Amick on Suns’ failed pursuit of LaMarcus Aldridge: Every team is prone to having things backfire
Jul 6, 2015, 9:52 AM | Updated: 9:53 am
The Phoenix Suns cast out their line and tried to reel in a big fish named LaMarcus Aldridge.
But when their hook reached the surface, all they landed was a tire.
Or something like that. You get the idea, anyway.
Now the Suns must rebound from this miss and move forward. A guest of Doug and Wolf on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Monday, USA Today NBA writer Sam Amick said there doesn’t really seem to be another big move in store for the team.
“This time of year, if you’re a GM, if you’re a front office guy,” he said, noting he talked about this with another non-Suns front office member the other day. “I was just asking him, ‘how nerve-wracking is this for you guys?’
“Like, every single day you’re trying to play the hand you’re dealt, and you’re taking these calculated risks that I don’t care, you work the odds and you try to come up with your strategy, but every single team — the Suns included — is prone to having something backfire.”
Amick said it made sense for the Suns to pursue Aldridge, who averaged 23.4 points and 10.2 rebounds per game last season, if they felt there was a legitimate shot at getting the franchise-changing talent.
The writer said when that’s the case, the team does its homework to find out if in fact they have a chance to come away with the player they covet. And by all accounts, the Suns very much did.
But that chance did not materialize into Aldridge, and if he was the goal — with the team moving Marcus Morris and others to clear salary cap space seeming to solidify that idea — then the team simply came up short.
“You now have a couple years where they have made roster decisions that I think have run the risk of upsetting their environment, their culture in the locker room,” Amick added, noting what happened with Goran Dragic during this past season. “These things are delicate. I don’t know where they go, but now the Morris twins are broken up and you don’t have the kind of depth that you had before.”
Amick said he thinks Suns GM Ryan McDonough probably feels OK with where the team is at because it has been on the cusp of reaching the playoffs each of the last two seasons, so it did not necessarily need a player like Aldridge to end what has become a five-year postseason drought.
