Posted by Ira:

I think Colangelo is a a little overrated. His team jelled, but I don't see it going much further. His draft pick wasn't the best pick in the draft. Bargnani is a good, not great, offensive player who doesn't and probably never will play much d or rebound. Garbajosa is a borderline starter. Trading for Ford was a very good move, but I wonder how long a 165 lb point guard can survive in this league.

They've got a very good offensive team, but I don't see that they have what it takes on the defensive side to take the next step. I'll be very surprised to see them win the Atlantic next season.

Posted by TrueBlue:

Posted by Solace:

Wow, I can't believe how underrated Marion is on this board. Sure, you could trade Marion, but why? The Suns are extremely close to a championship. If you trade a player for whom you have no hope of getting someone better in return for, you're making it more difficult to win a championship. The money I understand, but as Bonn said, Deng has to get paid too... and Marion is plain better. Those stats show that Deng is good, but Marion is better by a VERY significant margin.

Now rebuilding if you're the Suns is interesting, but you'd have to question that decision. If you want to indulge it, you're talking about trading Marion, Nash and Stoudamire. And if they make those trades, they don't get back equal value. Every team wants to get the level the Suns are at... so they should go for it and try to win some titles. IMHO, they are the best team in the NBA.

Deng will be considerably paid less than Marion even 2 yrs from now with a pay raise. Look Marion is a regular season stud everyone knows this. But he has peaked as a player and his salary continues to escalate. The Suns have been in championship contention for 3yrs now it won't last forever so instead of letting the bottom just fall out for no reason at all trade one of your best assets to trim payroll, help the rebuild process, while taking a chance at possibly remaining highly competitive. No one will want Marion once he's past 30 as much as they may want him now. Besides he's been on the trade block already it's not like this is some shocking idea or something.

[Edited by - TrueBlue on 05-14-2007 3:26 PM]

Posted by BasketballJones:

Posted by djsunyc:

Posted by Ira:

I think Colangelo is a a little overrated. His team jelled, but I don't see it going much further. His draft pick wasn't the best pick in the draft. Bargnani is a good, not great, offensive player who doesn't and probably never will play much d or rebound. Garbajosa is a borderline starter. Trading for Ford was a very good move, but I wonder how long a 165 lb point guard can survive in this league.

They've got a very good offensive team, but I don't see that they have what it takes on the defensive side to take the next step. I'll be very surprised to see them win the Atlantic next season.

went to toronto and in a matter of one summer, put together a team that had a 20 game turnaround.

look at their cap - no bad contracts. near the cap for the next 2 seasons and then major space after that. so his plan is to win in the process while rebuilding with a core of ford/calderon (one of them will eventually get traded), bargnani, and bosh. so as they 3 develop over the next 2 years (tj's 24, calderon 25, bargnani 21, bosh 22), they will then have major cap space to get, hopefully at the time, a "final" piece to the puzzle.

overrated? nope. the guy knows what he's doing. look at what he did in pheonix and the really short time in toronto. (AP + garbajosa make $8 mil combined - talk about bang for the buck, and only signed for 3 years a piece)

not all gm's can win a title (just like all superstars can't either - ewing, barkley, stockton/malone). all you can hope for is to build a good a team as you can that can contend. alot of luck is needed to win that title. if anything, he's a visionary and is helping dictate a change in the way the nba game is played.

[Edited by - djsunyc on 05-14-2007 9:19 PM]

He's just reaping the rewards of the moves Isiah made while he was in Tornto. When you put that together with his stellar performance as Knicks GM? Come on man, This is Isiah's award.