Robert Sarver and the Suns

With Amare Stoudemire being shopped to seemingly every team in the league, I think it is time to look at the path the franchise has taken since Robert Sarver took control of the franchise as majority owner of the Phoenix Suns. His first season as owner coincided with the beginning of the "Seven Seconds or Less Era" and was a great success. They won 62 games and made the Western Conference finals and likely would have won that series as well had Joe Johnson had broken his face in the previous round. While I won't go into the minutiae of the personnel moves of the Suns over the next couple of seasons (the Sports Guy did a pretty thorough job on this) I think that a couple of events that happened during this season are similar to the events that are undermining the Sun's season today.

Joe Johnson asks the Suns not to match his offer sheet with the Hawks

When Joe Johnson asked to leave because he wanted to be "the man" instead of be a vital part of a winning team it was odd. Then it came out that Shawn Marion was unhappy due to not getting enough credit for his role in the Suns success and was deemed a locker room cancer. Now Amare wants to go someplace where he won't be in the shadow of Steve Nash and Shaq, a place where he can be "the man". This seems like a classic case of "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me." Whatever the issues were with Joe Johnson wanting to leave, they weren't addressed in order to keep Marion and Amare happy. It seems the only star to be happy in Phoenix during the Suns recent history has been Steve Nash. A large part of this is that he was given wide latitude to do basically whatever he wanted on the court and the media universally praised him. Why wasn't Phoenix able to share more fully the accolades that come from winning? Who knows.

Suns sell their draft picks for cash
The cheapest players in the NBA relative to production are players on their rookie contracts. The draft also represents the easiest way to fix the weaknesses of your team. One of the biggest weaknesses of the Suns was that they got nothing out of their bench (particularly in the playoffs) and their style of play broke down when Steve Nash went to the bench. It would seem that the easiest way to find a backup to Nash would be through the draft. A rookie point guard could spell Nash for 15-20 minutes in the regular season to keep Nash fresh and be grooming to take the reigns from Nash. Instead of trying to find such a player the Suns took odd stance of selling their picks for financial reasons. This obviously isn't a sustainable method of running a team and the Suns are reaping the fruits of this right now.

How does all of this affect Robert Sarver? As he is the guy who signs the checks he is the one who ordered his new GM (and good friend) Steve Kerr to get the Suns under the luxury tax and it ended up costing an additional 2 first round draft picks. With the Arizona Cardinals almost winning the Super Bowl this year, perhaps Bill Bidwell and family have been replace as the least competent owner in Phoenix. Due to his unwillingness to pay the luxury tax Sarver robbed his team of any semblance of depth (before backtracking and taking on Shaq's huge contract) and none of his star players not named Steve Nash has been happy. I don't think that Sarver's dream of owning an NBA team included this.