Amare To Stay In Phoenix?

February 16th, 2009 by Andrew Wamboldt

According to ESPN’s Marc Stein, there are now strong indications that Amare Stoudemire will remain in Phoenix.

There are suddenly strong signals emanating from the desert that the coaching change announced Monday by the Phoenix Suns will be the only big personnel change they make this week.

After the Suns spent several days taking and making phone calls on potential trades for Amare Stoudemire and Shaquille O’Neal, NBA front-office sources told ESPN.com that Phoenix — having received a series of underwhelming proposals for Stoudemire — prefers now to leave its core intact for the rest of the season to see if new coach Alvin Gentry can do more with this group than the outgoing Terry Porter.

“I got the impression today that [the Suns] are standing pat,” said one source with knowledge of the team’s thinking.

Said another source close to the situation: “That is very accurate.”

Officials from two other teams told ESPN.com on Monday that the Suns’ willingness to consider offers for Stoudemire has been scaled back considerably from last week, when Stoudemire himself seemed resigned to being sent elsewhere, telling reporters: “I know for sure, wherever I go, we’re going to definitely be playoff contenders.”

This definitely in contrast of what was being said this morning, in which the national media guys had trade talks heating up, and Hoops World pretty much called it a done deal. This is more in line with what the local media guys were saying though.

At this point, it’s hard to read too much into this. It could just be a smoke screen by Phoenix to try to get teams to up their offers. They may be actually keeping Stoudemire. If a trade is completed, the talks will probably fire up and lead to a completed trade very quickly. With the trade deadline quickly approaching, we will know the fate of Amare Stoudemire soon.