Monday night February 15th was quite the evening for everyone to give their take on the NBA trade front. I honestly do not know how much more trade talk I can take. From the Corey Maggette conversation yesterday to the supposed deal with the Pacers for Troy Murphy and now back to Amar’e Stoudemire, the talks are as chaotic as ever right now.
For our loyal readers and everyone else out there, this post will serve as a recap of where we are right now and what we learned last night. We had well-regarded journalists directly contradicting their peers, fishy as well as phenomenal usage of the Twitter medium and finally, overall confusion for everyone. Without any more introductory prose, here is what happened specifically last night in chronological order:
6:50 pm - Bob Finnan of the News Herald reported initially this bombshell of an article that shocked the nation of Cavs fans. It was later directly stated that his primary argument shown below was false according to the most recent sources:
A source said the five-time All-Star center let it be known that he does not want to come to Cleveland. The Cavs have reportedly been informed of that news and have gone in another direction.
If this had been true, it could have hurt the Cavaliers in many different ways. First of all, there would go the only current All-Star of the three forwards currently being pursued by Cleveland. Additionally, it would have hurt Cleveland’s reputation across the NBA and GM Danny Ferry would have lost some of his leverage in the negotiations with the other two teams.
7:40 pm – Both Brian Windhorst (@pdcavsinsider) and Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojyahoonba) retracted the claims by Finnan and stated that there have been no such statements made by Stoudemire or his representatives. Via nearly choreographed tweets, the two star NBA writers said that there was no such poor feelings between Amar’e and the Cavs. This was a huge relief for many Cavaliers fans as evident in the well-over 100 retweets of these comments.
8:20 pm – Around this time, Amar’e Stoudemire (@amareisreal) first updated his Twitter page with an initially typo-laden message about how he enjoyed playing with Shaquille O’Neal one season ago. As of much later in the evening, here is what his revised tweet stated:
I play very well w/Shaq. I averaged more pts last year WITH him & played better D. You guys can stop saying we don’t play well together.
Shortly following his initial tweet about the Finnan allegations, Brian Windhorst also claimed any Stoudemire deal will likely be decided quite quickly. The Suns return to action Tuesday evening at Memphis and it became obvious that the distraction of STAT’s recent tweet could harm the team with their actual schedule. Thus began yet another flurry of rumors, conspiracies and potential deadline deals.
9:10 pm – J.A. Adande of ESPN published this story about the chemistry developed by Shaq and Amar’e last season. Responding to Amare’s tweet as well as the earlier report from Finnan, albeit not directly, he broke down the last two years in Phoenix Suns history in terms of the relationship between Shaq and Stoudemire. In his thoughts, the real problem with the inconsistency for Phoenix was not their poor relationship but many other factors including a coaching change and offensive style. Definitely a good read for all fans worried about their combined forces on the court.
Just around this hour as well, Chris Mannix (@chrismannixsi) began to respond to some comments on Twitter about all of the deadline madness. Some of the more intriguing statements he made over nearly an hour time frame were about the Stoudemire to Cleveland negotiations. He wrote that the trade is more likely than not, that Murphy is indeed low on their list of options, and finally that Ferry should do everything in his power to spend money for LeBron even though he will probably stay in the end. Good stuff all around from Mannix and it was pretty cool to have such insightful interaction via Twitter.
10:10 pm – The Cleveland Plain Dealer published their daily load of Cavaliers material. The first article that I saw on the site was Brian Windhorst’s nightly recap of the recent events on the trade front while including many of the sources mentioned above. Of direct importance to the timeline, Windhorst refuted the earlier Los Angeles Times report about a back-up deal being in place for Murphy. Here is what he also said about the money in the Stoudemire deal:
If the Suns reach the conclusion that they must trade Stoudemire or lose him for nothing, they must weight the trade offers. Taking the Cavs offer, if they work a buyout of Ilgauskas’ contract, potentially could save the team around $10 million in salary, luxury taxes and revenue-sharing bonuses. Once again, it is about the money.
Also involved in the Plain Dealer discussion about Stoudemire coming to Cleveland was local sports sage Terry Pluto who weighed in with his overall opinion of the deal. Pluto offered up the traditional argument against Stoudemire, citing his poor defense and lack of focus for the Suns. Always nice to have the other side of things in a debate, but I am just not sure how anyone can complain about the simple upgrade from J.J. Hickson to Stoudemire.
11:30 pm – Essentially closing the evening of different rumors and reports, Marc Stein of ESPN wrote about the Miami Heat and their chase for Amar’e Stoudemire. Here are some of the specifics of the late night report:
The Heat emerged from the All-Star break even more determined than they were before to find a third team to help them broker an Amare deal before Thursday’s 3 p.m. deadline. Miami is “coming hard” after Stoudemire, one source said.
Earlier reports mentioned that Phoenix was not very interested in a potential trade offer of Jermaine O’Neal and/or Michael Beasley, but this has the Heat looking desperately for trade help. With Miami struggling to provide Dwyane Wade help for this season, let alone for the future, they are definitely in more of a desperate position than the contending Cavaliers. Whether this will be enough to convince the Suns in time for the deadline will be another matter and it should be interesting to see how it all plays out soon.
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(Image above is via AP Photo/David Zalubowski)