Why is amare stoudemire not playing

The deal is contingent on Stoudemire not receiving a contract offer from an NBA team, but it's difficult to imagine the six-time All-Star heading back stateside now that he's 35 years old and more than two years removed from his last appearance in the league. The veteran center, who is expected to play in the BIG3 league this summer, has an ownership stake in Hapoel Jerusalem and helped lead the club to an Israeli League championship in his lone season with the team in Rotowire Jan 22, See More See Less.

Stoudemire is no stranger to the Holy Land—nor the more than 10 hours of travel it takes to get there. In March , he added Israeli citizenship and he says he went through a conversion seven or eight years ago. But as his recent arrival indicates, Stoudemire is very much an active player. Stoudemire, whose Hebrew name is Jehoshaphat, joins a club in the top five of the EuroLeague table, one that has NBA scouts at seemingly every game.

His body is allowing him to keep going. But after just two months and 11 games, he returned to Florida. Asked about Stoudemire's remarks, Woodson said, "I'm not going there with you guys. I think Mike D'Antoni is a great coach.

He does a number of wonderful things on both ends of the floor. Amar'e is entitled to his opinion but I think every coach in this league is a great coach.

It's not an easy job by no means. One day, Stoudemire will actually accept responsibility for his shortcomings and not knowing the new defensive sets. Not Wednesday. On its face, that seems like a reasonable if tabloid-vitriol-heavy response to the notion that a grown man who has played at the upper echelons of NBA basketball for more then a decade has never received any instruction on how to play defense, especially considering he played as a rookie under Frank Johnson for a team that finished 11th among 29 NBA teams in defensive efficiency, according to Basketball-Reference.

Plus, as we've noted before , for all the derision of his defensive acumen as a pace-pushing, offensive-minded coach, the Phoenix teams that D'Antoni coached and on which Stoudemire played routinely ranked around the middle of the NBA pack; it's not like they were eternally bereft on that end or that nobody there, D'Antoni or his assistants included, knew anything about defense, Stoudemire's own well-documented shortcomings aside. That said: As noted by Seth Rosenthal of Knicks blog Posting and Toasting , Amar'e just kind of seems to say things, like how he uses the adjective "phenomenal" a handful of times in every interview, or how he described his rehab stint as directed toward returning him to his "dominant self.

It's possible that he was just thinking that a really good way to emphasize how detail-oriented Woodson is in practices, and specifically when it comes to defensive assignments and positioning, would be to say that it is nice to have a defensive-minded coach, and that he forgot to mention that of course at some point over the last plus years someone has suggested that he has to see both the ball and his man because that is something everyone should endeavor to do in a basketball setting, perhaps because his thoughts were bifurcated by something, like maybe the fact that his wife is pregnant , or that someone had a really rad shirt on.

You never know with Amar'e, is the point. What you do know, unfortunately for Knicks fans, is that irrespective of whether anyone has ever taught Amar'e how to play defense — and again, someone at some point totally has — the Knicks themselves have been a bad defensive team for the better part of two months now. They've allowed The issue, specifically, as ESPN. Weirdly enough, the Knicks — according to Woodson , at least — really miss reserve big man Rasheed Wallace, who's been out for the past nine games with a foot injury.

They've lost five of those nine, giving up more than points in each defeat. He was never a true threat from downtown, and he never shot more than 0. However, he shot as high as Historically, guys who struggled with injury when they were younger do not typically fare well as they age, and without any NBA action for nearly three years, one might wonder if he would quickly break down under the grind of a regular season.

Both international and Big 3 play are more spread out than NBA basketball, so the adjustment could be grueling for Stoudemire. Some of them were contenders, while others were likely lottery teams.