King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Suns, Mavs eliminated: Two Western Conference blockbuster trades go bust, one to go. Plus: Where'd the wild West go? And: NHL.

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April 30, 2008 | Shaquille O'Neal to the Phoenix Suns and Jason Kidd to the Dallas Mavericks. Two blockbuster answer trades after the Los Angeles Lakers shook up the Western Conference by dealing for Pau Gasol. Two failures. Both teams drummed out in five games on the same night.

The Suns got bounced by the San Antonio Spurs for the third time in four years, the Spurs holding off a late rally to win Game 5 Monday at home, 92-87.

The Mavericks were embarrassed in the first round last year as the No. 1 seed by the Golden State Warriors. This time around they went quietly as the No. 7, simply losing to a superior team. The Hornets never trailed in Game 5 and led big for most of the night before Dallas got close late, ultimately falling 99-94.

The Suns got more quality minutes from O'Neal than they had any right to expect, but they never successfully transformed from a highflying offensive team to a slower one built around Shaq's low-post game. They went 37-16 before O'Neal arrived, 17-11 when he was in the lineup. Not that that mattered. Shaq wasn't brought in to win regular-season games. He was brought in to match up with Tim Duncan in a playoff series against the Spurs.

But what the Suns lost in the trade -- Shawn Marion's all-around game, space for Steve Nash to work his improvisational magic and the ability to overwhelm opponents with tempo -- was greater than what they gained.

It had become clear that up-tempo formula wasn't going to get them past San Antonio, and it was at least likely that it wasn't going to get them past the upgraded Lakers, so they took a shot. It most decidedly didn't work, and now they're stuck with two more years of a fading Shaq owed $20 million per while Nash, 34, likely enters his decline phase.

In the past three years the Suns have been eliminated in the conference finals, conference semifinals and conference quarterfinals, in that order. Detect a pattern there? Me neither, but it looks like things are likely to go down before they go back up.

There's some chatter that coach Mike D'Antoni could be on his way out. It's unclear whether he or general manager Steve Kerr was the one who wanted to make the Shaq trade, but either way, Kerr didn't hire D'Antoni, and you tell me if this post-game comment by Nash sounds like the star player throwing the coach to the wolves, which it sounded like to me:

"I think on paper we have more talent than they [the Spurs] do, but I think their experience, their commitment and understanding of what they're trying to do is greater than ours. And their ability to play together and make small plays on both ends of the floor, do the little things, is unsurpassed. That's why I think a team like them has won as many championships as they have."

In other words: Boy, they're really well coached. Unlike us.

Next page: Mavs window is closing too. Plus: Where'd the wild West go? And: NHL playoffs