The Perpetual NBA Thread

[ssaloon]

Brandond Roy and Lamar Odom look iffy to start the season.

[zidane21]

pansin ko lang po, mukang may curse ang denver nuggets na palaging merong nagkaka-major injury (out for a year, etc.) sa kanila every beginning of the season.. voshon lenard, kenyon martin, nene hilario (twice na including this coming season )!!

[tsupermario]

and then later on the show he called trump a "first class idiot"

[chain]

very nice read:

There are few more perplexing NBA personalities than Shawn Marion. Even after spending the entire 2005-06 season with Marion's Phoenix Suns for a book, I still find him a difficult guy to understand. Every question that arises about him only raises more questions.

I had lots of room to deal with the Marion paradox in the book and probably still didn't get it answered. But it's more relevant than ever right now because the Matrix has officially asked to be traded. SI.com colleague Marty Burns runs through the various possible trade scenarios in another space, so this is more about the complicated landscape that surrounds Marion and the only NBA team for which he's ever played.

Herewith, some questions and some answers. Whether it's all of them, I can't say.

1. Is Marion correct to feel slighted that the Suns have been trying to trade him?

Hell, yes. Any human being with a measurable pulse should feel bad if your (pick one -- company, family, girlfriend, team) wants to jettison your butt.

And, make no mistake about it, the Suns were trying to get rid of him long before he said it was time to hit the road. Whether management is correct in that stratagem is a different question, but Marion would've been gone to Boston by now had he and his agent, Dan Fegan, not thwarted a three-way deal with the Celtics that would've brought Kevin Garnett to Phoenix. (They told Celtics personnel boss Danny Ainge that Marion would opt out after one year, his right under his current contract.)

2. Is Marion being truthful when he told the Arizona Republic that the Suns' unwillingness to give him a three-year extension at about $60 million is only "part of why" he wants to leave and that the exact salary figures "aren't important?"

Hell, no. Had general manager Steve Kerr not told Marion point-blank that the Suns weren't going to extend him, not this season anyway, Marion would not be demanding a trade. He wants Paul Pierce contract numbers (Pierce is due about $60 million for the 2008-09, '09-10 and '10-11 seasons, while Marion is due $16.4 million this season and $17.8 next year) and felt rejected when told he wasn't going to get them. Yes, trade rumors were part of it, but nothing makes a player feel so wanted, so respected, as paying him what he considers to be his dollar value.

3. Is Marion correct in saying that he's underrated?

Hell, no. One of the ways you're "rated" is by how much money you're paid; Marion makes more money than any other Sun, including Steve Nash. Another way you're "rated" is by how many All-Star teams you make; Marion has made four in his eight seasons, plus one Olympic team (2004). People mention him all the time among the elite players, but he doesn't seem to get it. I remember Joe Dumars was correctly considered underrated for the first couple years of his career until he got proper recognition and, moreover, realized it. "I'm called underrated so often," Dumars once told me, "I've become overrated."

4. Is Marion a legit MVP candidate, as he claims?

Hell, no. He doesn't handle the ball well enough. He doesn't create his own shot. He's not the go-to guy in the clutch. (Nash is, or perhaps Amaré Stoudemire because he can get to the foul line.) He is not a team leader despite being a co-captain with Nash.

But that shouldn't upset him. Few players are MVP candidates. Not many stars in recent NBA history are more valuable to a team than Jason Kidd, and he's never won the award. Marion is a legit All-Star on a contending team, a role most players would die for.

5. Does Marion too often shrink from competition at big moments, as both Nash and coach Mike D'Antoni have intimated?

This isn't a hell yes. But it's a yes. Because he doesn't really create his own shot, I think Marion feels out of sync in the offense once in a while and can't figure out how to get himself going. On defense, I think he gets disheartened from time to time by having to compete against players who are bigger and stronger, which is often his lot. Overall, he gets frustrated at the defensive liabilities of his teammates, particularly those of Stoudemire, and tires of covering up for them.

6. Is Marion too often singled out for criticism?

Again, this isn't a hell yes. But it's a yes. In his private moments, D'Antoni even concedes that he sometimes gets on Marion so much because he expects so much from him. Whatever Nash's defensive liabilities, they don't come from a lack of effort, and when D'Antoni and the coaches get on Stoudemire for his poor defense, it seems to go unheard. D'Antoni gets all over Leandro Barbosa for shot selection, but he battles through it. Raja Bell is so hard on himself when he gets into a shooting funk that no one needs to do it for him. But Marion takes pointed criticism personally and feels that he is too often the only Sun in the blame game.

7. Would the Suns be a better team without Marion?

Hell, no. Either Lamar Odom's long-armed presence or Andrei Kirilenko's frenetic unpredictability would be nice complements in a Nash-Stoudemire offense, particularly because Grant Hill, about whom the Suns are excited, has looked so sharp in drills. But given the whole Marion package -- the automatic double-double, the sometimes accurate three-point shooting, the number of positions he can guard as well as the little things he does on defense (such as jumping over to double-team), the jaw-dropping athleticism, the relative indestructibility -- you have the portrait of a player who is hard to replace.

But here's a different question ...

8. Should the Suns work like hell to move him?

Yes. He can opt out after this season and they would get nothing. He feels unhappy and slighted. He's not going to get his desired money from owner Robert Sarver, who wants to avoid paying the luxury tax and reacts to the word extension the way, say, Hillary Clinton reacts to the word intern. Marion will never feel like a favored son/Sun in an environment with the uber-respected Nash and, now, Hill.

But Phoenix won't give him up for anything less than almost equal value. Raptors general manager Bryan Colangelo (who drafted Marion when he was the Suns' GM) would love to have the Matrix but is unwilling to part with Chris Bosh. The way it looks now, a deal would have to be done for either Odom or Kirilenko. And even if that gets done, it's no slam-dunk that the Suns will be better, though they might be happier.

[empy]

i think the one good point that Marion has in this whole saga is that his coaches should back him up in his demand that his teammates get better, particularly Amare. he feels that he holds the team together on defense, because his interior partner is disinterested in playing it, and his PG plays defense like a matador, so he always has to bail them out. as the article says, he also gets worn down by guarding stud PF's in the West like Duncan, KG, Brand and Dirk who are all bigger than him. i think he also guards Shaq when the Heat come to town because Amare sucks on D.

so he feels like he's the glue that holds the team together. that's a yes, on defense, and also a yes because he's the swiss army knife of NBA players. but he's not the engine that makes the team run (that's Steve Nash), and he's not it's future either (that's Amare and Barbosa).

plus, he already makes more money than Nash. he should just get over it, and play. get a ring before he leaves, because he's likely not to be in this good a situation for the rest of his career.

[ssaloon]

He's a perfect example of the steve nash effect imho.

[theveed]

While he has been great even when teamed up with Stephon, he's so much better with Nash. I understand his frustration with the trade talks especially if he's the only real defensive threat inside the perimeter for the team and no one finishes Nash's passes like he does.

Sucks to be a weak-emotioned superstar hehe. I just wish he voiced out right after last season or after this season.

Think of how bad it'd be for him if the Suns did win the championship this year (or even the finals) without him.

Besides, is there anyone who Nash passes to that can't flourish? My goodness, there will be no Joe Johnson, Raja Bell, (to a certain degree, Q.Rich) breakouts without the mophead Canadian.

[Eismann]

LAL GM and owners and should read between the lines and trade right away for The Matrix. Imagine the stars that a Marion-Bryant will attract next season or even after the all-star break. Hell, even Stern should act on this!
Another stud C will immediately thrust the purple and gold to a June affair next summer and it's good for the league in general with all the referee issues and hypocrisies these past summers.........imho, a dream LAKERS-CELTICS championship revival in the making? That could save the league from this quagmire and faithfuls like us could just hope...he-he-he

[chain]

"Around here, 'it's Steve this and Amare' that. What people forget is that I had to adjust my game to different people."
--Suns forward Shawn Marion

The friend Suns assistant coach Phil Weber has brought along to the morning coaches meeting in head coach Mike D'Antoni's suite in the Loews Santa Monica hotel looks familiar. Weber introduces him as "Jim."

It doesn't dawn on me who he is until Mike asks him what film projects he's been working on. "I was gonna say, 'You look like the guy,'" I tell him, "except you are the guy." It's Jim Caviezel, the actor who played, most famously, Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ. He and Weber met years ago when Weber was working out players at UCLA and Caviezel was an avid pickup player.

"He gets that a lot," says Weber.

"I feel confident now," says assistant coach Alvin Gentry. "Phil Jackson doesn't have Jesus sitting in his meeting."

"Phil's probably got some Eastern guy in a white robe," says assistant Marc Iavaroni. "Advantage, Suns."

The mood changes quickly. The Lakers' 99-93 win in Game 2 two nights earlier in Phoenix had put a dark cast on the series, the presence of the Son of God notwithstanding. Nash had played well with 29 points, but, with the exception of Raja Bell, who had 23, everyone else pretty much disappeared, Shawn Marion most conspicuously. Marion had 13 points (only two in the first half), while the man he was most responsible for checking, Lamar Odom, had an active game, making nine of his 12 shots.

A graver concern is that Marion has gone into the tank, or at least stuck one foot into it, partly because news has leaked out that Steve Nash has won his second straight Most Valuable Player award. Marion legitimately likes Nash, and, at some level, recognizes his greatness. Marion never openly challenges Nash's primacy within the team and seems to have accepted his own role as a kind of vice president. When he is critical of the ways the Suns are playing, he generally leaves Nash out of it. "I could be under the basket by myself and don't nobody pass or want to push the ball," Marion complained to Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic late in December. "Steve's the only one pushing it. He can't do it by himself."

Still, Marion sees himself as every bit as valuable to the Suns as Nash, and, further, his people around him, in particular his agent, Dan Fegan, see him the same way. During the regular season, Fegan had lobbied with D'Antoni to include Marion in any MVP conversations with the press. Over the next couple of weeks, D'Antoni did exactly that. Yet voters, taking note of his limited ball-handling skills and inability to get off his own shot, don't see him that way at all -- only one of 127 MVP voters had Marion in their top five.

His delicate psyche is never far from the coaching staff's collective mind. On the one hand, Marion is outwardly confident, cocky even, buying into that wonderful nickname, Matrix, given to him by TNT commentator Kenny Smith early in Marion's rookie year. The special-effects-driven movie was hot then, and "Matrix" was perfect for a player with an uncanny ability to suddenly materialize in the middle of a play (Marion seems to come from nowhere when he makes a steal, grabs a rebound or makes a quick cut to the basket) and leap from a standing start as if he's on a trampoline. Sometimes Marion refers to himself as the Matrix, as if he has bought into the idea that he is a super-hero who defies normal physical laws. His teammates call him "Trix."

On the other hand, Marion lives in a perpetual state of fear that he is being overlooked, underrespected, ignored, dissed, persecuted, singled out, patronized, whatever. He grew testy with Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic when the columnist asked him about past playoff failures. (Specifically, his 7.8 points-per-game average when San Antonio's Bruce Bowen locked him up in last year's Western Conference finals.) Back in January, Marion told reporters that, in regards to the Olympic team, "Jerry hadn't asked me." At that time, stories were beginning to filter out about which players Colangelo was inviting to the summer tryouts in Las Vegas. Marion was clearly upset; Colangelo was clearly stupefied and came over to resolve it at a practice session.

"Do you remember we talked about the Olympic team last May?" said Colangelo. "During the Dallas series?"

"I remember that," says Marion, "but, you know, I read about the formal interviews and stuff going on and we haven't done that."

"All right, Shawn, look at me," says Colangelo. "Are you in?"

"Yep," says Marion, breaking into a smile.

"Good." And they shake hands.

[chain]

The Colangelos have always been strong supporters of Marion -- it was Bryan who squelched any franchise talk of trading Marion (managing partner Robert Sarver wanted to at least entertain the notion when he took over), and it was Bryan who gave him a contract that pays him $13.8 million this season and about $48.6 million through 2009. That is substantially more than Nash, who on his free-agent deal is getting $9.6 million this season and about $34.2 million through 2009. But Marion's view is that no matter how hard he tries, no matter how completely he fills up a box score with points, rebounds, steals, blocked shots, and assists (well, not assists), he cannot gain traction in an organization and a press corps bent on canonizing Nash and anointing Stoudemire as the next superstar.
Valuable asset

Shawn Marion sees himself as every bit as valuable to the Suns as reigning two-time MVP Steve Nash.

Even when it works out for Marion... sometimes it doesn't work out. He went through a streak in late February when he was playing at a level equal to anyone in the league, and D'Antoni, speaking sincerely, carried it a step further, saying that "Shawn Marion, right now, is playing the game as well as anybody ever played it." Marion had scored 30 points and grabbed 15 rebounds in four consecutive games when D'Antoni, unaware that he was going for five straight, a milestone never previously reached by any Phoenix player, took him out of a safely won game against Milwaukee. When he realized it, D'Antoni hurried him back in. It was awkward, for Marion and both teams, and he missed two shots and one of two free throws to fall one point short.

All this angst gives Marion a certain joylessness from time to time. He really is a good person who should enjoy the game and life a little more than he does. Before a game in New York on Jan. 2, Gentry was lying on a bench in the locker room, felled by the flu, complaining that he needed something to fill his stomach. As Eddie House waved a bag of greasy chicken fingers over Gentry's nose, Marion said, "See, Alvin, that's what you get when you take three Viagra in one night." Even Gentry laughed.

The day after a home game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Jan. 14, one the Suns had won 115-106, I asked Marion for his thoughts on the game. "Man," he said, "I don't know what it looked like for you guys. But it was a fun, fun game to be in, you know what I mean?"

I did know what he meant. It had been a fun game, an outstanding game, and I was glad that Marion felt that joy. Maybe he feels it more than he shows. A more tender Marion moment came in early February, when, before practice, he suddenly blurted out to his teammates, "I want to thank you all for treating my family nice when they were out here." Marion is extremely close to his mother, Elaine, who was just 14 when she gave birth to Shawn and his fraternal twin, Shawnett. Two children followed, and Elaine worked two jobs to raise them. "She did everything for me," says Marion, who does not speak of his father other than to say that he was "recently released from prison." Whenever D'Antoni gets exasperated with Marion, he usually ends up saying: "But Shawn is such a good guy at heart. A really good guy."

There is also a charming naiveté about Marion. He chows down on Hamburger Helper and doesn't care who knows about it. He's an avid cartoon watcher. He's a little, well, thrifty. He favors Holiday Inn Express when traveling on his own dime. One day we were having a conversation about the advantages of having kids close together and Marion pointed to what he considered the key factor -- the savings on baby clothes. During his annual pilgrimage to Friedman's, the Atlanta shoe store that caters to large-footed jocks, Marion spent thousands of dollars, then complained about the $17 it cost to mail them. One day last year, one of the trainers was thumbing through a luxury car magazine and musing about making a six-figure auto purchase.

"Why don't you just buy it?" asked Marion.

"Shawn, how much money you think I make?"

"I don't know," said Marion. "Two, three hundred thousand?"

(That is reminiscent of the comment made by Darius Miles, a young player for the Portland Trail Blazers, after he heard that a player had been fined $300,000. "My mother would have to work over a year to make that kind of money," said Miles.)

The question is: Does Marion have a point about being treated unfairly?

A minor one, perhaps.

"I mean, damn, I'm doing things in this league nobody else is doing," Marion had told me a couple of days before the Laker series began. "Come on, now give me my respect. I'm not no big man. I'm a basketball player out here doing things at my size that no one else is doing."

Marion has his defenders around the league. "You can say what you want about Nash and Stoudemire, both great players," Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said during the season, "but Shawn Marion's ability to run the floor at breakneck speed forces you to play their game. He's more important than anybody knows. If you don't run with him, he goes ahead and dunks it. Or somebody has to pick him up who shouldn't be guarding him, like a guard, and that leaves the three-point line open."

Marion's constant complaint is that, at a lean 6-foot-7 and 215 pounds, he is frequently asked to defend against players who are much taller, wider, and more physical. (And though he doesn't mention it -- but is probably thinking it -- the Suns sometimes have to hide Nash on defense.) Marion desperately wants to be known as a "3," a small forward, generally the most athletic player on a team, rather than a "4," a power forward, generally a bigger and slower player. What the coaches want to communicate to Marion is that going against bigger players, filling the power forward spot, is precisely what has made him an All-Star. He can use his speed, quickness, and leaping ability to leave other fours in the dust, whereas, against the typical small forward, some of his athleticism would be negated.

I ask Marion if he's happy in Phoenix. He says he is. He even feels that it was "my destiny to be here." While playing in a junior college tournament in Mesa, Ariz., a decade ago, Marion took a side trip to watch the Suns play and got a chance to take one shot on the court. "It was a three-pointer," says Marion, still smiling at the memory, "and it went in. First NBA three-point shot I ever took. I thought, 'This is where I want to be.'" He was elated when the Suns made him the ninth pick of the 1999 draft.

"But, still, there are certain things I can control, certain things I can't," he says. "The things I'm doing now are the things I've been doing since I've been here, before anybody got here."