I promise to stop blasting out posts after this one. After all, I need to get some sleep sometime.
I’m surfing the ‘Net and keep reading articles from people who claim to know basketball that declare the Suns need to blow up this team because the current roster has no chance to win the championship. With that kind of logic, then there really should be only four teams in the NBA: the Lakers, Magic, Cavaliers, and Celtics. The reality is, no other teams had a chance to win the title this season.
So why don’t we make it easier for everyone and just blow up the remaining 26 NBA franchises. Let’s see… Stoudemire to the Lakers, Bosh to the Cavs, Wade to the Magic, Yao to the Celtics…
I understand this “no hope for a championship” mentality. If you can’t win it all, you need to try something different. But there is a difference between trying and giving up. “Blowing up” implies an irrational, immediate act without any forethought or reasoning. In the NBA, this means doing things like salary dumps and making trades for trading sake.
The essence of sports is competition. Yes, the championship is the ultimate prize. Fundamentally, however, the goal is to compete to the best of your abilities. This is what makes sports meaningful.
For the Suns, I hope the ownership and management understand that as competitors, they need to uphold their honor and put the best possible team on the floor that they can. They also have every right to try and avoid losing millions of dollars in the process.
But to use the “no hope for a championship” excuse is not acceptable. What teams can legitimately say that they can win it all? Not many, that’s for sure. And the ones that have actually been blown up are some of the worst of all: the Kings, Grizzlies, Timberwolves… This is not the kind of company Robert Sarver and Steve Kerr should want to join.
It’s time for Sarver and Kerr to act like true professionals and do the honest hard work, which is using the players they currently have and figuring out how to win as many games as possible. The idea that some great combination of players is to be had by continuing to wheel-and-deal is a gambler’s ruin that only works in fantasy sports but not in real life.