Former Suns star Amar’e Stoudemire reveals why he left Phoenix

Stoudemire on how Sarver drove him to leaving the Suns:

“For me I was trying to re-sign with Phoenix. We had just been to the conference finals and lost on a buzzer beater…I go into negotiations with Robert Sarver, the owner of the Phoenix Suns at the time and I’m like alright I’m leading the team in scoring, rebounding, block shots, deflections.

“He’s like ‘oh we gotta do some kind of reconstructed contract where if you gotta play 72 games if not you lose 20 percent of your contract,’ something crazy like that…There was too much grey area, and I’m like let’s not mess around with this.”

Stoudemire was coming off a season playing all 82 games, and had played 79+ games in two of previous three seasons beforehand. The former Rookie of the Year did have injuries throughout his time in Phoenix but had warranted the benefit of the doubt with his stellar play on the court.

Sarver had the reputation on being stingy when it came out to handing out money to the franchise’s star players. So when the team’s leading scorer, rebounder and shot blocker came to get his pay day, Sarver wanted to set measurements to try and avoid paying the full amount.

In his first season with the Knicks, Stoudemire played 78 games averaging 25.3 points, 8.2 rebounds and 1.9 blocks. Despite the stellar numbers, Sarver was right to worry about Stoudemire’s injury history, as he only played over 60 games in a season once for the rest of his career.

Regardless of hindsight, losing Stoudemire set the Suns back years and luckily, with new ownership, the franchise and the Valley were able to honor his time with the team by inducting the 42-year-old in the Ring of Honor on March 2nd, 2024.