I am an amare soutdemire fan, and I would like to see him get more easy baskets. It seems like he has to work too hard and he's not getting the ball in the places/positions that he did in the past. He is the featured player, but perhaps he is not being used in a way that best takes advantages of his abilities. Part of this, as I have opined all along is that the suns must sink the outside shot, must hurt the opposition from outside, in order for amare to have the spacing to dominate at the end. that is not happening this year and it could be the suns are just short on shooters.
Cool that we both see Amare the essential piece for the team. However, I beg to differ slightly on the assessment of the current condition. Amare's passing, though not yet perfect, has improved enough so that he made the right decisions with the ball in hand much more often than not. So much so, that he could open up the space for others now, besides others nailing the shots to create space in the middle for him.
In last loss to Nets, it was evident. He made things happen one way or another with ball in his hands, even not always in the best positions. Yet, in the stretch in the 4th when Nash and Shaq sat, Diaw, Bell, Hill, LB passed the ball on perimeter back forth with no space gain, ignoring Amare's offering himself. Those possessions led to turnovers and rushed shots with clock winding down. I mean if Amare did too many stupid things early in the same game or someone else were hot, I'd understand it. But Amare had hot hand and made the right passes all game long! That's when Porter needs to intervene and order the players to feed the bigmen at least when they proved to be doing well.
FEATURing Howard for example meant that they fed him the ball even when he made a lot of stupid plays earlier in the game -- to make him learn from failure. And from shots per min. numbers, Amare's 0.347 is not far from the team average of 0.302, and below LB's and Shaq's. That's hard evidence that Amare is not featured at all!
