By Steve Kerr: We’re Not Championship Contenders
June 17, 2009 – 11:00 am by Tas Melas
Any casual basketball fan realizes the Phoenix Suns have dropped off since there glory days of a couple years back, and it’s refreshing to hear that their GM thinks the same. Steve Kerr could have easily used the excuse that Amar’e Stoudemire was injured this season, and so, no changes were needed for next. If you read between the lines below – actually, he spells it out quite clearly – the Suns are looking to make changes for next season and trading Shaquille O’Neal could be the first move. The big rumor was Cleveland last week especially after the Cavs’ bigs were dominated by Dwight Howard in the Eastern Conference Final. Kerr claims that talks regarding The Big Showman were going on with other squads before those rumors surfaced. Stoudemire’s whirlwind tour of campaigning to play in every city a few weeks back only rekindled the fire that had been going on all season regarding this franchise. Since Terry Porter was named Head Coach at the beginning of 2008-2009, it seems like at some point, every player on the roster voiced his displeasure with the way things were going down. Raja Bell and Boris Diaw were shipped out in December… Stay tuned for more. Steve Kerr joined KTAR to discuss a possible extension for Steve Nash, the Shaq to Ohio rumors, and draft prospect, DeJuan Blair.
On DeJuan Blair:
“I do think very highly of him. We had him in for a workout about three weeks ago. He’s an awesome kid. He plays hard, he rebounds, he’s a great teammate. We love him. Our concern is the medical concerns coming out of Chicago after the combine. There are some issues there with his knees, he’s had two ACL’s done. I actually feel really bad for the kid because he’s the type of guy you want to have a long career. You want him to succeed… I think his stock has probably fallen since Chicago because of the reports. Generally, what happens with guys like that is, at the top of the draft you have to invest a lot of money based on the salary scale so you’re kind of scared off. Then there comes a certain point where someone says, ‘Well, it’s worth it, it’s worth the gamble. We’re not investing a lot of money so let’s go for it.”
On trading The Big Shaqtus:
“I’ve spoken to about 15 teams during the week and nothing else came out. All of a sudden, a week later all this Shaq stuff comes out… There’s just a lot of conversation going on and that’s it. There’s nothing major happening. With that said, there’s a lot of interest. We’ve got to get our money straight, we’ve got to get our situation going forward straight in terms of building in the right direction. We took a shot the last couple years, it hasn’t panned out. We can’t sit here and say we’re still championship contenders and because of that, we have to look at every possibility that’s out there and see what that is.”
On an extension for Steve Nash:
“I’m going to meet with Steve and his agent Thursday morning and we’re going to talk. It’s very much in the preliminary stages. Steve knows that we’re very busy preparing for the draft and free agency and I think he wants to hear what our plans are going forward. Steve has always been a guy who cares about winning and kind of the spiritual aspect of playing the game. He wants to be happy, he wants to be in a situation where he’s comfortable and so he wants to see what we’re going to do.”
Listen to Steve Kerr on KTAR in Phoenix with Doug and Wolf
Tags: Basketball, DeJuan Blair, NBA, NBA Draft, Phoenix Suns, Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Kerr, Steve Nash
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