Suns Fail to Move Amare, Use Terry Porter as Their Scapegoat

Over the weekend, Ziller suggested that the Suns weren’t getting the offer they wanted for Amare because he was so obviously on the block. Then, Terry Porter gets fired. Everyone’s scrambling to decide whether that was the first step in the Suns’ mid-season makeover, or a way to restore order. Well, let me go out on a limb here and suggest that the Suns forced their own hand. Firing a coach basically during the All-Star break is unusual; doing so when you’re the host city is absolutely unprecedented.↵
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↵To me, it says that Amare was so much on the block, and the Suns’ desire to make a move so publicized because of All-Star Weekend, that Stoudemire became worthless. At the same time, though, the whole world was talking about how effed that team was, and what a mess the team had become. I know the media doesn’t control personnel decisions, but everyone and their moms knew the Suns wanted to make a trade. Maybe they didn’t plan on consulting public opinion, but once their desire to make a change became such a hot topic, it would’ve looked bad for them to stand pat. They’d practically admitted things weren’t going well; firing Porter might have been as much about not looking helpless as fixing their team.↵
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↵Then again, if Kerr hadn’t panicked, he could’ve waited until Jason Richardson was charged with reckless after “driving 90 mph in a 35 mph with his 3-year-old son unrestrained in his vehicle’s back seat.” When someone endangers the life of an infant, you can pretty much blame him for anything, right?↵