Reliving the Past (Marbury Trade)

[playstation]

Since we got a week to kill, and I think about the Suns more than i think about work/family/etc, here's an article from right after the trade:

The Sun Sets in the East

You'll have to forgive the Phoenix Suns- they're a little slow. They didn't know that when the Knicks call you up offering Charlie Ward for your best player, you're supposed to hang up the phone. The Knicks had about as much bargaining power throughout the league as Saddam had in that bunker, but they still managed to trick Phoenix into giving them one of the top 20 players in the NBA. The Suns fell for the oldest trick in the book on Monday, and I'm here to tell you why we're all going to pay for it.

You, the reader: You may have heard about this trade on Monday and thought to yourself, "Man the Suns are dumb. Good thing the (fill in your favorite team's name here) would never fall for that." Well, it doesn't matter whether your team would fall for it or not, because you'll never see them again. The New York Knicks will now dominate the television airwaves for the foreseeable future, so kiss your team goodbye. If you thought you saw enough of the Knicks when they were terrible, just wait until the second half of this season. Or have you forgotten those classic Knicks-Heat playoff scrums, the ones featuring the full use of each 24-second clock, more bricks than a mason's convention, and foul-line wrestling? With the Knicks now turning into the Yankees and simply buying superstars, can a 24-hour Knicks channel be far behind, or does NBC own the patent for that idea?

Jerry Colangelo: The only way Colangelo could have come out looking worse in this deal would be if The Source announced they were releasing a racist mixtape he made a decade ago about an ex-girlfriend. So, the Suns have now essentially traded Jason Kidd for cap space. Garry St. Jean, the gauntlet has been laid down.

Suns fans: What was once a team with a bright future has quickly become an also-ran. Marbury is gone, leaving the team with Shawn Marion, Stoudemire, and the Scrabble All-Stars (Leandrinho Barbosa, Zarko Cabarkapa, Milos Vujanic, Maciej Lampe). Oh, but there's cap space to sign a star free agent! Too bad that other than Kobe Bryant, no free agent is better than Marbury, whom they just traded. On a positive note, Steve Nash will also be a free agent, so the Suns can overpay to re-acquire yet another All-Star point guard they traded away.

So there you have it. What looked to be an innocent trade on the surface is actually a natural disaster threatening to shake the very foundation of this country. Could the Suns really be this dumb, or has Mad Cow reached Phoenix already? The answers are out there....

 

[Tank]

Wow that's great. I'd love to hear that guy's oppinion on the trade now...

 

[thegrahamcrackr]

Who wrote that one? Most analysts actually liked the trade for the Suns citing the increased flexibility it gave us, and that the team would never get out of the first round.

 

[Chaplin]

Yeah, I'd like to know who wrote it as well. It'd be interesting to send the author an email and find out what he thinks of the trade now.

 

[Azlen]

I just found the article here
http://www.sign-arenas.20fr.com/thesunsetsintheeast.htm

The website does have a link for providing them feedback

 

[Ouchie-Z-Clown]

I just found the article here
http://www.sign-arenas.20fr.com/thesunsetsintheeast.htm

The website does have a link for providing them feedback

we gotta roast that dude.

 

[The Commish]

we gotta roast that dude.

Yeah that guy is toast...I might make it a point to leave feedback every day this week.

 

[Azlen]

Cardinal fans can go after him to. This is what he wrote about them in his mock draft column.


Here's a question for all you parents out there: would you rather see your daughter end up in a 'Girls Gone Wild' video, or have your son be drafted by the Arizona Cardinals? Either way, your kid is going to wake up face down in a Havasu motel room on the back end of a weekend bender, wondering where their money went. But while your daughter would at least have some stories to tell, your son would just be entering the beginning phases of clinical depression, having been forced to play for the league's worst franchise.
It's one thing for a team to to continually make stupid decisions. We've all been there with at least one of our teams. But if a franchise is both inept AND cheap, that's just unforgivable. But the Cardinals are both, which puts them in a very exclusive 2-team club with the L.A. Clippers. I half expect the Cards to try and draft Larry Fitzgerald again this year. Once that doesn't work, don't be shocked if Cardinals officials hand Tagliabue a card with Rod Tidwell's name on it, and once THAT doesn't work, the pick will be Cadillac Williams.

 

[Billythekid]

Ha! I wrote this guy an email and he responded... rather quick i might add.



TJ,

Thanks for the email. I'd completely forgotten about that column, it obviously looks a lot different now than when I wrote it. I'd definitely feel a lot better about it if Phoenix hadn't signed Steve Nash and run the entire league off the floor on their way to the best record in the NBA. If they don't sign Nash, the Marbury trade looks pretty bad, and there was no guarantee they'd sign such a huge difference-maker with their cap room when I wrote the column. So, I generally don't feel too bad.

Hindsight being what it is, the Suns obviously came out looking great. If they don't sign Nash or pick up an All-Star point guard through trade, then they don't look so great and you probably don't send me an email calling me a sucka. Either way, I don't think the article was bad- you may think I'm an idiot based on what I wrote, but it probably at least made you laugh.

Either way, thanks for taking the time to read the column and write me an email. Regardless of what you have to say, I always like to hear from readers. I take it you're a Suns fan, so good luck to your team in the playoffs.


Best,

Ray


TJ wrote:
Man, that was a really bad article. How do you feel now... Sucka!

The Sun Sets in the East

You'll have to forgive the Phoenix Suns- they're a little slow. They didn't know that when the Knicks call you up offering Charlie Ward for your best player, you're supposed to hang up the phone. The Knicks had about as much bargaining power throughout the league as Saddam had in that bunker, but they still managed to trick Phoenix into giving them one of the top 20 players in the NBA. The Suns fell for the oldest trick in the book on Monday, and I'm here to tell you why we're all going to pay for it.

You, the reader: You may have heard about this trade on Monday and thought to yourself, "Man the Suns are dumb. Good thing the (fill in your favorite team's name here) would never fall for that." Well, it doesn't matter whether your team would fall for it or not, because you'll never see them again. The New York Knicks will now dominate the television airwaves for the foreseeable future, so kiss your team goodbye. If you thought you saw enough of the Knicks when they were terrible, just wait until the second half of this season. Or have you forgotten those classic Knicks-Heat playoff scrums, the ones featuring the full use of each 24-second clock, more bricks than a mason's convention, and foul-line wrestling? With the Knicks now turning into the Yankees and simply buying superstars, can a 24-hour Knicks channel be far behind, or does NBC own the patent for that idea?

Jerry Colangelo: The only way Colangelo could have come out looking worse in this deal would be if The Source announced they were releasing a racist mixtape he made a decade ago about an ex-girlfriend. So, the Suns have now essentially traded Jason Kidd for cap space. Garry St. Jean, the gauntlet has been laid down.

Keith Van Horn: Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we, back to the late 1990's and early 2000's. Keith Van Horn and Stephon Marbury were teammates with the New Jersey Nets, who were pretty back then. Marbury and Van Horn got along about as well as you'd expect a Brooklyn native and a Utah alum to get along. My personal favorite memory is Stephon bitching at Van Horn on the court, and watching Keith take it like a man on the way back into his shell. Well, these 2 are back together again, and I couldn't be happier. In fact, they're #3 on my list of NBA pairings I'd like to see chained together, or somehow conjoined to become Siamese twins. Number 2 on that list is the duo of Wally Szczerbiak and Ron Artest, topped only by the combination of Doug Christie and Shawn Kemp. I give it 2 weeks before Steph starts yelling for Van Horn to hold his pocket.

Knicks fans: Sure, they get a more exciting team in the short-term, and their team is guaranteed a playoff berth. But with the way New York fans foam at the mouth over their teams, I can already forsee the unbearable heartbreak that will come when their team fails to win the weak Eastern Conference. In fact, the chances of the Knicks winning the East are about as good as my chances of marrying Britney Spears. Sure, both scenarios look a little more possible than they did last week, but the odds have only been lowered from 1-in-double infinity to 1-in-inifinity.

Antonio McDyess: McDyess now must return to Phoenix, the team he left several years ago after super-secret, G-14 classified negotiations with the Denver Nuggets. In fact, I think McDyess may have even been kidnapped by the Nuggets at one point. So, McDyess will have all eyes and expectations on him, in a town that he once betrayed. At least, until Amare Stoudemire returns to take his job. This could be the most akward return this side of A-Rod at Arlington.

Charlie Ward: Poor Charlie. He went from being permanent trade bait to point guard for a last-place team to released and out of a job within a 2-day span. Not only that, but when Phoenix handed him his jersey Monday night, instead of "Ward" being stitched on the back, it said "Should Have Played Football". Mr. Ward's eternal quest for respect may never end. Good thing he can spoon his Heisman every night.

Latrell Sprewell: You are looking at a man fresh out of thunder. That's because it's been stolen by Isiah Thomas, that tricky devil. Spree was the prodigal son/villain/hero/a$$hole king of New York for the past month, thanks to the display he put on when he visited the Garden and beat the Knicks, complete with a trash-talking session with his former owner. Knicks owner James Dolan was vilified for letting Spree go, and Knicks fans were crying that they would never again be a complete 10th seed again without their beloved Spree. Now, Knicks fans have a new fixation, and Spree's cornrows are a thing of the past, rendered irrelevant. Think anyone will be pining for Sprewell in the Big Apple now?

Suns fans: What was once a team with a bright future has quickly become an also-ran. Marbury is gone, leaving the team with Shawn Marion, Stoudemire, and the Scrabble All-Stars (Leandrinho Barbosa, Zarko Cabarkapa, Milos Vujanic, Maciej Lampe). Oh, but there's cap space to sign a star free agent! Too bad that other than Kobe Bryant, no free agent is better than Marbury, whom they just traded. On a positive note, Steve Nash will also be a free agent, so the Suns can overpay to re-acquire yet another All-Star point guard they traded away.

Common sense: The Knicks now have 4 players making the max (Marbury, Houston, Van Horn, Penny Hardaway), and Penny joins Antawn Jamison as the only players in the NBA making the max off the bench. If you're brilliant enough to sign Keith Van Horn to the maximum allowable salary, there needs to be rules in place dictating that you do it in invisible ink. Certain things just shouldn't be allowed to transpire.

So there you have it. What looked to be an innocent trade on the surface is actually a natural disaster threatening to shake the very foundation of this country. Could the Suns really be this dumb, or has Mad Cow reached Phoenix already? The answers are out there....

 

[Cheesebeef]

Ha! I wrote this guy an email and he responded... rather quick i might add.



TJ,

Thanks for the email. I'd completely forgotten about that column, it obviously looks a lot different now than when I wrote it. I'd definitely feel a lot better about it if Phoenix hadn't signed Steve Nash and run the entire league off the floor on their way to the best record in the NBA. If they don't sign Nash, the Marbury trade looks pretty bad, and there was no guarantee they'd sign such a huge difference-maker with their cap room when I wrote the column. So, I generally don't feel too bad.

Hindsight being what it is, the Suns obviously came out looking great. If they don't sign Nash or pick up an All-Star point guard through trade, then they don't look so great and you probably don't send me an email calling me a sucka. Either way, I don't think the article was bad- you may think I'm an idiot based on what I wrote, but it probably at least made you laugh.

Either way, thanks for taking the time to read the column and write me an email. Regardless of what you have to say, I always like to hear from readers. I take it you're a Suns fan, so good luck to your team in the playoffs.


Best,

Ray


TJ wrote:
Man, that was a really bad article. How do you feel now... Sucka!

pretty solid response - especially considering how many people HERE went just as agro slamming the Suns like he did.

Nice to see he wasn't a jackass about it.

 

[Billythekid]

Yes, he was gracious in defeat.

 

[elindholm]

"Scrabble All-Stars" was pretty funny.

 

[jibikao]

I think the writer did make a valid point.

He did say if we sign Steven Nash (Or Kobe??) then things "may" look different. But since at that time we don't know if Suns can get Nash (remember, Nash's priority is to sign with Mavs), the writer made pretty good points that Suns may be in trouble if they can't get a "difference-maker" like Nash.

The writer didn't say Suns will still be "bad" after getting Nash, did he?

 

[Chris_Sanders]

I think the writer did make a valid point.

He did say if we sign Steven Nash (Or Kobe??) then things "may" look different. But since at that time we don't know if Suns can get Nash (remember, Nash's priority is to sign with Mavs), the writer made pretty good points that Suns may be in trouble if they can't get a "difference-maker" like Nash.

The writer didn't say Suns will still be "bad" after getting Nash, did he?

He actually said Marbury is better than Nash.

 

[Joe Mama]

He also said the New York Knicks were to be atop the Atlantic division.

Joe

 

[Treesquid PhD]

That is too funny. Someone dig up the articles when we traded Tony Delk and Rodney Rodgers for JJ, a lot of these same writers ripped that trade too.

 

[newfan101]

He also said the New York Knicks were to be atop the Atlantic division.

Joe

True. He also forgot to mention that his Knicks had to take Penny Hardaway and his attitude and contract.

Also, his comment that the Suns could pick up Nash by being under the cap was laced with sarcasm. His implication at the time was that the Suns would compound a bad trade by signing Nash. Now he's conveniently reversing that stance to save face.

Writers will be writers.

 

[Errntknght]

Joe, "He also said the New York Knicks were to be atop the Atlantic division."

Actually, he didn't say that at all. What he said in the shortened version originally quoted was that the Knicks would dominate the broadcast schedule more than ever - presumeably because they had an all-star in Marbury. If you read the full article you'll see him saying they were a lock for the playoffs but he added, "In fact, the chances of the Knicks winning the East are about as good as my chances of marrying Britney Spears. Sure, both scenarios look a little more possible than they did last week, but the odds have only been lowered from 1-in-double infinity to 1-in-inifinity."

What I wondered was why his chances of marrying Britany went up at all, however insignificantly.

 

[jibikao]

Nash > Marbury.