in defense of the setting suns

In the dead of the wet and dreary winter months, a sudden flurry of last-minute mega-trades, conjured by the sage GM architects (and in some cases, heartless demolition men) just in time before the 2/21 Thursday deadline, unpexpectedly injected some excitement into the post-All-Stars, pre-playoffs stretch of the NBA season, a.k.a. "the super snooze-days". One deal in particular that caught the united fury of the beat writers and pundits arcoss the heartland is the Phoenix-Miami transaction: Miami sent the hall-of-fame-bound center Shaquille O'Neal to Phoenix for the multi-dimensional forward Shawn Marion. Without a doubt, this transfer makes financial sense for Miami, who can shed the hefty payload of an aging and often injured center moping through a hopelessly lost season despite the heroics of Dwane Wade. On the other hand, critics, including ESPN's Hollinger who rated the Shaq-Marion deal as D- for Phoenix, argued that Shaq is a muscular but slow dinasaur, and an exceptionally poor fit for the high flying Phoenix offense, especially when Shaq has clearly entered the twillight of his illustrious career. To counter conventional wisdom, I am here to argue for basketball sense for the unfairly ostracized Suns.

First, the Suns had no chance to win the West this year keeping the same roster. The Lakers had just landed Pau Gasol in an astonishingly unequal trade, Utah acquired Korver to finally resolve their outside shooting problems, and the Spurs are still the champions and have further fortified their front court with Kurt Thomas. Marion's ineffectiveness during the playoffs, when the game often slowed to a grinding half-court game, is well documented and is the cause of on-going locker room dissent. Shaq is a proud veteran who has repeatedly expressed desire for a fifth ring before retirement; he would be a strong locker room presence tolerating none of the bickering. Moreover, Amare Stoudamire is notoriously poor on defense (partly to avoid unnecessary fouls), and as a result opposing big men like San Antonio's Tim Duncan and Utah's Carlos Boozer frequently scored at will during stretches in playoffs. Shaq at least presents a big wide body with six fouls to stop the opposing front court attack.

Second, the window of opportunities for the Suns is closing fast. The chief-of-staff point guard Steve Nash is 34 and slightly built, with Grant Hill 35 and Raja Bell 31. The heart and soul of the firing squad is clearly the workhorse Nash, and the team will soon begin its decline as its leader slows physically with age, especially when the Suns adopt a run-and-gun offense. The duration of Shaq's contract and Shaq's internal clock are roughly on the same timetable as the Suns' elders, allowing the Suns' front office to rebuild quickly in a few years if the combustion experiment fails.

Finally, Shaq's arrival permits the squad to finally returns to their natural positions in a half-court set. Stoudamire slides back to Power Forward from Center, Grand Hill, who plays the same position as Marion, slides back to Small Forward from Power Forward, with Bell and Nash in the back court. Effectiveness of the half-court offense will be a crucial element in the slow-down playoff.

The slow-footedness of O'Neal in the Suns' fast-break offsense is over-exaggerated; rarely do you see a 5-on-5 break anyway. Suns have enough gunners--Stoudamire, Hill, Nash and Barbosa--that Shaq does not have to score double digits to be effective. Of course, I am not clamoring the Suns as the new favorites in the ultra-competitive West, but the Shaq-Marion trade did present an attractive calculated risk for the Suns, given their present shortcomings, for immediate success in the short term. Go figure, or do you think you can do better?