I hate to interupt the discussion of Italian beauty and food but here is some investigate info:
It is at present heresay from Joe Spursfan, photo to follow...
I just got off the phone with a college friend of mine who works for a station in Phoenix. (He loves Nash, but he says D'Antoni is a crybaby and he really hates him.) He says that there is another camera angle of the incident that tells the story a little differently. (Actually, he said that it makes Stoudamire look like a whiny, lying bitch.) He also said that D'Antoni and the Suns are trying hard to back off of this thing and let it go away quietly now.
My friend said that someone on the Suns' staff was looking at a replay and saw what he thought was a kick. He told D'Antoni and Stoudamire, and they got their panties in a wad before getting all the facts. Suddenly Amare "remembered" getting kicked in the Achilles, and got in front of a reporter with the story. When D'Antoni was first asked about it, he was pretty vocal. But not long afterward, he heard that there might be a problem with their information, and suddenly he said that he didn't think it was a big deal - the league would probably review the film and whatever they decide will be fine.
From the other camera angle, what happened is this: Stoudamire was on the way up, and the very end of the heel of his (Stoudamire's) shoe hit the sole of Bowen's shoe, near the toe. He said that Amare's toes were pointed straight down because he had just lifted off, so his heel was coming straight up. Bowen's foot was coming down (not forward, as in a kick) at that point, and it was the edge of Amare's shoe-heel that hit the bottom of Bowen's shoe. Nothing ever touched Stoudamire's Achilles tendon, and the contact was nothing more than a light brush anyway. (I am doing my best to write this down quickly, while it is fresh in my mind.)
Someone asked Amare why, if it was such an obvious kick, he didn't react during the game. Stoudamire said that he didn't want to risk getting a technical, or getting ejected from the game. But earlier he had said that he wasn't upset about anything until after he looked at the replay. But the first thing my friend asked was, "If he wasn't upset, why would there have been any thought of getting a tech?" Nobody has ever accused Amare Stoudamire of being smart, and he apparently failed to notice that his stories don't add up.
The one other thing he told me was that it is very clear what happened from looking at the game film. Stoudamire came down awkwardly, on his left foot, after making the dunk. He said that Amare later claimed that the reason he came down awkwardly is because of the kick. (Another variation of the story.) But he said that if you look at the video from the other angle, I am told, it is clear that it was a light brush, and that Stoudamire's foot wasn't deflected at all. There is no way that it could have caused him to come down awkwardly. His body was too far under the basked by the time he got the ball to the rim, and making the dunk threw him off balance.
The word is that Stoudamire has been instructed not to say another word to the press about the incident. They are going to claim that the league will handle it as they see fit. But the truth is they want it to go away now. And that also fits. You know Mike D'Antoni would never quit whining about something like this, if there were really anything to it. Hell, he's still whining about things that happened years ago. I knew that he was a sniveling *****...I just didn't know Stoudamire was.
