Confessions of Lunacy from a Disgruntled Phoenix Suns Fan

Ok I promised myself I would stop talking about this, but I just can't. The fate that has befallen my beloved Suns is the stuff nightmares or the Memphis Grizzlies are made of. Before the "Marion for Engineless Volkswagen posing as basketball player named Shaq" trade went down (I'm still bitter, can you tell?) a Suns-Hornets playoff series would have been the most interesting and entertaining series in the playoffs. Even though the Hornets swept the season series with the Suns, every one of those games (except for that last one) was one hell of a competitive, if slightly defensively deficient, dogfight. Even though Paul got the best of Nash, apart from the turnovers, Nash didn't do all that badly and a few bounces this way or that was all that separated the teams.

But, with Marion now gone I'm dreading a possible playoff confrontation with the Hornets. If that does happen (and it might; see future blogs for details) I see the Suns and the Nash-era crumbling in a 4-1 pile of asbestos-rich dust. They can't run the Hornets out of the building and they can't shut down Paul.

However, the Suns have always been about crazy theories, and the one I thought of might just be crazy enough to work. If the Suns are thinking what I'm thinking (they probably aren't but bear with me) then they might have pulled the greatest rabbit-out-of-the-hat-sleight-of-hand-mother-of-all-illusions since that Houdini guy became famous for doing it. So they have Shaq now, ostensibly for interior defense and rebounding and all that good stuff, but unless his production starts to match his carbon footprint, that isn't going to cut it. However, the Suns have Shaq playing 30 mintues per game and there is no way that he's gonna be able to last through the playoffs playing that many minutes in PHX's system. Inevitably he's going to break down leaving a Suns playoff line-up that looks like this:

C - Amare Stoudamire
PF - Boris Diaw
SF - Grant Hill
SG - Raja Bell
PG - Steve Nash
6M - Leandro Barbosa
7M - Shaqille O'neal (possibly)

Do you see what I see? Potential! This is basically the same line-up that the Suns had last year except with Hill in place of Marion and Shaq playing limited minutes in place of Kurt Thomas. Not too bad, they're still going to be the best running team in the League and as much as I hate Shaq, he's still a marginal improvement over Thomas as an interior presence.

**PLUS**...and this is the genius of it all...they will have an Amare and a Boris hardened and tempered like shimmering steel from having guarded Mr. O'neal in practice every day for 4 months. That shit will either break you or make you and I think that after all he's already been through, Black Jesus won't be broke. He's going to itching to play Tyson Chandler who weighs what, a solid 100lbs less than Shaq? Amare might be a punka$$ b!tch right now when it comes to putting a body on his man in the paint, but that will change. It has to! Paul is still a problem, but you know that old saying, "the best defense is a good offense"? I'd imagine running around chasing after Barbosa and Nash for 45 minutes will cut him down to size a little bit. Plus, Nash can always guard Morris Peterson while Raja Bell roughs up Paul like Bruce Bowen would. I don't think Mo-Pete has beaten anyone off the dribble since 2003.

So call me crazy, go ahead, I'm used to it. But I have Hope, and really, what more do you need? I've been saying it for 4 years now, but this season could finally be the one where the Suns get over that hump.