again, it comes back to Sarver. in this market, clearly someone was gonna give Amare max money – which in all likelihood meant he was gone. Sarver should’ve had an aggressive plan in place to replace him (Bosh or more realistically Boozer). Sarver did neither, then, worse still, took a reactionary approach which will make things worse for much longer.

Fyi, Lopez’s TRB% was 14.2% last year, significantly higher than his rookie campaign. I expect him to get more toward where bigs should be (16-19%) next season, picking up any slack there might be. I’m not anticipating a huge disparity at all. But again, I would feel a lot more comfortable with one more big. PLEASE NOT KURT THOMAS.

The fact is while Amare wasn’t a great rebounder, he was a good rebounder. Too many fans compare him to all-time greats and say he’s not any good which is false. He is good. (Here’s a shocker – his career reb% is HIGHER than Shawn Marion’s. He just never played as many minutes as Marion so Marion always had higher totals.)

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/stoudam01.html

As for Warrick, he couldn’t beat out Darrell Arthur in Memphis. He LOST his starting job last year to Ersan Ilyasova and Chicago traded for him in a salary dump where he couldn’t start ahead of Taj Gibson & James Johnson (2 rookies) on a team scrapping for a playoff spot. 3 different coaches in about 18 months looked at him and said, “Nah, he’s not the answer.” He’s not a playmaker, not a shotblocker, not a defensive whiz, not a shooter, and as noted not really a good rebounder for a 4. What am I missing?

Unless Lopez really develops into a monster, the Suns are GOING to take a hit on the boards big time.

The fact remains, Amare is not a winner. He’s not ever going to be, unless he happens to luck out and end up playing with one of the true superstars of the league (Bryant, Wade, LeBron, soon to be Durant). Phoenix wasn’t going to win with Amare. Anyone who thinks the Suns should have resigned Amare to retain any hope of winning it all would be a worse GM than Thomas. Amare has had 7 years to bring the ‘ship to PHX, and he hasn’t done it. They had the best team in the league two of those years, and they flopped both times. Last year, they overacheived, but it was no thanks to Amare, who had a fairly lackluster postseason, in which he allowed “lesser” talents to steal the spotlight while he filled up the stat sheet with about 20 points and 6 boards per night (does that sound like a max player to you?).

I get what you guys are saying, but you’re just wrong about the Suns having any shot whatsoever with Amare.

Whether or not Sarver made the right calls remains to be seen, so why are you so quick to judge when you have no idea what the outcome will be? They need another big. I’ll give you that. But who says they’re done making moves?