When Amar'e Stoudemire made his 2012-13 season debut with the New York Knicks in the team's New Year's Day loss to the Portland Trail Blazers, he didn't exactly look great on defense. This is not surprising; as NBA.com's John Schuhmann (among others) noted, defensive breakdowns have been the rule rather than the exception throughout Stoudemire's NBA career. For all his scoring talents and athletic ability, even at the pre-injury peak of his powers with the Phoenix Suns, Stoudemire has just never been an aware or adept defender, much to the consternation of the fans of the teams for which he has played. Luckily, there is a very simple explanation for Stoudemire's defensive woes — just teach him how to play defense, dummy! ( For your health. ) You see, according to the man himself, as detailed by Al Iannazzone of Newsday , nobody's ever taken the time to do so: "Just having a defensive coach for the first time in my career is going to help," Stoudemire said. "I've never been taught defense in my whole career. To now have a coach that actually teaches defense and teaches strategies and knows positioning and posture and how to guard different plays is going to be helpful. I'm going to take it as a challenge, accept the challenge and try to improve as a player." OK, sounds great. Thanks, Amar'e! Except — and you're not going to BELIEVE this — the spiteful New York media has decided, for some odd reason, that a 30-year-old player in his 11th NBA season shouldn't be blaming coaches (and, specifically, the offense-first coach for whom he has played the bulk of his career) for his defensive shortcomings. From Marc Berman of the New York Post :
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