year if he were on the team. The problem with not having KT is in the likely event of Amare getting into foul trouble. But then, when Amare's in foul trouble, the team is in trouble. Remember game 3?
Now remember, I'm not saying that I don't think Kurt has a place on this team, I just think the trade makes a lot of sense. If I owned the Suns, I'm not sure I could turn down a 16 million dollar expense cut for what I thought D'Antoni would do with Kurt Thomas, if we faced the Spurs. Also, if I was the owner and my most trusted confidant was telling me how great Sean Marks is, I'd probably go, "for 16 million, it's worth a shot."
It's an artificial comparison, I'll admit, but how much is Roger Clemens making this season? It's the American way to overspend your budget for the opportunity to do something special. People who want to manage their money responsibly shouldn't be in pro sports -- heck, it's no secret that most teams lose money, so it's one of the least appealing investments out there.
Besides, which was a worse overpayment based on the Spurs series: Thomas for $16 million, or Marion for $25 million, which is his salary plus the amount over the luxury tax line?
Playing the Marion card is unfair. And I do believe that Marion is less overpaid. Also, Marion being overpaid is the reason we have to cut costs on guy like Thomas. Would you rather have dumped Marion for cap space and kept KT?
As for your other question, comparing it to baseball is ludicrous. You're comparing the Phoenix Suns to what I believe is the highest spending team in sports history, with no salary cap. They are trying to win a championship, which they haven't done since 2000 (I believe), yet have been spending vast amounts of money every year. The Dodgers and Red Sox spend a ton of money and that doesn't seem to do it either. All it does is keep you competetive, as long as there's no salary cap. If there is one, it just straps your franchise. Although I will admit that keeping KT wouldn't have done that, since he was in the last year of his deal.
Again, I'd love to have an owner who would just spend the money and not give a crap, but we don't have one. I don't think any team other than the Knicks and maybe the Mavs would have been willing to spend 16 mil on KT with this coach, if there was a deal on the table to remove it.
I could buy that argument if the Suns had made other movements to address their depth, but they've done the opposite. Eventually, you don't have the bodies even to field a team. Remember, D'Antoni also said that the Suns needed to get deeper. There's an imperfect correlation between what he says and what he does.
Right now the Suns have only seven players worthy of being considered for the rotation. The only way for that to work is if no one ever gets hurt, no one ever gets tired, and no one ever gets in foul trouble. Good luck.
Do I think the Suns have had a great offseason? Heck no. Do I think we can still win the championship with this team? Yes. But this "now we're screwed because we traded Kurt Thomas" mentality which has been growing over the last few days is just plain silly.
