Shaq trade

Suns fans, I had a pretty good debate with several of you when the big Shaq trade came down and I told you that this takes you from contender to also ran.  Of course you guys were pretty optimistic about your chances with the most over rated player in the hisory of basketball.  Now there are reports that your coach is being released from his obligations.  What say you now about the trade?

IM SO SAD,B/C SHAQ IS ONE OF THE BEST BIG MAN TO PLAY THE GAME ! ANYONE THAT RIPS ON SHAQ IS A HATER. DUDE, GIVE RESPECT WHERE ITS DUE. PHX DID NOT EXECUTE !!! PLAIN AND SIMPLE !!!

Sorry Lady but i totally disagree with the Shaq fits in Phoenix statement.

This team use to be a fast pace team that ran away with points left and right. Now that they brought Shaq in its a whole new ball game.

He never did fit. They made him fit.

Everybody knows that I am probably Shaq's biggest detractor, but the problem wasn't the trade itself, it was the timing of the trade.  Listen, if the Suns wanted to go a different direction - with an emphasis on defense and more of a half court game - and felt that Marion was hindering Stoudemire's development, etc., then fine, you make the trade and bring in a guy like Shaq...but you don't do it at the friggin' All-Star break in mid February, just as your team is leading their division and getting ready for the stretch run playing a certain brand of basketball - having developed a certain kind of chemistry with a certain kind of coach who has been successful running that system!

Give yourself the benefit of an offseason and a training camp to make that kind of a move, that kind of a switch in philosophy - it's not the kind of thing that will magically transform itself in the Heat of a division race.

The trade for Shaq was a knee-jerk move, plain and simple.  I understand the overall intention, I just don't understand the way it was executed.  Same with Dallas and the move to get Kidd - these are potentially great moves in theory, but in the heat of conference race for playoff positioning it's totally disruptive - I just don't see how anyone could've expected those move to work out seemlessly.

It's not like the Lakers, who got better instantly - not just by gaining a great passing big man to fill a void in the triangle, but by simultaneously getting rid of a guy who didn't even know what a triangle was - the Suns (and the Mavs) had to give up key components to what made them successful in the first place.

If the trade had been done in concert with other personnel moves in order to effectively orchestrate a change in philosophy - say during the offseason - with a training camp and slate of preseason games to works things out, then that makes sense.  But to just pull the trigger on that kind of a singular, massive switch-out midseason is a recipe for disaster.

Shaq is better the Wilt in my opinion. Shaq's body frame is much thicker than Wilt's and Russels. I think Wilt was the best at his time, but I would never consider him the Greatest Center of all-time. Wilt played in a league where basketball didn't have as much finess, than it does today. Are you going to compare Bob Cousy to Steve Nash? There are very few basketball players from back then that can compete in today's style of basketball.  Such as Pete Maravich and David Bing. Bill Russel said it himself, "where you left off, someone begins." These guys are the foundation of what made basketball  great.

Well, body frame thickness is an interesting measure of talent, that's for sure, although it does focus on Shaq's single biggest advantage over anyone else in the league. He is not better than Wilt, and he sure as hell isn't better than Russell--he isn't, and he wasn't, even in his better days in LA He probably could have been if it weren't for his crappy attitude about