Hornets down Suns 104 - 91

Amare brought the suck.

Good night.

[Note by Phoenix Stan, 12/04/08 8:10 AM PST ]

Morning After Thoughts on Amare

•  For Amare rebounding is usally an indicator of effort. Not always. Sometimes the ball just doesn’t come your way but last night and recently the level of effort just isn’t there
• Amare has shown this season that he can play defense. When he chooses. He needs to choose to do so more.
• Offensively Amare was aggressive early. Every touch he turned, faced up West and destroyed him off the dribble. Once the Hornets started collapsing more from the weakside and Amare wasn’t getting the calls he should have got he seemed to give up. The ball came to him and he wanted no part of it until the end of the game when he tried to go Kobe and single-handedly win the game. That rarely works even for Kobe.
• Hopefully, this game can be used to show Amare how he’s not performing w/o having Shaq around to blame. Otherwise, I am all in favor of benching him to get that message across. But I guess you don’t bench fragile young stars in the NBA…
• This all feels so familiar. For the past two years we’ve been having this same conversation about Amare early in the season. Last year he started well for the first week or so and then trailed off and then after the loss to the Lakers on Christmas day said something about “stepping up” and his numbers increased. That increase btw started well before Shaq came (see chart below). I am not ready to call for a trade but I am frustrated and feed up with this act.

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