Aldridge's game is more complementary of Oden's than Stoudemire's game is.
How so? I don't think that there's anything that Aldridge can do that Amare can't. People seem to think of Amare as a great low post scorer -- and he has that ability -- but he also stretches the floor. For instance, Amare is shooting an eFG% of 44.6% on jump shots this season, while Aldridge is shooting 42.0%; more than 50% of the shots for each player are jumpers.
True. However, Amare stopped playing (let's not pretend he merely complained about the situation, like Nash did), because he didn't want to play at a slower pace (a change that indeed hurts him). Why will he be happy playing alongside Oden?
Huh? D'Antoni's teams in Phoenix were better defensively than this Portland team is or was. Even the current version of the Suns is a better defensive squad than the Blazers. Following your logic, Stoudemire will become an even worse defender. I guess the Blazers are disciplined, but so were the Suns, they just missed the skills. That's Amare's problem: he lacks the ability to defend. I surely doubt it can be acquired by osmosis, I've never seen such a case.
People said the same about Ray Allen and Paul Pierce two years ago.
Yeps, but people who said that were clueless. Pierce and Allen were never bad defenders the way Stoudemire is. Even if they were, the fact still remains: the Suns were/are better defensive squads than the Blazers.
Well, no room for discussion, huh?
Then let me ask you, do you think this trade makes sense for Portland?
Heh... there's certainly room to discussion. The way I see it, Pierce and Allen were never truly bad defenders. They were very good (PP) or solid (RA) when they actually could afford to not care about saving forces because they needed to carry the offensive load. Stoudemire, OTOH, is consistently bad. He just lacks the awareness to defend some game situations, he doesn't react quick enough.
Amare's problem, in my view, is that he's an extremely good scorer, one of the bests in the game - especially if he has good guard play, but he's not very good on anything else. Somewhat of an one-dimentional player. I still don't dislike this for Portland, as I also see plenty of flaws on LMA and Bayless games.