Scoop Jackson Has An Announcement: Scoop = Right, World = Wrong

If that sounds unbelievable, that's because it is. It starts out relatively inoffensive, then gets stupid.

Shaq will thrive on solar power

Incredibly, incredibly cute.

Guess what? The Suns just made a fantastic trade

Fantastic? You're going to tell me that this was "fantastic"? The best argument I've heard involves "Marion is a malcontent so the Suns did the best they could by shipping him out for Shaq." But fantastic? Read on....

The world has finally given up on Shaq.

Because his PPG and RPG have dropped rapidly over the last 3 years, perhaps? The fact that he has only played in 99 games the last two seasons and has only played in 32 during this one?

Many feel the gimmick is up, there's no room left for the games, that he's not worth his weight or contract on anyone's roster anymore. "Damaged goods," is how one man described him. "Stupid," "Dumb," "Doesn't make any sense," and "What in the #@$% were they thinking?" are some of what's being said. If you've read ESPN.com or any blogs, listened to any sports talk radio or had time to peep the sports pages, you'd know that the Suns are catching heat for bringing Shaquille O'Neal into their almost perfect basketball universe.

The same kind of heat the Lakers caught when they gave him up and gave up on him almost four years ago.

Right. Because 4 years ago, Shaq was still pretty damned good. He was a 20 points, 10 rebounds kind of guy. Very very productive. And those critics were right, he went on to win an NBA title. Got news for ya scoop, they're still right.

Shaq doesn't fit into their style of play. Even if he's in the best shape of his life, he can't get up and down the floor with the Suns. He'll be worthless on offense, and he's going to destroy their flow. He's lazy. He's not going to work hard. He's injury-prone. He's not worth the money. They still won't win a championship with him there.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Sorta wrong. Maybe. Yes. Wrong. Wrong.

Correct answers: Yes. Wrong. Sorta wrong. Sorta wrong. Maybe. Yes. Yes. Impossible to determine.

Since you have 1/2 credit on some of these, you get 4.5/8 right for a 56.25% score. Lets look at where you screwed up!

Shaq absolutely does not fit into their style of play. A large, old player does not fit into a run-and-gun fast-break style offense. Absolutely not. This should be obvious. He won't be completely worthless on offense, but not worth very much considering Amare is a better option almost every time, and he probably will disrupt their flow. Shaq is nowhere near the 2nd best player in the NBA, so no, he is not close to worth 2nd best player in basketball money. And you have no idea if they will win a championship with him there or not. That's bullshit.

In Miami (and in L.A. and Orlando before) Shaq was Option 1 or 2, and over the past two seasons that became a problem. In Phoenix, he'll be Option 4, maybe 5. Mike D'Antoni should have no plans to depend on Shaq for any offense -- heavy emphasis on "depend." Not in the conventional way that everyone is thinking. The pressure on him to score 20 and grab 10 is finally over.

Read what the hell you just said! You're basically arguing "Shaq will totally help propel Phoenix to a championship, my reasoning is that 1) he's not that good anymore, and 2) but that's ok, because he won't be expected to be that productive." Cleanup on aisle common sense!

Now he'll be the Big Decoy.

Which will totally work, because other teams have no sense for evaluating if he's still as good as he used to be. You know, I hear the New Orleans Hornets and San Antonio Spurs prepare for games by looking at tapes of the 1999-2000 season.

And because he won't be double-teamed (remember he's still one of the best-passing post players in the game, and the Suns are one of the best outside-shooting teams in the League, hitting 38.7 percent on 3-pointers along with four players capable of dropping 20 to 30 every night), Big stands a chance of being more valuable by doing less in Phoenix.

Big Decoy, 2007-2008 season: 1.4 APG, good for 14th in basketball among centers. He's behind Zydrunas Ilgauskas for fuck's sake. His assist to turnover ratio is .47! Not as comically bad as Eddy Curry, but still awful, even for a center.

The beauty is -- again, if the Suns play this right -- Shaq doesn't need to be a part of their transition game, he just needs to ignite it.

Get ready for this guys, it's pretty funny.

Rebound, turn, outlet! Rebound, turn, outlet! Precision. Execution. Buckets. Only six seconds off the shot clock. Back on D. Repeat. So unfair.

Sounds exactly like what Shawn Marion did for them! Only Marion grabbed rebounds more often and actually was able to run the floor to contribute anyway even if he wasn't the lucky fella to whom the rebound bounced. FANTASTIC trade! I guess if you're arguing that Shaq "wouldn't be completely dismal" to the Suns, you've done a C-minus job. But that the trade was FANTASTIC!?!?! Gimme a break.

It will be so systematic that no one will be able to stop it once it gets perfected.

For crissake all you're saying is that he can grab the farking rebound and pass it. The rebound is the hardest part, and he's not even very good at that anymore. Ben Wallace is way shorter and lighter and having a terrible season and he STILL gets more rebounds per game than Shaq, who is 40th in the NBA.

And for those who think it's predictable and defenses will be able to shut it down, here's one to grow on: Whenever teams played the 49ers, they knew where, when and how Jerry Rice was going to get the ball. Yet for years, the best defenses in the game could not do anything to stop it. Nothing. The Niners won four rings with Rice, proving that predictability when perfected, works.

Football....that doesn't happen to be a completely different sport with different dynamics than basketball....does it? Chalk another one up to the "anecdotal bullshit" category!

On defense, all Shaq needs to do is breathe, partially because Amare Stoudemire is so active. As long as Shaq doesn't move (and get in foul trouble, which my be a bigger problem on offense), no one'll get hurt. Remember Chief from "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"? That's Shaq all day on defense. Just play the paint, don't protect it.

So, what does Amare Stoudemire's man do when Amare goes to help out Shaq? Run into the stands and buy a hot dog? No, he stands right under the fucking basket for easy points if the ball can get to him. An awful defender can bite you in the ass, regardless of how good the help defenders on your team are. And I'm so gonna think of a Cuckoo's Nest-related label.

There's more grief from the world about this. Grief of how "the Suns should have kept Shawn Marion," how he was "their best defensive player and best rebounder" and how "there's no player in the league like him." All true. But Marion wanted to go. He wanted out of everyone's shadow and the organization's underappreciation of him. And before the Suns ended up like the Grizzlies after trading Pau Gasol and getting "the twin of nothing" in return for the Matrix, they decided to get someone who, if you checked his history, guarantees your team will either get to the NBA Finals or win a ring.

Orlando? Finals in three years. L.A.? Finals in four years, three rings in eight. Miami? Finals and ring in his second season.

Sir, a coke-addicted moron could fine serious, serious flaws in that logic. For starters, you just represented something that has historically happened 53.3% of the time as a "guarantee." Hey guys, 53.3% of the time, Shaq gets to the finals EVERY TIME. Second, you just assumed that things like the state of Shaq's career (currently the severe decline phase), Shaq's teammates (ones who play a vastly different style of basketball than he does), and the conference and division in which Shaq is competing (both pretty tough) are irrelvant.

Get ready, this is about to become dismal.

See, the Suns are outthinking all y'all.

You're a professional writer. "Y'all" should not appear in your sports column.

They know that one thing comes almost assured with this trade: They will win a title with Shaquille O'Neal in the lineup. It's just a matter of whether the one ring they get with him is worth the years they won't win while he's still there.

Could you be more completely and totally irrational? First of all, as you just discussed, Shaq didn't win a ring with Orlando. Second, you are talking like the Suns are 100% completely and totally guaranteed to win a title either this year or in the next two. If you can say this with confidence, Scoop, head to Vegas right now, bet the farm on it, and start living the good life. And third, if the Suns absoluetly will win at least one ring with him there that they wouldn't have won without him, then it's not a "matter" of whether the other two years are worth it, because the Suns are absolutely dying for a title, and it's a very difficult title to win. If this trade guarantees them ONE title (which it absolutely doesn't), then it's no fucking question that it's worth it. Period.

The Suns have never won an NBA championship -- just like Miami before Shaq arrived. And if they're smart, they can take the one they'll win and milk it for 30 years -- just like Portland. The question is if $20 million per for the next two seasons is worth getting the one year of ring service they're going to get from Shaq.

It's official, you've fallen off the proverbial cliff harder and more dramatically than the little Price is Right mountain climber guy with an idiot contestant playing. If there is a fucking team in the NBA that wouldn't pay a guy $20M for two years with the stipulation that it would guarantee them one championship in the next three (hell, it's probably true of the Knicks), that team shouldn't have a fan in the world, and the GM should probably be drowned. And you continuously hammer home the "fact" that Shaq in some sort of divine way "guarantees" a championship in Phoenix, which is a "stupid" "thing" to "say."

There are so many other variables that play to the Suns' favor in this: a front line of Stoudemire, Shaq and Boris Diaw that no squad in the West can match -- not even the Lakers, when Andrew Bynum comes back with Gasol in the slot. Amare will be able to play his natural position, power forward, which causes matchup drama for any other team.

For the 20 minutes per game you'll get out of Shaq, that's true. Stoudamire is currently running at 23.1 PPG and 9.4 RPG. We'll see if those improve. My guess: not significantly.

Steve Nash is going to get open looks because of Shaq's presence and how coaches automatically forget about other players on the court because they are still afraid of getting killed by Shaq in the playoffs.

Those teams must still have the image of Shaq dominating the Bulls last year fresh in their minds. Oh wait....

Shaq's and Grant Hill's passing ability in the half-court will be more dangerous than Nash's, which will now increase the assist-per-game ratio for the team, which is the most difficult stat in the League to alter and one that correlates most to a team's ability to win.

Are you fucking kidding me? Shaq and Grant Hill better passers than Nash? Even though Nash is overrated, he's at the very least one of the three best passers in basketball. Shaq can go ahead and add his 1.4 assists per game at the expense of Marion's 2.1. Grant Hill averages 3.3 assists. Nash averages 11.7. How many of Nash's are in the half-court, I can't say for sure, but it's still way more than Shaq or Hill get. Mark my words, Scoop, the Suns' APG will not be seeing a significant boost from this trade, and you couldn't overrate O'Neal's ability as a passer any more than you have. You know what else correlates to winning? Not turning the ball over. Shaq does that a lot.

Big might come to town rejuvenated. He probably hears everything that's being said about him, which could send him back into 2005-06 mode. Just being gone from Miami with all of the hot mess surrounding his divorce will give him a new lease on his life. Robert Horry might think twice about running a Suns player into the scorer's table next time.

So....all the Toronto media needs to do to get Frank Thomas to hit like he did for Oakland 2 years ago is start talking shit about him! Totally makes sense!

Variables that no one outside of Steve Kerr's office and Robert Sarver's bank account could possibly comprehend. The fact is, by attaining the services of Shaquille O'Neal and not expecting or needing much from a productivity standpoint in return, the Phoenix Suns may have made the most ingenious move in the NBA in the past 10 years. Only time will tell. It's just a matter of how wrong they -- and he -- really want to prove the world to be.

Most ingenious move in the NBA in the past 10 years!??!??!?!?!

::faints::