Getting amare would sell tickets, etc, and that might be enough for something stupid to happen.

Getting Amar’e might generate short term interest. It might cause some people who would otherwise not renew to think twice and plop down the money, but in general, studies indicate that the draw of stars for home ticket sales is mostly myth. Winning will sell tickets. If Amar’e comes here and the team doesn’t win, his star draw won’t increase ticket sales.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure that Cohan/Rowell have read these studies.

Amare does only two things better than Andris, and in doing so scores at a greater but less efficient clip.

This is false.

Amare is a more efficient scorer than Andris. Andris may have shot for a better FG%, but Amar’e’s ability to get to the line and convert from the line makes him a more efficient as well as more prodigious offensive weapon.

How many blockbusters where one team acquired a superstar backfired for the team acquiring the superstar?

Best example I can think of is the one you address below, Shawn Kemp. You’re right: getting a superstar is almost always worth it. That’s probably the strongest argument for the trade.

I do think, however, that the positional questions complicate things a bit. Generally, when a team acquires a superstar, there’s a clear hole for them to fill — you put them at their natural position and let them do their thing. Shaq becomes your center, Kidd becomes your point guard, etc. Here, we’d be acquiring a superstar and putting him somewhat out of position. Might not be perfect for Amar’e’s happiness, might not be perfect for our defense.

The thing that kills me about the trade is that Andris Biedrins would be a great center to pair with Amar’e. Andris is happy to focus on rebounding and guarding the rim, and he’s very energetic about moving and setting picks on offense… he doesn’t clog the lane much. Amar’e would be the featured big on offense, Andris would complement him everywhere else. The result would be two hyper-efficient scorers who collectively rebound very well, with Anthony Randolph coming off the bench as the most exciting sixth man in basketball. Damn, I wish they’d bite on a Monta package.

They won’t. In the event that this trade resurrects, it will certainly require Andris Biedrins. And that will prrrobably be worth it. But the resulting lineup would be a bit odd. A genuinely good NBA center is an awfully nice thing to have.

Awesome points as always, Owen.

Ditto, hoss. It’ll be a shame when this trade either A) dies or B) happens, because it’s been the most damn interesting thing to discuss around here since forever.

Way back when I was pro-trade (last week), my main issue with the anti-trade position was its reliance on fear: the retina, the knee, the chance that he could balloon up and sire 78 children and become Shawn Kemp, the chance that one of the guys we’re trading could take a quantum leap forward — all these fall under the fear category for me. To these issues, I say to myself and the other fraidycats: Why the F Not. We suck, we’ve sucked for a long time, let’s do this.

Totally agree with all of this.

The real, non fear-based sticking points for me come down to defense and passing, two areas that I think the numbers tend to underrate. Obviously passing is quantifiable to some degree, but I think the hypothesis of my "Amare & Sharing" diary, which I don’t think I articulated that well, was that it might be more important than the numbers suggest — that there may be a teamwork "tipping point" (say, in the neighborhood of <1.5 asts per 36) where being a total ballhog starts to have a negative effect, rather than just a minimal effect, on a team’s ability to win. I have no proof at all of this — and I’m not enough of stat guy to know how to go about proving it.

Nor I (paging jae!). I think this is completely possible — it makes a certain sort of intuitive sense that your team can only go so far if your signature scorer doesn’t pass out of double-teams. Maybe there’s a way to gauge the effectiveness of offenses whose top guys have low assist totals? Anyway, I do think it’s a risk. But it’d be great if we could get a sense of how much of a risk (JAAAAE!).
 

It’s just a feeling based on the assist numbers of the true greats — Bird, Magic, Jordan, LeBron, Wade, Shaq, Duncan, KG — v. those of guys like Maggs, Z-Bo, and Al Jefferson.

An interesting thing here, that you probably noticed, is that the list of big scorers with poor assist totals correlates pretty decently with the list of big scorers who don’t play good defense. For all three of the guys you list, I’d put “bad D” as a bigger problem than “bad passing”.

Defense and passing are obviously critical components of successful team basketball. For that reason, it does feel a little icky to add a guy who contributes neither, like Maggette, Jefferson or Amar’e. On the other hand, Amar’e’s offensive approach has been so successful that it’s hard to fault him for gunning. If you shoot 54% from the field year after year, with a good number of trips to the line and a high percentage from there, you probably shouldn’t be passing much.

Now, a guy like Shaq, at his peak, did both: he was a hyper-efficient scorer who also found other guys. That’s obviously preferable. But overall, I don’t think Amare’s passing numbers are enough to worry me about his offense. (Incidentally, Shaq’s passing numbers have been poor since he came to Phoenix. They’d already been dipping in Miami, so I don’t know that there’s a causal relationship there, but it’s possible that Nash’s passing is so good that it deflates big men’s passing numbers by a bit… no reason to pass if you’ve got an open dunk. Maybe jae can tell us if Amar’e’s passing numbers improved at all when Nash was off the floor?)

As for defense: as JAE always says, it’s half the game. Not a quarter, or a third, or any other fraction. I keep coming back to Garnett v. Jefferson: on paper, especially if you look at KG’s recent, post-peak numbers, they’re not all that far apart. Yet KG’s commitment to defense — not just measurable blocks and steals, but defensive awareness and team defense — seems to have infected that whole team in a way guys like Jefferson and Amare couldn’t in a million years. If anything, Amare as a Warrior will likely contribute to a culture of offense-only that has rotted the soul of the team for a long time. We’ve sucked, and we’ve sucked for a long time … and one of the biggest reasons is poor D.

Sure. But our defensive problems are significant whether we have Biedrins or Amar’e. Don’t get me wrong — Biedrins is the better defender. Our defense would get a bit worse with Amar’e, and I think that’s the biggest basketball reason to oppose the trade. But our bad defense has a lot more to do with Monta’s recent apathy, Jack’s recent focus on offense and Nellie’s literal abdication of that side of things than with what’s happening down low. It doesn’t strike me that Biedrins is doing much to create a culture of defensive accountability, not that I blame him for that.

Baron could be an ace defender when motivated; I’m not sure you can say the same for Amare. Not a single report I’ve read from people who watched Amare extensively has anything kind to say about his D.

The numbers actually have some kind things to say about Amar’e’s defense. Over the course of his career, Amar’e averages 1.5 blocks a game (okay for a center, very good for a power forward), 0.9 steals (not great, but higher than guys like Al Jefferson and Zach Randolph), 6.3 defensive boards (a not-elite-but-solid number, identical to Elton Brand’s career rate) and a non-problematic 3.4 fouls.

What do defensive statistics mean? Very, very little — you can’t tell who’s good and who’s bad from looking at these. But they don’t mean nothing. And it’s clear that Amar’e does create some positive events. He does block a good number of shots without fouling unduly often, and he is a solid presence on the defensive glass. He’s not Jamal Crawford, at the very least. Amar’e’s D may be poor on the whole, but he does make some good defensive plays.

That same description could apply to Baron. Baron’s defensive effort wasn’t consistent… in our 48-win season two years ago, I’d say it was fairly poor overall. But he grabbed some steals and defensive boards and he’d block the occasional shot… he partially compensated for his bad defensive moments with some good ones. Really, “weak D with some good plays” is a decent description for that whole ‘06-’08 team. It was an unmistakably poor defensive team, but they’d create some havoc here and there, enough for the offense to win the day a little more often than not. I think Amar’e could be a credible part of a defense like that. Frankly, with our current roster and coaching staff, we can’t expect much more than that, whoever our starting center is.

Amare’s solid plus-minus numbers should quell my fears about both ballhoggishness and lack of D, but as I pointed in my diary, the fact that he’s always been a hair worse in this regard than his near-constant companion Nash (and Marion, when he was there) is concerning.

I’m not unconcerned by these numbers, but I’m less concerned by them than you are. Why? Backups.

The Suns have, simply put, not had a credible backup for Steve Nash for most of these past several years. In ‘05-’06, they used Eddie House, who did okay in a CJ Watson sorta way… they haven’t really had a second point guard they’ve used extensively since then. When Nash has been off the floor the last three years, they’ve had (the now-departed) Boris Diaw run a lot of plays in an Anthony Mason sorta way. Diaw’s an interesting player, but he’s not a point guard, and this strategy has not been bearing fruit for the Suns. Check Diaw’s plus-minus numbers for the past three seasons… they’re awful. Nash is a great player, but not as great as plus-minus makes him look. If they’d had a decent backup point, his numbers wouldn’t be nearly so eye-popping.

With Amar’e, it’s a different story. When he’s been off the floor, he’s often been replaced by Shawn Marion, for years a great player in his own right. If not Marion, it’s often been Shaq, Kurt Thomas or Diaw (who, in Amar’e’s absence, usually plays more like a big than a miscast point guard), or sometimes a guy like Grant Hill or Matt Barnes in a smallball lineup. Amar’e’s plus-minus numbers can’t possibly match up to Nash’s, in other words, because the guys who replace him are better replacements. In context, Amar’e’s plus-minus numbers are very, very impressive.

Marion’s numbers are even better, of course, and I suspect that’s legitimate: at his peak, I think Shawn Marion was an even better player than Amar’e Stoudemire. But I don’t think that Marion exists anymore, so it’s not relevant to this trade.

Finally, there’s the Anthony Randolph Factor. My irrational love and excitement for that dude is pretty much boundless; and whether you call Amare a 4 or 5, the inescapable fact is that with Amare on the team, Randolph is not "The Man" in the frontcourt. Without Amare, he is.

I am as starry-eyed over Randolph as the next guy, so I hear you. But it’s worth asking in what way we want Randolph to be “The Man” in the frontcourt. To me, his rebounding and defense are his most exciting aspects. I’m certainly not against his developing a post game, but I don’t know if we need to orient our team around the idea that he definitely will. I don’t want Randolph to be smothered by another player, but I don’t want him to be our featured scorer before he’s ready to, either.

If Randolph becomes a star as we all hope, he might well be a star of a somewhat Shawn Marion-ish type: a versatile defensive force who can do a lot of things offensively, but doesn’t require the ball at all times, and isn’t quite efficient enough to merit it at all times. Well, if there’s one combination that has proven to work on the court, it’s Amar’e Stoudemire and Shawn Marion. There were admittedly ego clashes after a couple years, but the Suns won a boatload of games with the two of those guys as a frontcourt tandem, and that wasn’t all Nash. Amar’e’s scoring prowess didn’t stop Marion from doing his thing.

The way I’m increasingly looking at it: if we don’t trade for Amar’e, there’s a risk that Randolph doesn’t develop and we have no frontcourt stars. If we do trade for Amar’e, there’s a risk that Randolph develops and we have two frontcourt stars who clash. There are genuine problems with both scenarios, but I’d sure rather have a “two stars” problem than a “zero stars” problem.

I think I talked myself off the fence again. This is getting ridiculous.

we could use another rebounder glue guy in the post and possibly a pssing wing depending on who we have to give up. But the issue is those players are way easier to sign (and for cheap) than a player like Amare. Poor analogy, but when boston basically shipped all there talent for ray allen and KG, they were able to find plays who fit into roles around them. That’s what we’d have to do. If we traded marco, BWright and andris… our team would resemble this:

PG: monta/curry/law
SG: Jack/Morrow
SF: Buike/Maggette
PF: Randolph/ Jermario
C: Amare/ Turiaf

We could find a post player like a leon powe though who would give us the necessary bench minuts as a 4th option big.