Bad News for Amar'e Stoudamire and the Suns

Despite early hopes that Amar'e Stoudamire might be able to recover from surgery to repair his torn retina in time for the playoffs, it is now clear that he won't. That is a huge psychological blow for the Suns, who recently picked up Stromile Swift to help them down the stretch. It is also, no doubt, a huge psychological blow for Stoudamire, who has already come back from microfracture surgery.

But, just how much does it hurt the Suns on the basketball court?

Despite recently elevating his play (not coincidentally following the Suns' return to running like they did in the D'Antoni days), Amar'e Stoudamire was having a bad (for him, anyway) year. In fact, on Feb. 5 David Berri blamed his poor performance this year for the Suns failing to meet expectations. After evaluating the Suns' performance through the first 47 games of the season, Berri wrote:

...if Stoudemire was performing as he did last year, the Suns would be on pace to win 55 games. Such a mark would be fall short of where the Lakers are, but certainly could be good enough to challenge for second in the conference (and with the injury to Andrew Bynum, second might be good place to be in the West).

Stoudemire, though, is not performing as he did last year. Last year he posted a 0.291 WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minute]. Of the 129 players who played at least 2,000 minutes in 2007-08, Stoudemire ranked 12th in WP48. So Stoudemire was an elite player.

This year his WP48 is only 0.123. This mark would have ranked 73rd last year. Again, the population of players with more than 2,000 minutes is 129. So Stoudemire’s performance this year is below average (average in that sample is 0.142). At least, below average for the players who get the most minutes.

Stoudamire's play picked up a little bit between Feb. 5 and Feb. 18, when he injured his eye. Since that improvement coincided with the firing of Terry Porter, and a return to the "7 seconds or less" offense they ran under Mike D'Antoni - an offense that fully utilizes Stoudamire's many skills - we could expect it to continue, if he were healthy.

Also, by another measure, Stoudamire, while still down considerably from last year, was not playing quite as poorly as David Berri's WP48 indicates. His PER of 20.66 is the worst he's posted since his recovery from microfracture surgery. But it is still well above average. A far cry from the elite 27.29 he posted last year, but still ahead of Steve Nash's 18.11. In fact, on the Suns Stoudamire trails only a resurgent Shaquille O'Neil's team-leading 22.61. (Shaq, by the way, ranks 4th in PER among centers, trailing Dwight Howard's 25.62, Al Jefferson's 23.14, and Yao Ming's 22.87. Tim Duncan, who is really a center masquerading as a power forward, is also ahead of Shaq, at 25.25. Still, that's not bad for an overweight 37 year-old - Happy Birthday, Shaq! - who was left for dead last season.)

In any event, down year or no, Amar'e Stoudamire was playing better this year than Stromile Swift has ever played in his career. Signing Swift may (or may not) help the Suns, but it certainly won't replace the production lost when Stoudamire went down. The news that he won't be able to return this year hurts, both from the human standpoint, and on the court.