Today there were rumors about two trades involving the Phoenix Suns. The first was a headline trade of the Brazilian Bullet and crowd favorite Leandro Barbosa and bench warmer Dwayne Jones for The Turkish Pizza Machine Hedo Turkoglu (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KElULD40hBw&feature=related). The second involved the Suns using the trade exception they earned from the Amare Stoudemire sign-and-trade to New York to absorb Josh Childress in a trade with Atlanta. The Suns gave the Greek defector a contract extension amounting to $34 million dollars over 5 years.
Essentially the Suns traded Amare Stoudemire, Barbosa, and Jones for Hedo Turkoglu and Josh Childress. To the naked eye, it may seem like a small downgrade precipitated by the fact that Amare was leaving anyway and causing the Suns to grab what they could. However, I think this was a trade that greatly hurt the Suns and their style of play.
Lets start with Barbosa. After the Suns performance in the playoffs, you could see that Barbosa had become expendable. The emergence of young Goran Dragic as the backup point guard Steve Nash has dreamt of caused Barbosa to log minutes at the 2 if he wanted to see the court. Offensively it was seamless as Barbosa excels in the 7 seconds or less system that was left by Mike D'antoni. Defensively, however, the playoffs showed how Leandro could not guard the two position with any success. Kobe, and really any other shooting guard, abused Leandro in the post to the point where Leandro became a liability. In the end, Dragic is just too good at the point guard position and Barbosa became an expensive 3rd point guard. I don't mind that the Suns traded him, in fact if they would have trade him for Josh Childress, I would have been impressed. It must have been difficult to get rid of a crowd favorite of Barbosa's caliber, and the Suns pulled the trigger.
Childress solves the issue that I laid out above. As a 6'7" swing man, Childress will be a great spot starter and backup 2-guard. He has the length to come in and defend his position as well as the offensive skills to excel in the Suns system. The former Stanford star, has played in Greece the past two years and averaged 15 points per game in 27 minutes a game for Olympiacos. He will be able to back up Grant Hill and Josh Richardson superbly in the future.
The bone I have to pick with the Suns is due to their decision to trade for Turkoglu. Hedo has 4 years and $44 million dollars left on his contract and is due $9.8 million dollars this season. In addition to adding Hedo, the Suns signed willowy Hakim Warrick to a 4-year $18 million contract and Channing Frye to a 5-year $30 million contract. Add the first year of their contracts together and you get $20.3 million (9.8+4.5+6.0) which happens to equal about the maximum amount they could have offered Amare.
To me, signing Amare back to a max deal is a better use of the owner Rober Sarver's money than the potpourri of Warrick, Frye, and Turkoglu. Turkoglu is an aging small forward who had a disastrous season last year for the Raptors. He looked like a shell of his former Magic self, and the Raptors must have have been ecstatic to get rid of him. Warrick is a decent role player, but he simply is not worth giving up the chance to sign Amare back. Lastly, the Suns love Frye, and I do too, but he showed that he may not be able to handle the spotlight in the playoffs where in comparison, Amare stepped up to the challenge by averaging 23 pts and 7.3 rebounds a game in the playoffs (including the explosive 42 point game against the Lakers.) Amare has benefited from playing with Steve Nash, however his athleticism, face-up jump shot, and agility are a perfect fit for the Suns. I think Amare is responsible for a lot of Steve Nash's acclaim. He the perfect big for this system and runs the pick and roll with Nash perfectly. It will be sad to see the Suns without him this year.
Lets look at the numbers. According to Basketball Reference.com's PER and Win Shares (WS)(http://www.basketball-reference.com/), Amare would have been a better use of funds. PER is a stat created by John Hollinger that "sums up all a player's positive accomplishments, subtracts the negative accomplishments, and returns a per-minute rating of a players performance." The league average for PER is 15 and the higher the score, the better. Win Shares on the other hand is a statistic that estimates the number of wins a player is responsible for. 1 WS equals 1 win.
Stoudemire surpasses the competition in every way. Last season he had a PER of 22.6 (9th in the league) and a WS of 10.7 (11th in the league.) The main player added, Turkoglu, is no where close. Last season Turkoglu's PER was 13.3 and his WS was 3.4 (both outside of the top 20 and below average.) Even if we go back to Turkoglu's to the 08-09 season when the Magic made the Finals, he only registered a PER of 14.8 and a WS of 3.4.
This tells me that the Suns would have been better off in a basketball sense and an entertainment sense resigning Amare to a max-contract and trading Barbosa for an athletic back-up wing player who can guard the 2-guard and small forward positions in case Grant Hill regresses next year. They would definitely have lost Frye in this scenario, but Robin Lopez should mature this year and paired great with Amare as a defensive and rebounding presence. Then focus on finding a bargain back-up center or even deal Barbosa for a big (for example Jeff Foster) and let Jared Dudley and Earl Clark earn more minutes.
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