{"id":110,"date":"2008-02-12T18:50:54","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T23:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=110"},"modified":"2008-02-12T18:59:44","modified_gmt":"2008-02-12T23:59:44","slug":"yet-another-pet-peeve-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=110","title":{"rendered":"Yet Another Pet Peeve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It really bothers me, in any industry or line of work, when people outside of an organization believe that they know more about the inner-workings of said organization better than those designated to run it.\u00a0 This questioning\/second-guessing\/revisionist critique of sports general managers is the most egregious and haphazard, in my experience.\u00a0 The Phoenix Suns acquisition of Shaquille O&#8217;Neal\u00a0last week is the most recent example of this that really bothered me.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\" width=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/site.mynet.com\/nba_bilgileri\/mynet_resimlerim\/shaquille_o_neal.jpg\" height=\"1\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\" width=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/site.mynet.com\/nba_bilgileri\/mynet_resimlerim\/shaquille_o_neal.jpg\" height=\"1\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\" width=\"199\" src=\"http:\/\/www.femalefirst.co.uk\/images\/shaquille-o-neal.jpg\" height=\"300\" \/>As sportswriters or fans, everyone is certainly entitled to their opinions&#8211;this post is a perfect example.\u00a0 And, many of the opinions expressed by people that I know or follow were very negative towards the Suns acquiring Shaq.\u00a0 No many of the reasons for the criticism I believe are valid, logical and legitimate concerns for the Suns.\u00a0 Without taking any side on whether I think Steve Kerr did the right thing or not, the following are a few criticisms that make sense to me as criticisms that we, as fans or analysts, have enough information to logically render:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Shaq is old and injury-prone<\/em>.\u00a0 Yes, I agree that this is a concern, and I think that even\u00a0Steve Kerr would say that the trade is a gamble for this exact reason.\u00a0 They gave up a much younger Shawn Marion in exchange for someone who has probably been lugging around 320+ pounds for over 20 years now.\u00a0 Yes, definitely a rolling of the dice on his health.\u00a0 Valid concern.<\/li>\n<li><em>Shaq&#8217;s contract hurts the Suns salary cap flexibility.<\/em>\u00a0 Again, something that we, as fans, can know enough about the workings of the NBA cap structure to be able to assess whether or not we would have done this deal or not.\u00a0 Again, it is a gamble.\u00a0 There is no question that if the Suns do not win this year, then they may regret the trade from a cap flexibility standpoint because they owe him $20 million in each of the next two years.\u00a0 (Remember, though, that Marion was actively seeking a reworking of his contract, so there is a chance that the Suns were going to pony up almost that much for Marion also&#8211;just something to keep in mind.)<\/li>\n<li><em>The Suns were so close in the past couple years (especially last year) that they should have given it one more try with this squad<\/em>.\u00a0 Again, another opinion that the fan\/national analyst can legitimately foster.\u00a0 The Suns were, potentially, only a fair David Stern ruling away from winning the title last year with this exact team.\u00a0 They have the best record in the Western Conference right now and it makes sense that they could make another deep run with Marion.\u00a0 Again, a valid concern.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, the above concerns are not even close to the concern that is most often expressed nor are they the most popular criticisms of Kerr in this whole ordeal.\u00a0 The most common (and the one that really drives me crazy every time I hear it) is:\u00a0 SHAQ DOESN&#8217;T FIT IN WITH THE SUNS&#8217; &#8220;SYSTEM.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" align=\"left\" width=\"210\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cis.nctu.edu.tw\/~is82027\/jpgs\/steve_kerr.jpg\" height=\"260\" \/>What?!?\u00a0 When someone says that, they are basically saying:\u00a0 &#8220;I know more about the makeup of the Suns, in regards to their basketball system, than the general manager, who, by the way, has 5 championship rings as a player.&#8221;\u00a0 And, this is not even to mention Mike D&#8217;Antoni, the architect of this modern &#8220;Run &#8216;n Gun,&#8221; who has also publicly defended this move vigorously.\u00a0 (Yes, I understand that we are not totally sure that D&#8217;Antoni was on board the whole time and of course he would defend it publicly.\u00a0 For that reason, I stick to Kerr.)<\/p>\n<p>Do I think that the Suns are going to win the NBA title this year?\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know.\u00a0 Do I think that they are better with Shaq instead of Marion?\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know that either.\u00a0 But, what I do know is that Steve Kerr believes it and, though he might be &#8220;wrong&#8221; in the end, he certainly has much more knowledge about the &#8220;system&#8221; of the Phoenix Suns than I do, and because of that, I am not about to go talking about how Shaq is not going to fit in in the &#8220;system&#8221; of the Phoenix Suns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It really bothers me, in any industry or line of work, when people outside of an organization believe that they know more about the inner-workings of said organization better than those designated to run it.\u00a0 This questioning\/second-guessing\/revisionist critique of sports &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=110\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,73],"tags":[206,205,208,207],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nba","category-pet-peeves","tag-heat","tag-shaq","tag-shawn-marion","tag-suns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}