Steve Kerr admits Kurt Thomas trade was horrible

[JCSunsfan]

I don't think he was a great GM. He made a horrible hire and he made one of the worst trades in the history of the game. He improved over time and IMO he became a decent GM but he did NOTHING to warrant the "great" label you've given him. As for not being a knowledgeable fan, I can live with that.

Steve

This. I hoped he would continue to improve.

 

[Ninjafish]

2. Let's take a look at the trades he made:
a) Shawn Marion for Shaq: if you can honestly say that you saw the potential that Shaq still had - to be a legitimate All-Star and the best center in the Western Conference - then perhaps you are as good at evaluating talent as Steve Kerr. When was the last time the Suns had the best center in the Western Conference? I mean, besides the game against the Knicks last season when we started Josh Childress in the middle...

So there's still one person on the planet that views the Shaq trade as a good trade. lol.

Shaq was such a terrible fit for us that we became immensely better the year after he left just by losing him for nothing.

I see Shaq as one of the biggest reasons we were murdered by the Spurs in the 08 playoffs.

 

[slinslin]

So there's still one person on the planet that views the Shaq trade as a good trade. lol.

Shaq was such a terrible fit for us that we became immensely better the year after he left just by losing him for nothing.

I see Shaq as one of the biggest reasons we were murdered by the Spurs in the 08 playoffs.

Ridiculously untrue, the Suns played their best basketball with Shaq when Porter was fired.

Marion for Shaq was a good trade. Marion since has been exposed as a role player in the league.

 

[Ninjafish]

Ridiculously untrue, the Suns played their best basketball with Shaq when Porter was fired.

Marion for Shaq was a good trade. Marion since has been exposed as a role player in the league.

Do you actually like watch basketball games or do you just like to talk about it while knowing nothing?

This is almost as dumb as the comment you made last week about Carter being a good player on the team. There is no defendable argument you can make about Marion for Shaq being a good trade.

 

[CardsFan88]

Not everybody resigns. I too think he should have, but not everybody is going to do that. There's always more to it, love for some of the players, honoring a contract, so on and so forth. What I do know is that Kerr got out as soon as he could short of resigning. So in a sense, he DID resign, just in the polite 'business' way.

He was a 'team player' in front of the camera. He ended up being a 'yes' man, but we also don't know what was said behind the scenes. It's very possible Kerr was emphatically saying this and similar moves were horrible, but in the end, it wasn't his call...even as GM.

Sarver got schooled by Seattle. Not Kerr. It's pretty clear that Sarver ordered a reduction in salary, and the only way to get it done was to make that trade. If that's the only offer, and time is running out (wasn't it within a month of the trade deadline?), and that's what the owner demands, then it's what has to be done. I don't agree with it, and he probably should of resigned (just to screw $arver over and make it public), but again he basically did leave the first chance that wouldn't of left the team in a bind, and maybe hurt his chances with future employers.

$arver $ucks. He's destroyed this franchise, and every day he is the owner is another one where he can issue another franchise destroying directive. If Kerr wouldn't have done it, $arver would have found someone else to do it. Maybe it would have been a few months later or a few weeks, but the cost cutting we've done would've been done (in same or similar fashion) regardless of Kerr trying to make a point. Kerr can't change bankster $arver from doing idiot bankster decisions. $arver doesn't know how to run a business, because his previous business is nothing more than a gimmick and fraud. So with idiot $arver now in a real business his penny pinching ways have consequences.

The #1 problem with the suns, isn't finding or evaluating talent, it's getting $arver's idiocy out of the way.

With a seemingly endless stream of directives that destroy a team handed down to Kerr, it is IMPOSSIBLE to know just how good or how bad Kerr was as a GM minus the influence of $arver. We only know that he did what the OWNER wanted and got out ASAP that wouldn't hurt his future employment options. Now he's talking about the Kurt Thomas trade in that way, which is very telling, and telling us what we already knew. $arver made him do it. Nobody trades away a decent defender plus two 1st round picks, for a second rounder. Like anybody would trade in a hundred dollar bill for a one dollar bill. It's really that simple. Yes, he is lamenting that Stern didn't have some sort of protocol to keep such outrageous trades from being allowed. There should be such a protocol. It allows owners to destroy teams too easily.

Kerr a good or bad GM? In reality one needs to at least see him be one again before a real evaluation can legitimately occur.

 

[Folster]

Do you actually like watch basketball games or do you just like to talk about it while knowing nothing?

This is almost as dumb as the comment you made last week about Carter being a good player on the team. There is no defendable argument you can make about Marion for Shaq being a good trade.

He's actually right about Shaq. Once Porter was fired, Gentry opened up the offense and the Suns started throttling teams. The first two games under Gentry, the Suns routed the Clippers on back-to-back games 140-100 and 142-119 respectively. Unfortunately, the Suns curse struck and Stoudemire suffered the season ending eye-injury in the second game. We did manage to route OKC 140-118 a few nights later minus Stoudemire, but success was short lived without him.

The only time we got to see Shaq and Stoudemire play together was under Porter's ridiculous (force-feed Shaq in the post) system. We never got to see what they could do together under Gentry, sans those two games.

 

[Ninjafish]

He's actually right about Shaq. Once Porter was fired, Gentry opened up the offense and the Suns started throttling teams. The first two games under Gentry, the Suns routed the Clippers on back-to-back games 140-100 and 142-119 respectively. Unfortunately, the Suns curse struck and Stoudemire suffered the season ending eye-injury in the second game. We did manage to route OKC 140-118 a few nights later minus Stoudemire, but success was short lived without him.

It was the Clippers. I just looked up those two games and found that at the time the Suns played them, they were a 13-41 team, one of the very worse teams in the league. What can we tell from destroying a team like that? Not a whole lot. The fact that the Suns scored 140 in the very next game even without Amare showed what a fluke it was.

The only time we got to see Shaq and Stoudemire play together was under Porter's ridiculous (force-feed Shaq in the post) system.

Not correct. You saw them play together in the 08 season and in the 08 playoffs.. to disasterous results. Why would they match up any better against the Spurs than they did the previous year? Hack-a-shaq would still be an effective weapon. Shaq would still be clogging the paint preventing Nash from playing the way he plays best. The Spurs would still be able to exploit Shaq's defensive weaknesses in guarding the pick and roll and embarass him by running that same play on him all night long.

 

[slinslin]

Not correct. You saw them play together in the 08 season and in the 08 playoffs.. to disasterous results. Why would they match up any better against the Spurs than they did the previous year? Hack-a-shaq would still be an effective weapon. Shaq would still be clogging the paint preventing Nash from playing the way he plays best. The Spurs would still be able to exploit Shaq's defensive weaknesses in guarding the pick and roll and embarass him by running that same play on him all night long.

Non-sense. Shaq was traded for midseason and played just 28 games that year for the Suns.

And the Suns did not beat the Spurs without Shaq before that either. If I remember right that was the series when Duncan hit a long game winning 3 pointer in game 1 in Phoenix..

Shaq was not clogging the lane for Nash. They played extremely well together unless Terry Porter was coaching.

 

[JCSunsfan]

This thread is a bit off track. Steve Kerr made one of the dumbest trades in NBA history. Thats a fact. It was motivated by an owner who did not know what he did not know about the NBA and a GM who was either to inexperienced or did not have enough backbone to stand up and say it was a stupid idea.

I blame Colangelo for selling the team to him in the first place.

 

[mojorizen7]

Steve Kerr made one colossal, horrific mistake: hiring Terry Porter. Besides that, you're just not a knowledgable basketball fan if you can really look at the moves Kerr made and come to the conclusion that Kerr was not a great GM. Let's look at the personnel moves that he made:

1. The most important impact that Kerr had on our roster was that, for the first time in as long as I can remember, he allowed the Suns' coach to field a roster where guys could play in their natural positions. A starting 5 of Steve Nash, Jason Richardson, Grant Hill, Amar'e Stoudemire, and Shaquille O'neal is the most well-rounded lineup in the last 30 years for this team.

2. Let's take a look at the trades he made:
a) Shawn Marion for Shaq: if you can honestly say that you saw the potential that Shaq still had - to be a legitimate All-Star and the best center in the Western Conference - then perhaps you are as good at evaluating talent as Steve Kerr. When was the last time the Suns had the best center in the Western Conference? I mean, besides the game against the Knicks last season when we started Josh Childress in the middle...

b) Boris Diaw and Raja Bell for Jason Richardson and Jared Dudley. I mean... seriously? If David Stern could retroactively veto trades, he'd have to take a serious look at this one without catching a scathing tweet or two from Dan Gilbert. Of course, Boris Diaw's departure probably cost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Phoenix area for all those hard-working McDonald's, Burger King, and Jack 'N Tha Box workers.. but I guess you gotta take the good with the bad.

c) Drafting Goran Dragic and Robin Lopez/ adding Lou Admundson: many fans here will look at these two moves as blunders on Kerr's part. But, these two guys thrived as members of Kerr's roster. Dragic struggled when he was surrounded by Josh Childress, Hakeem Warrick, Hedo Turkaglu, and the rest of the D-Leaguers that were brought in after Kerr's departure, but he thrived as the point guard in what was probably the best second unit in the league. And, if you think that a basketball team with Boris Diaw and Shawn Marion could have provided the defensive intensity and intelligence that won us so many games that year, then you just don't know the game of basketball. Or, perhaps you've never seen Lamar Odom put up 25, 17 and 8 as the biggest guy in the Lakers front court (not talking about the WCF here - that Laker team had Bynum, Gasol, Artest, and Odom versus Amar'e and an injured Robin Lopez).

Amen.

 

[cly2tw]

1. The KT dump was mainly Sarver + DA. As DA would only give Kurt a marginal role due to his philosophy, and unwilling to accept the critiques that he used KT too late in the dubious WCF defeat to Spurs the previous season, Kerr had to follow Sarver's saving order to dump him.

2. Shaq was an OK addition. However, his presence frustrated Nash (OK, it was under Porter's horrible coaching) so that it wasn't gonna work out good enough as a team.

3. Suns' best team of the last decade was actually the last WCF one, which was the most balanced with Lopez/Amare/Hill/JR/Nash and Lou/Dudley/LB/Dragic. Had they kept that team by say trading LB for someone like Chandler/Dalembert, and some sort of minor twists, they'd had been contenders still. Well, too bad that's not Sarver's goal.

 

[mojorizen7]

3. Suns' best team of the last decade was actually the last WCF one, which was the most balanced with Lopez/Amare/Hill/JR/Nash and Lou/Dudley/LB/Dragic. Had they kept that team by say trading LB for someone like Chandler/Dalembert, and some sort of minor twists, they'd had been contenders still. Well, too bad that's not Sarver's goal.

That was a well balanced team,loved the 2nd unit.
I still contend that the '07 suspension team was the team that was best destined to contend for the title though....of course i use the word's "suspension" and "destined" which is probably a complete FAIL on my part.

 

[chickenhead]

Ugh. I agree the '07 unit was the one that seemed to have the most legitimate shot, and the Horry debacle still hurts the most. Second best chance I still think would have belonged to a team that managed to keep Joe Johnson (and keep him happy: not actually sure it was possible. I actually apply "what could have been" both to that team and to his career). Then the last WCF team was the one where we amazingly had another chance for a quick re-solidification into a contender. And now...

 

[Mainstreet]

I don't think he was a great GM. He made a horrible hire and he made one of the worst trades in the history of the game. He improved over time and IMO he became a decent GM but he did NOTHING to warrant the "great" label you've given him. As for not being a knowledgeable fan, I can live with that.

Steve

The above is my basic position. I'm not happy saying Steve Kerr was a bad GM like in my first post and sort of leaving it out there without clarification. Kerr grew into better GM with time. I guess when Kerr said he made one of the worst trades in NBA history (trading Kurt Thomas and two first round draft picks to Seattle for virtually nothing it), it upset me and brought back unpleasant memories. This indeed was a poor move. Also Kerr hiring Terry Porter as HC was a real bump as well. However, as pointed out, trading Raja Bell and Boris Diaw for Jason Richardson and Jared Dudley was a blockbuster for Phoenix. I will not get into trading Marion for Shaq nor the draft.

I would also like to add, Steve Kerr had a very short career with the Suns. Who knows how well he would have done given even more time. IMHO, Kerr leaving was more than a money issue. Kerr had learned to stand up to Sarver and I believe he may have even supported keeping Amare but I guess we will never know.

Also I would like to clarify, at least to my knowledge, Kerr did not sell any draft picks outright for cash.