Phoenix Suns: All-Decade Team Starters and Reserves

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Amar’e Stoudemire Phoenix Suns (Photo by Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images) /

Power Forward

Starter: Amar’e Stoudemire – 49 games: 24.9p/9.2/1.0

Reserve: Markieff Morris – 345 games: 11.4p/5.4r/1.7a

The fact that Smar’e Stoudemire is easily the best power forward for the Phoenix Suns this decade is proof of how bad the position has been for the franchise since he left for New York.

Sure, STAT only played in a handful of games in the decade (49 regular season and 16 playoff games), but who else would you choose?

Channing Frye?

Marquese Chriss?

Dario Saric?

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Although his final 49 regular season games came at the tail end of his tenure in Phoenix, they were still extremely productive and helped propel the Suns into the playoffs, ultimately into the Western Conference Finals one last time with Steve Nash and Co.

Arguably, the franchise should have re-signed him and given that core one last run (certainly hindsight being 20/20, forget that he only had two more good years after the 2009-10 season, now that we know how poorly the decade turned out otherwise, who cares if they were sitting on a bad contract for three additional seasons), his entrance into the decade was one of excellence, the kind that fans, and the franchise, had come to expect from the superstar power forward.

Then, Markieff Morris gets the nod as the reserve out of literally there being no other legitimate option.

When you look back, when he was happy, he was fine. There were certainly high expectations that he could be a solid player for many years, and heck, he was WAY better than Marquese Chriss would ever be in the future.

But it still hurts to even think that during the past ten years, there wasn’t even two power forwards better than he.

Again, that’s really saying something.

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