Yokels Basketball: You wanna be the champ, you gotta play like the champ

Hmm, so maybe the Suns are just following the Celtics' footsteps. They were looking great early, dropped a tough one against the Lakers on Christmas, then dropped 7 of 9 (mostly on the road) before righting their ship and rattling off 8 straight again to get right back in the thick for best record in the NBA.

So, the Suns were looking great right after the Richardson trade, winning 9 out of 12. Then they drop a tough one against the Nuggets, then procceded to drop 5 out of 6 before their win last night against the Hawks.

More likely though, the Suns are just a bad/incohesive team. Our bench is appalling bad and are frequently all double digit negatives in the +/- column. Our starters get off to a 5-10 pt lead, our subs go in, and it's a 5-10 pt deficit when the starters come back in. Our starters claw and fight to get back to even or better and our bench just coughes it all up again later. Rinse and repeat. Just check out the lines from our NYK and ATL games. This puts a huge burden on our already aging stars. The trade deadline is in less than a month (Feb. 19th). If the management won't/can't trade Amare, then I really hope they'll pay the vet min. for some waived vets in a month. Usually, a handful of expiring vets are waived after the trade deadline if their teams couldn't make a move and don't plan to play them for the rest of the season. This is usually done as a courtesy since those now literally unmovable and going to expire anyways and this gives the vets a chance to sign on with a new team.

Two years ago, the Suns picked up Tim Thomas this way and he played a HUGE role for them in the playoffs. Last year they got Giricek, which sadly, didn't do much at all. Just browsing for seldom used expirings... this year, some possible names include: Stephon Marbury, Malik Rose, Tyrone Lue, Damon Jones, Stromile Swift, Donyell Marshall, and Theo Ratliff. Not exactly an awesome crop, but maybe Marbury or Lue could be picked up to play some backup minutes for Nash.

Anyhoo, that's enough rambling about the Suns.

Here's a funny from the NBA store. So, if you didn't know... the Bulls and Knicks all wear special green jerseys for St. Patty's day, while the Celtics wear their regular greens with gold lettering. See here:

Well, if creating (and selling) a whole new jersey to just 3 of the largest markets in the U.S. wasn't enough for the greedy opportunists at the NBA... here comes possibly the WORST marketing idea I've ever seen (in the NBA at least)...