Which Teams Should Bid on Amar'e Stoudemire?

After last week's report out of Phoenix that Amar'e Stoudemire and Suns management would be talking extension with a potential midseason trade as the safety net, the inevitable has happened: reports that Stoudemire's camp and the only franchise he's played for are not close in negotiations. As such, reports Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Suns will be listening to bidders for Amar'e a bit more intently as we edge closer to the February 19 trade deadline.

Woj reports the Bulls, Heat, Nets and Sixers have approached Phoenix. The Arizona Republic's Paul Coro reported Sunday the Warriors and Cavaliers have also bid for Amar'e. All these clubs make sense ... but so do a few others.

Bobcats. Charlotte looks like a perfect match for Amar'e in a couple different ways. The team has a bit of a hole at power forward (former Sun Boris Diaw mans the position now), and has a huge, gaping hole on offense, where the team ranks 26th. But with Gerald Wallace, Stephen Jackson and Nazr Mohammed featured heavily, the team has the league's best defense ... which should serve to cover Stoudemire's deficiencies. The Bobcats don't have much to offer via trade -- Gerald Henderson, Diaw (a starting-level replacement for Amar'e at half the price), the expiring contract of Acie Law and a future first-round pick would be about the best reasonable package Charlotte could offer in a two-team deal.

Thunder. Oklahoma City could very well bid for Stoudemire this summer, but gaining home-court advantage by trading for him now could prove beneficial if teams like the Knicks and Nets press for him come July. (There's also the possibility Amar'e agrees to a cheaper extension now than he'd get this summer.) The interest in Amar'e would come from the completely single-faceted offense Oklahoma City has. Among all rotation players, two score at efficiency levels above league average: megalith Kevin Durant and back-up big man Nick Collison. That means that no matter how electric Durantula has been, the Thunder still boast only the No. 20 offense in the league.

Amar'e would help that, not by taking possessions away from Durant, but by lessening the load on Russell Westbrook (who uses about 17 shooting possessions a game, getting 16 points out of them -- awful) and Jeff Green (14 points in 14 possessions). OKC also represents one of the few teams in the league in which Amar'e would be a rebounding upgrade ... at center! (Nenad Krstic, you have been dismissed.) The Thunder have a bounty of assets ... including Phoenix's unrestricted first round pick for this June's draft.

Kings. Sacramento considered trading for Amar'e last February, ultimately deciding the price (Jason Thompson and the Kings' first-round pick) was too high. That decision has been proven correct, as there's no chance in Hades the Kings would give up Tyreke Evans for anyone on the Phoenix roster. Thompson, however, would likely be available in an Amar'e deal ... as would Kevin Martin, potentially. Alvin Gentry recently moved incumbent starting two-guard Jason Richardson to the bench, but surgery for Leandro Barbosa has left the team with a hole there. Plugging in Martin at the expense of Amar'e could lead to Martin catching up with the big names in the scoring title race.

Sacramento's roster isn't quite unbalanced -- losing Martin would leave a pretty ugly hole at shooting guard, assuming Evans sticks at the point, given that the Kings started a rotation of small forwards and Beno Udrih at the two during Martin's injury. But a big man is desperately need, and Amar'e, while not a good defensive player, isn't as bad as some of the bigs on the Kings roster. I'm not sure the Kings would relinguish both Martin and Thompson, but Phoenix would obviously need a replacement at power forward. Sacramento could be content to wait for the summer, to see what shakes out.