This is the central flaw in your entire argument. If everyone wanted Stoudemire, we'd be hearing about a lot of strong offers for him. The guy's been on the trading block for at least a year and a half and everyone knows it. Sarver and Kerr haven't blinked yet (on this particular issue -- to their credit), and yet still the strong offers aren't coming in.
Stoudemire simply doesn't have that much value. That's the unfortunate reality.
Understand the disagreement. The part that makes it hard to describe is that the major reason imo his value isn't what it should be is the (chicken and the egg) of Kerr/Sarver. Of course injuries are a moderate concern, but that isn't what has dropped his value the most. It's not his defense. Instead, it's now moved to a low ball reality we created by our front office's previous actions.
I fully believe now because of the precedent set by the front office/ownership whether it's fully true or not isn't the issue, it's the belief that it IS amongst other owners/gm's (espn) which does then in reality create the market accordingly (in this case low ball offers for Amare). Fictional markets can be reality. This is a case of that imho.
We could be trying to trade Lebron to another team, and we'd be getting low ball offers with this front office. It'd be more than Amare, but still alot lower than anything say the Cavs would be offered. By what? Probably an extra first round draft pick, and the guy that would be off limits to us in the filler. Hard to quantify, but probably somewhere around that.
In this instance (on top of that), now Amare won't fetch what he would have before the draft. It's still a better time since FA hasn't begun, but there are no doubt less options available to us, and the number of quality options has probably dropped off the map.
Once free agency starts, and the pieces are moved about, perhaps another decent low ball offer comes. But other than that, the current GS deal should be all we expect in terms of talent by anyone offering anything to us.
If we're going to get a good deal, it's going to be us initiating it. That's the only way imo.
With cheap good talent mostly only available during the draft, it was a golden opportunity for the Suns to meet their needs in acquiring talent, and shedding payroll, if that is what they have decided to do.
But it appears they didn't go after Rubio, or any other prospect besides Curry that they liked (which is kind of like trying to go sub-orbital instead of full fledged earth orbit when you have all the resources that should be necessary to go full earth orbit).
I don't hear any blockbuster type deals, and at this point should we expect our front office to do one. No. But they should be trying. Maybe they are. But it shouldn't take long for them to figure out who they want, unless they don't know or don't see anyone they like.
GS most likely screwed us, so it is a big sucker punch to our already floundering front office that might have struck silver on their hail mary pass. I would expect a worse offer consummated now if one goes through.
This is how people fail (when things thrown for a loop like what GS did), but it can also be one of their greatest triumphs. There is a side I'm hoping happens, and the one I think will happen, and they aren't the same.
At this point I do expect him to be traded for less value than what we had on the table (which to me wasn't enough), which at the end of the day is unacceptable to me. Unacceptable because it's clearly losing talent and making us worse.
There is something to be said that they didn't still go through with the deal after pulling Curry out. Obviously I'm glad with that. I can see some good things in Curry, and he may very well be a very good player someday, but good big men are rarer to find.
It's very hard to believe Curry will be the piece that is as impacting on our team as Amare can be. You can find a good shooting guard/point guard and pair them with Amare much easier than having Curry and finding another guy equal to Amare.
But at this point we probably couldn't even get Curry, so whatever talent we get will be lower we'll just receive more quantity of it. I don't believe in giving up a known A or A- talent for a prospect that might be a B or B+ and a couple of C's thrown in. A couple of guys that might turn into B- or something.
That original deal we would receive would be less than when we traded Barkley, who was already starting to decline, and was a fairly bad offer at the time.
Even then, Horry and Alien head turned out to have great careers, which is the exception to the rule when trading for relative filler. We shouldn't expect a filler trade to bring back even that much actual value above the paper value that it looks. We actually got lucky on that deal to get so much talent, but it was still players who weren't as good as Barkley.
With how things are trending I still feel events can unfold to put the pressure on the Suns that feel they 'have to' deal him.
We're not out of those woods yet. Which then if the Suns cave might be the GS deal without Curry. (Or a worse deal with another team). They may say no deal without Curry for now, but this FO should not give anyone reasonable to think they couldn't change their mind on that if Amare starts complaining.
He's come out and said he wants a commitment and new contract. He wants to know one way or the other. Trade or Re-sign. If the third option of playing out his contract happens, he won't be re-signing imo.
Time is precious, probably only a month or so to decide before things might start getting ugly. Maybe they have until the season starts, however each day that goes by (after the fa period is mature) fewer and fewer offers will start to come by as teams make decisions on their roster for the season. Do the Suns know they are on the clock now? They are imo.
Thus if we want to trade him now, his value is going to be lower now even if the other gm's didn't think they could get a favorable deal for themselves. It's been trending this way for years with all the bad deals. But now the structural aspects will be getting in the way. A real double whammy.
So now when we might want to trade a good player, poor offers come in. It shouldn't be a shock. You ask for nothing time and time again, giving away players to save money, giving away draft picks for a pittance of money, you're going to get low balled.
We're getting almost a collusion type effect (because of obvious market factors), where poorly run organizations are consistently offered one sided deals. The writing is on the wall with us.
So don't play their game. Let's recognize that we have a bulls eye on our forehead and only play the game in our arena. Well salary dumping will never be in anyone's arena.
There's a gap between what we know he is worth, and what other GM's will offer us, where the talent of the player is probably not the most important aspect to what they are offering us, it is who they are dealing with that is.
This gap most likely cannot be overcome this offseason. In my opinion it would take years to overcome. So we're stuck with this perception for awhile, and it seems to only be growing by the day amongst the media, given every commentator seemed to perpetually mention finances.
We should expect this to continue until something shows us and them why it isn't the case any more.
Commitment to Amare helps does that. Not selling picks, whoops we did again[we can't afford to sell even the last pick in the draft for perception reasons], for a couple of years would help. Not low balling people we want to re-sign like JJ would help. Front office moves like that must happen, and/or some combination of Kerr being fired, or Sarver selling the team to change that attitude towards us. If either remain, that won't change until how they spend money changes. You either need to spend the money when it's necessary, or bring in a new sheriff who will.
Or we could just pretend they aren't seeing us as pushovers and get bent over for the next decade or so. Trying to trade anyone of talent on our roster is a fools errand at this point. But inquiring about other people's talent equal to Amare isn't.
If we re-sign Amare, then most of us are fine with that. I would be.
If we ask him to play it out, he's gone, and his value to others will be even lower. Imagine what offers we'll get then, especially given our stated low demands already.
I don't see our FO having the balls to not trade him away for nothing. But they would have already failed in letting it get that far whatever decision ends up happening. A person will still respond to a max deal if offered. Amare would still probably re-sign then. But why then wait until the end of the year? At that point decisions would have been made so I don't think Amare would want to, nor might the suns be willing to offer Amare a contract if it gets that far. But I just don't see all of this falling into place for Amare to re-sign, and too much bad blood can happen between now and then.
If his name was Talent Big Man Player #1, under the scenario other front offices perceive us, even as another NBA team, it just doesn't make sense to trade him, unless you are targeting a specific player that you feel is equal in talent as that player, or in our case Amare. Like a Rubio, etc. But it should be a short list, and it should already be compiled by the front office.
Wasn't there an offer for Amare from the Wolves? I thought I heard that. If so, I'd be contacting the Wolves about Rubio. If the options you want aren't there move forward. Especially given the perception of our front office right now, I'd go ahead and make the commitment to Amare.
Try for a couple of specific players and if it can't happen, move on with Amare. This front office plays the waiting game until something is forced almost, and then have to make a poor decision *because forced decisions are usually poor ones*, it's *planned decisions that tend to work out better*.
Don't let events unfold to dictate things for the franchise, take the franchise in the direction it wants to go. We're lacking that aspect of Jerry Colangelo the most. The Suns front office is on the clock. The front office may need to realize that for now, for this situation, the rest of the nba is going to bet against the house for Amare. If we decide to trade him by taking someone's offer, it's going to be less than he is worth.
