Phoenix Suns Blog [Category - Adam Beechen]

Appreciating the Under-Appreciated

Fri, 05 Sep 08 21:15:00 UT

I’m still giddy over the Suns signing the perpetually under-appreciated Matt Barnes. And while he hasn’t been around long enough to be considered perpetually under-appreciated, something tells me Louis Amundson is going to be looked on as an under-appreciated pickup before it’s all over.

All of this, naturally, has gotten this Suns history geek thinking about who I think are the most under-appreciated players in the franchise’s history.

Curtis Perry: True, he’s a legend among longtime Suns fans for simply being a part of the fabled 1975-76 team that stretched the Celtics to six games in the NBA Finals. But I contend that Curtis was the most under-appreciated of any key player on that roster. Think about it: Everyone had a signature aspect or moment but CP. Alvan Adams was the Rookie of the Year. Paul Westphal was the budding superstar guard. Ricky Sobers was the gritty, brawling, rookie, replacement point guard. Dick Van Arsdale was the veteran personification of stability. Keith Erickson doomed the heavily-favored Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference Finals. Gar Heard hit the Heard Shot ‘Round the World, of course. And Dennis Awtrey had the perm. But Curtis was a rock at power forward all season long, averaging thirteen points and ten rebounds. And he was a mentor to younger players (and to me: One summer, when I was attending then-Coach JohnMacLeod’s basketball camp, we were doing a simple rebounding drill, and I managed to throw the ball over the backboard. Curtis patted me on the head and said, “You’ll play guard.”). He had his best years as a Sun, and was even named the team’s most outstanding player for the 1974-75 season.

Alvin Scott: His stats never overwhelmed you, to say the least, with career averages of about five points and three rebounds per game. But this forward was a seventh round draft pick out of a teeny-tiny school (Oral Roberts University) who went on to play for eight years in the NBA. And what’s more, he was a rotation player for the Suns for all of those years. MacLeod never had any trouble throwing Scott into a game under any circumstances. He was the definition of a role player, doing whatever dirty work was needed – rebounding, playing defense (the man could guard four positions), and running the floor. As a side note, he was entertaining for years on the break, as you never knew exactly where his dunk attempts were going to land – in the hoop, or somewhere on McDowell outside the old Coliseum, bouncing toward Grand Avenue. Plus, he wore these socks that made his legs look nine feet long.

Eddie Johnson: In the Suns’ magical late-1980s revival, EJ has become the Forgotten Man when compared with more famous names, like Tom Chambers (about whom more later) and Kevin Johnson. But what people forget is that the whole revival thing started with Eddie. He got to Phoenix before TC and KJ, and helped make it the popular free-agent destination it is today. Further, Eddie went on to be the first Sun to win the Sixth Man of the Year award, for the 1988-89 season, and that was in an era of pretty good Sixth Men, like Ricky Pierce and Detlef Schrempf (And here’s some trivia for you: Did you know the Suns are the only franchise to have four different players with the award? In addition to EJ, Danny Manning, Rodney Rogers and Leandro Barbosa have all taken home the trophy). Teams couldn’t rest when the Suns’ second unit took the floor, and that’s because of Eddie Johnson.

Tom Chambers: "Hold on, Beechen," I hear you cry ("Just a second," I shout back, "I’m finishing lunch! Okay, all done."). "How can a guy who’s in the team’s Ring of Honor be under-appreciated?!" And it's a fair point. The guy was second-team All-NBA twice and made four All-Star teams as a Sun. Overcoming an early-career label as selfish and teaming with Kevin Johnson, he formed half of one of the greatest pick and roll teams in league history. Tom blazed a trail for unrestricted free agents coming to the Suns, and there’s no question that, without him, that gigantic late-80s turnaround would not have happened. But consider this: In 1992-93, while TC was still an extremely productive player, the Suns acquired force of nature Charles Barkley – to play Chambers’ position. And Chambers fell almost completely off Suns fans’ radar after that. But, coming off the bench to spell Barkley and occasionally augment him at the unfamiliar position of center, Tom accepted his reserve role beautifully and became a key sub on the second Suns team to reach the NBA Finals. It can be argued that, without Chambers providing bench strength, the Suns wouldn’t have made the Finals at all. And this from a guy who was supposed to be considered selfish? This superstar’s graceful acceptance of his changed role alone qualifies him, in my eyes, as All-Under-Appreciated.

So there’s my list. Guys, if you’re out there, please know that you are, indeed, Appreciated for what you did for the Suns.

Fans, who else should we add to this list?

Why I Dig Sean Singletary

Tue, 26 Aug 08 22:30:00 UT

The Suns acquired rookie point guard Sean Singletary from the Rockets in a trade for D.J. Strawberry. Here’s why I like the addition, reasons listed alphabetically:

Sean Singletary played summer ball for the Kings before going to the Rockets in a trade, but he hopes to find a home in Phoenix.
(NBAE Photos)

A – as in Assists. Sean’s a true point guard, raised in a city known for their great point guards, Philadelphia. He’s been running offenses since he picked up a basketball. He knows how to find guys on the court, and he’s not scared of going to the basket, taking punishment, and dishing off. For all his many gifts, D.J. just wasn’t going to become a real point guard. Now the Suns have real depth at the position, which will come in handy as Goran Dragic learns the NBA way. Yes, Singletary is unproven in the league as well, but he’s played against NBA talent during college and in the off-seasons – and done well.

B – as in Best, as in Singletary played in the best college basketball conference in the country, the ACC (so did D.J., by the way). He ran his team against Duke and North Carolina four times a year. He knows pressure atmospheres and hostile crowds – it doesn’t get any rougher than playing on those teams’ home floors…in college or in the pros.

C – as in Courage. Singletary is not a big guy – he’s six feet tall. But he’ll throw his body into the paint and go chest-to-chest on defense. Whatever it takes. He doesn’t use his size as an excuse…Instead, he maximizes his quickness.

D – stands for both Defense and Distribution. Sean knows he’s not in Phoenix to score points. In fact, being a point guard, he’s probably salivating at all the weapons he’ll have a chance to feed. I myself am having giddy visions of Singletary-to-Barnes alley-oops off the break. But when Singletary improves his field-goal percentage, and he has quite a bit already, he’ll be that much more dangerous a weapon. In the meantime, he’ll content himself to be a pest on D, troubling opponents’ bench PGs and generating turnovers to lead to those drool-worthy alley-oops.

E – Energy, energy, energy. The Suns’ bench is now complete, and their second unit should provide the electricity the Suns need to maintain their position when Nash, Shaq, STAT and the gang take their breaks. It’s a crew of young, hungry, smart guys who know their roles…exactly what you want a bench to be.

F – Finance. Swapping D.J. for Sean doesn’t save the Suns a ton of money, but it does save them some, and that’s important, and they got a player of equal or better quality in return.

Is Sean Singletary going to see a ton of minutes? No. Is he going to learn a ton and be ready to contribute if and when he’s needed? You bet. Are the Suns going to be happy they did this deal? I definitely think so. And I think Suns fans will be happy also.

* * *
A final note: Condolences to Suns Coach Terry Porter, Blazer fans and NBA fans in general on the loss of former Blazers center Kevin Duckworth. He gave the Suns a lot of grief in the years of the great Suns-Blazers rivalry, with his unorthodox shot and ability to pull our big men out of the lane. He was a perfect fit for the Blazer team, and by all accounts, a really nice guy.

The Doggiest of Dog Days

Tue, 05 Aug 08 23:00:00 UT

Is it basketball season yet?

Shouldn’t baseball be over by now? I’m tired of pennant races that don’t involve actual pennants. I’m bored with hearing about the Yankees and the Red Sox as if they were the US and Russia during the Cold War and not a single other team – or country – matters. I’m sick of the speculation over whether this will finally be the year the Cubs win a World Series…Long streaks of championship futility only matter to me if we’re talking about the Suns finally bringing home the big trophy. I’m exhausted by trade deadlines and endless commentary over whether or not the acquisition of this middle reliever/fifth inning specialist will make the difference for Houston, trying to climb from fourth place to third, or whatever.

Isn’t it time to wrap up football as well? I say a final decision on whatever it is Brett Favre is going through should just be declared the Super Bowl for the year, the winner is either Favre or the Packers, and we all just forget the season and move right along. Honestly, I haven’t seen this many people so excited over the start of camp since my classmates hit the last day of school in fifth grade.

Can we cancel the college football season before it begins? I really don’t need a month of debates over preseason polls and rankings. Not a game has been played and people are already feeling disrespected over where they’re ranked? And it’s national sports news for four weeks? We all know it’s going to come down to USC versus Ohio State versus Georgia versus Florida versus Oklahoma versus LSU, so really, is there any point to playing the games? Instead of preseason rankings, let’s just start with the postseason rankings, and pretend the season never really happened at all. Let them fight over that, since that matters marginally more.

Maybe we might forget about golf for the rest of the year? Tiger Woods isn’t playing, so is there anyone out there who’s still interested? Is there anyone out there who can name the champion of golf’s most recent major tournament? Hint: His name is Padraig Harrington. See what I mean? Let’s declare golf over and move on.

Tennis? Please.

The Olympics? Okay, fine, but how many sports do you really watch? Are you going to be up at 3:15 in the morning to watch the live broadcast of the dressage event?

You are? Oh. I’m sorry. Never mind.

Yeah, there’ll be basketball in Beijing, but not real, important basketball. More like the tortilla chips before your chimichanga arrives. Enough to satisfy you at the time, but it’s just not a meal, and sometimes you walk away from the whole meal not feeling so good (Bronze medal in 2004, anyone?).

NASCAR? Apologies to all you vroom-vroom fans out there, but I’m from the school that says turning left is not a sport. It’s just not for me.

Someone told me there’s a presidential election race going on, and that it’s been kind of interesting to watch, but I haven’t heard anything about it. If they’re not shooting jumpers, I just don’t pay attention. Actually, if presidential races were decided by a series of one-on-one games (or two-on-two, if you wanted to include the Vice Presidential candidates), I’d be a whole lot more interested – I think “Can you jam on a regulation hoop?” should be a perfectly valid debate question.

Here’s what I’m ready for: Shaq camping in the lane. Amare facing up for a fifteen-footer, or pump-faking and blowing by for a tomahawk slam. Nash throwing a three-quarter-court strike to Grant Hill leaking out on the break for an easy layup. Raja spotting up in the corner to drain a trey. LB slicing through the paint and finding the bottom of the net before anyone even knows he’s there. Boris in the high post with shoot, drive and pass options and a nervous defender wondering which way he’s going to go. Matt Barnes stripping Shawn Marion of the ball on the Matrix’s first return to the Valley (hee hee!). Robin Lopez swatting an opponent’s hook shot right into the waiting arms of D.J. Strawberry. Alando Tucker pulling up on the break for a feather-soft bank shot. Terry Porter directing the troops, diagramming plays in the time-out huddle.

Phew! Just typing that last paragraph got me more excited about sports than I’ve been since April.

For the love of Connie Hawkins, is it basketball season yet?!

Welcome, Matt!

Wed, 23 Jul 08 20:00:00 UT

Suddenly, I’m excited again!

When last season ended with that loss to San Antonio, and Mike D’Antoni departed for Gotham, it was hard to be optimistic.

It's mutual: Matt Barnes and Adam Beechen are both excited Barnes is in Phoenix.

All the talk was about the Suns’ aging core, the “failure” of the trade for Shaquille O’Neal, and the futility of the run-and-gun system in the playoffs. Sourpusses (like me) predicted a downturn in fortune and some years of rebuilding. After all, how much could the team change?

Well.

Step One, hire Terry Porter as Head Coach. A pro’s pro as a player, he’s got the respect of everyone on the team. Heck, after all the times he tortured the Suns in the playoffs as a member of the Portland Trailblazers, I certainly respect him. He knows defense, he knows offense. He can teach. And he’s committed to playing a deep rotation.

Step Two, retain Alvin Gentry and bring in Dan Majerle, Bill Cartwright and Igor Kokoskov as assistant coaches. Gentry knows the Suns’ holdovers well, and is a fixture in the organization. Majerle is a tie to the Suns’ proud history, and can give seminars in toughness, hustle and defense. Cartwright is the big man instructor the Suns have searched for since Marc Iavaroni left for Memphis, and will join Shaq in “Project Amare,” as well as the new “Project Lopez.” Kokoskov is a Porter confidant from their days in Detroit, and an expert in the ever-more-important international game.

Step Three, draft Robin Lopez. Of the Suns’ most pressing needs after last season was quality depth up front. Shaq stayed remarkably healthy in his partial season with the team, but while he remains one of the more effective centers in the league, even he isn’t able to turn back the hands of time. When he goes to the bench, the Suns have to be able to count on the man coming in to defend the rim, body up the opponents’ strongest inside threat, and even keep them honest on the offensive end. I knew Lopez could do the first two, but after watching a few Summer League games, and seeing Lopez toss in a few of those awkward-but-effective hook shots across the lane, I felt a lot better about the third. Plus, he’s a dynamo who never takes a play off. He’ll be a glue guy who actually contributes.

Step Four, commit to Alando Tucker and DJ Strawberry. With Coach Porter’s stated mission to give playing time to more players, these guys are ticketed for bigger roles. And after watching them in the Summer League, I’m ready to see them take those roles on. Tucker can flat fill it up, reminding me of his fellow Wisconsin alum, Michael Finley. And Starwberry can punish smaller defenders.

Step Five, bring in an athletic wing. And here’s where the Suns really surprised me, landing one of my favorite unsung players in the league, Matt Barnes from Golden State. He never got a lot of ink (except all over his body – check those tats!), but it seemed like every time I checked a box score and Barnes got meaningful playing time, he was racking up a double-double. He’s pure energy in high-tops, delighting in crashing the boards, buckling down and playing defense, and surprising you with his shooting touch. He’s got elements in his game that remind me of a couple former Suns, Cedric Ceballos and Shawn Marion.

With a veteran backup point guard likely to be added (I, for one, am rooting for the Suns to give Shaun Livingston a shot, if he doesn’t get a better offer somewhere else), the Suns are looking at the following lineup as of today: O’Neal, Stoudemire, Hill, Bell and Nash. Not the most spry of starting fives, but smart and talented, and they’ll be undeniably effective. And now, check out the bench: a seasoned Strawberry and Tucker, hyperactive Barnes, even more hyperactive Lopez…oh yeah, and a couple of guys named Barbosa and Diaw, who happen to be pretty good.

I can’t remember the Suns being this deep in a long, long time. So, here’s my new outlook and prediction: The Suns’ veterans, dismayed at how they went out last season, use their experience and pride to rally to a 2008-2009 better than anyone forecasted, actually playing defense along the way and, buttressed by their young, versatile bench, run far deeper into the postseason than anyone expected. Health permitting, I could really see it happening. And the best part of it all is that the Suns actually seem to have been building for the future while assembling this team – STAT, Barbosa, Diaw, Tucker, Strawberry and Barnes are all relatively young and could be around for a while.

My turnaround from post-playoff depression is complete. When does training camp start?

Beechen Draft Night Diary

Fri, 27 Jun 08 06:00:00 UT

It’s finally here. Draft night for the NBA, 2008. As you all know, I declared myself eligible for the draft weeks ago, hoping to be selected by the Suns.

I searched (unsuccessfully) for an agent, went to pre-draft camp (and all I got was a t-shirt), and worked out privately for the Suns’ brass. And now we’ll see if all the hard work and preparation will be worth it. Herewith, my draft night diary, so you can share in all the joy, tears and anticipation of my bright athletic future.

All times Pacific.

2:30 PM: The first thing you have to do, if you’re an NBA draft prospect and you expected to be selected, is make sure you’re wearing your finest, flashiest suit. You want to announce to the world, here I am, ready to ruin your retinas and proud of it! Remember Joakim Noah’s duds last year? I found them a bit restrained. So I go to my local clothier (I won’t give them free promotion, but let’s just say their name rhymes with “Shmoss Dress For Less”) and head for the suit department. I ask the experienced salesperson on duty (he’s been working there since high school got out a few weeks ago) for his finest, single-breasted, purple and orange ensemble. “I’m going to be drafted by the Suns,” I tell him proudly. Not surprisingly, they have just such a suit. Unfortunately, it’s wool, and it’s eighty degrees in Los Angeles today. Double-unfortunately, the words “Harvey’s Singing Telegrams” are stitched across the back of the jacket. But the suit calls to me like…like…like a suit that’s calling to me. I plunk down my $19.99 and head into the sunshine. I’m sweating before I get to the car.

3:00 PM: Not having been invited to the NBA draft itself in New York (I’m assuming the NBA wants to cut down on plane tickets with the ongoing fuel crisis and I support that), I’ve planned a massive draft party at my apartment, so I need supplies. I head for the nearest store for fine food and drink (I won’t give them free promotion, but their name rhymes with “Shmeven-Eleven”). In honor of the Suns’ old home, I buy fifty-three cans of those potato chips that resemble the roof of Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum (the chips rhyme with “Shmingles”) and, because I’m a gracious host and I want to make sure my guests have something they can enjoy, too, I get a can of Shmingles that are sour-cream-and-onion flavored. Good news: Since putting on the new suit, I seem to have lost four pounds.

3:30 PM: Home at last. I make sure that all of the phones I have installed (thirteen separate lines) are working. I check to make sure my Internet connection is sound, in case lightning strikes all the cell towers in America and my new phones cease functioning. I leave my mailbox open. I position a crystal ball on my coffee table in case none of the above methods of communication work and the Suns try to contact me via the spirit realm. I am not missing this call!

4:30 PM: The draft has started, but none of my guests have arrived. I chalk that up to LA traffic. I see the Bulls have selected Derrick Rose. Good pick, and I’m relieved. I can cross off the list one team that might have drafted me ahead of the Suns. Good thing I kind of dogged it in workouts so I could slip down the draft boards a little (don’t tell the Bulls).

5:14 PM: I see former Suns Coach Mike D’Antoni has drafted Danilo Gallinari for his new team, the New York Knicks. I’m happy for him. Not only do I think Gallinari will be a pretty good player, he’ll give Coach Mike someone to talk to in Italian when the New York press gets critical.

5:17 PM: The Clippers just made their pick at number 7, and it wasn’t me. I’m almost halfway home to the Suns at number 15, baby! Hey, is it warm in here, or is it me?

5:18 PM: I’m out of Shmingles.

5:47 PM: Jason Thompson goes to the Kings. Two more picks, then I’m expecting a phone to ring. Meanwhile, none of my guests have arrived. Maybe they’re planning a surprise ambush for the moment after I get drafted by Phoenix. That’s cool. I can play along.

5:59 PM: The Suns are on the clock! The Suns are on the clock!

What's Lopez so angry about? He got picked before Beechen!
(David Gonzales/Stanford Athletics)

6:01 PM: The Suns are off the clock. They’ve selected Robin Lopez, a seven-foot center out of Stanford. And not me. I realize that, while I installed thirteen new phone lines, I never gave the Suns my numbers. Further, my e-mail address has been shut down for spam offenses, my regular mail has already come today, and the spirit world is closed on Thursdays. Drat. I guess the Suns decided to take the next best available comic book fan – who happens to be a very good defensive big man, something the Suns really need. I assume the Suns will be hoping and praying I’m still on the board when their next pick comes around at number 48.

6:09 PM: Since I have a while until the Suns are up again, I decide to remove my purple wool suit coat so that I might better enjoy the atmosphere of my un-airconditioned apartment. I wring the sweat trapped in my jacket out into the tub, which overflows. Once I’m drafted, I’ll get that drain fixed.

6:12 PM: I’ve decided to spend my time until the Suns’ second pick calling the GMs of every other NBA team and dissing myself so that they won’t take me prior to then. I’ve called two so far, and they’ve both agreed with every criticism I spoke about myself. Either I’m doing a really good job convincing them, or I overestimated my value.

6:41 PM: So far, I’ve been assured by every GM I’ve contacted that they don’t plan to take me in the draft. One helpfully suggested I play in Europe for a few years to improve my skills. Actually, the words he used were, “Go away,” but I knew what he meant.

6:45 PM: I was sure I’d go before the guy the Jazz have just picked with their first round selection. “Kosta Koufos?!” I shout in disbelief. “Bless you!” shouts everyone in my apartment building.

7:02 PM: A wave of despair washes over me. Well, it was either a wave of despair or the 53 cans of Shmingles.

7:16 PM: Inspiration strikes! I call the Suns’ offices, and though I’m almost instantly mysteriously disconnected, I don’t hang up my phone, thus ensuring the line between my apartment and the Suns offices will stay open. At least, I think that’s how it worked in that movie I saw.

8:03 PM: Deciding that any guests who are more than four hours late don’t deserve much hospitality, I eat the sour-cream-and-onion Shmingles. My suit doesn’t feel like it fits very well anymore.

8:21 PM: My mother calls and asks me where the Army is going to be stationing me. I remind her it’s not that kind of draft.

8:45 PM: The Suns have selected Malik Hairston with their second round pick. I can’t be too upset. Hairston’s a versatile wing who can help the team. I look around for the receipt for my suit.

9:05 PM: The draft is over, and I haven’t been selected. By anyone. It’s been a long journey that’s brought me back where I started – to my couch. But then…one of my phones rings. I’m not sure which one, however, so I miss the call. But it rings again, and this time I nab it. It’s my friend Dave. He’s putting together a team for a community rec league, and wants to know if I want to play backup point guard (“In case someone gets hit by a meteor.”). My mind whirls. A few good games, I tell myself, and maybe I can send some video to the Suns before the pro summer leagues and earn an invitation as a free agent! I tell Dave yes, and decide to hang on to my suit after all (never mind that I can’t find the receipt).

The dream lives on...

My Private Suns Workout

Tue, 17 Jun 08 23:30:00 UT

Lost in the shuffle of all the big name college prospects visiting Phoenix over the last few weeks for private pre-draft workouts was the fact that I, too, worked out for the Suns.

Having made myself eligible for the NBA draft, I notified all teams that I was available to work out privately. None of the teams responded, but that’s okay. I only really want to play for the Suns anyway. Of course, the Suns didn’t respond either, but I assume that’s just because their invitation got lost in the mail.

How hush-hush was this workout, you ask? Let me put it like this: All parties were so desperate to keep it out of the press that there was no pre-workout communication between the Suns and myself. No plane was sent to ferry me from Los Angeles to the Valley; I drove myself. No swank hotel reservations were made in my name; I stayed with my mother (she wasn’t expecting me, either – I’m telling you, this was very hush-hush).

When I got to US Airways Center, the Suns continued the subterfuge, just in case there were any nosy NBA reporters lurking around. The team brass pretended they had no idea I’d be coming. In fact, they pretended they’d never heard of me. They carried the act so far, I actually waited in the arena lobby for a good six hours before anyone even came out and spoke to me – that’s the sign of a first-class organization!

Finally, Senior Vice President for Basketball Operations David Griffin came downstairs to see me. His “cover” was that he was going out to a submarine sandwich place for lunch, so he didn’t actually look my way, but I knew that was just code. So I got in my car and followed him. I stood behind him in line at the sub place. When he ordered his veggie deluxe, I ordered a meatball supreme. I paid for my own sandwich. Not a word was exchanged between us. Our subterfuge was perfect.

Driving back toward the arena, I hastily ate my sandwich. Finally, at a stoplight, I “broke cover,” pulling up alongside Griff, honking my horn and waving wildly. He stared straight ahead. I got out of my car and banged on his window. “I’m sorry, I paid for my sandwich with a debit card and don’t have any change,” he shouted.

“Griff, it’s me,” I shouted back.

“I’m calling the police,” he warned.

“No, it’s Adam Beechen,” I countered. “I’m here for my private workout! You saw me in Orlando at the pre-draft camp, remember?”

Finally, he turned his head to look at me. I saw the look of recognition spread slowly across his face. Yes, the Suns had taken this so far, they’d actually convinced themselves they didn’t know who I was or that I was even coming! “Oh crap,” he said, car horns honking behind us. “You’re that guy who won’t go away, aren’t you?”

He remembered me!

With mock reluctance, he led me to a nearby outdoor high school basketball court. “I’ve only got about ten minutes,” he said. “What advice did I give you in Orlando?”

“You said I was a classic ‘tweener,’” I told him, “somewhere between ‘hopeless’ and ‘delusional.’ I took that to mean I needed to solidly pick a position for myself, so I decided I needed to get taller.” I proudly pointed to my sneakers, where I had several Sunday newspapers strapped to the soles. “The extra weight has really built up my calves,” I offered as a bonus.

“Oh, and you said I needed to improve my shooting eye,” I recalled, “so I had Lasik.” I winked at him proudly with my remaining good eye.

“You also told me I needed more weight to play in the NBA,” I reminded him. “So I packed on thirty pounds!”

He looked me up and down. “Of muscle?”

“Well, you didn’t specify it had to be muscle,” I muttered, tugging my shirt down over my belly. As much as I could.

Griff sighed and tossed me a basketball. After I chased it down over by the soccer field, he ordered, “Run a full-court layup, and let’s see what you can do.”

Obligingly, I took off with the ball. Unfortunately, at about the free-throw line, the meatball sub caught up with me, and it caught more air than I did.

When I looked back, Griff’s car was peeling out of the parking lot. I assume he was headed back to the arena to report on our private workout, and was making all haste to throw any clever basketball rumor-mongers off the trail. Clever guys, these Suns!

As for me, I’m committed to improvement (prospective teams like that), so I decided to stay at the outdoor basketball court until I hit that full-court layup, only leaving when the custodian kicked me out about eleven hours later.

Suns Fans: Fill in the Blank

Fri, 06 Jun 08 16:00:00 UT

Okay, fellow Suns Superfans…As the NBA Finals get underway, I thought we might play a game of our own. Please submit your best answer to the following question:

Would you rather see Adam Beechen on the dance team than root for the Lakers? Close call....

"I’d rather root for _________ than the Lakers."

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah: Beechen Goes to Camp

Tue, 03 Jun 08 21:00:00 UT

So, having declared myself eligible for the upcoming NBA draft, I spent last week at the league’s annual pre-draft camp in Orlando. And let me tell you, it was not what I expected.

Adam Beechen in his training camp gear.
(Adam Beechen)

I thought, you know, it’d be me and a bunch of the other prospects, sitting around a bonfire in the woods, singing songs, roasting marshmallows, sleeping in bunks and telling ghost stories. We’d share bad meals and “bug juice” in the Big Cabin. We’d do some crafts (I’d been wanting to make my Mom a new dreamcatcher), go swimming in the lake, have some singalongs, and best of all, stage a few panty raids on the girls’ cabin. Most importantly, we’d have a chance to bond, share our dreams about the future, and just have a great time in the fresh air.

Well.

I got out of the Orlando airport with my backpack on my back and my sleeping bag under one arm and hopped in a cab, asking the driver to take me to NBA camp, and next thing I knew, we’d pulled up in front of a gym. Okay, I figured, the bus must leave from here for the real camp. But no. I stood in line to check in, and the guy asked me what hotel I was staying in. Hotel? Then I was issued a practice uniform (a camp shirt!) and told to report the next day.

I gotta confess, I was a little confused. I mean, I had three boxes of graham crackers in my backpack and I was ready to make some s’mores! I was ready to meet my bunkmate! And dude, where were the girls?

But I made the best of it, like any good camper faced with, say, a change in the weather. Camp officials graciously allowed me to camp out in my sleeping bag at the free throw line. Actually, they didn’t so much let me as I sort of hid in the gym most nights after closing. Which wasn’t so bad, except that twice I was awakened by a size-sixteen “alarm clock” stepping on my face mid-fast break. And it turns out that you can survive for four days on nothing but graham crackers. They even give you a solid energy boost for about ten minutes…You’re pretty much useless for three hours afterwards, however.

The best part of NBA pre-draft camp? You guessed it, basketball. That’s pretty much all we did, which was a relief, since I’m sort of afraid of swimming (bad experience with an eel, I don’t want to talk about it). Even the camp contests were basketball-related. I’m proud to say that, on measurement day, I placed first among all campers in “Least Height,” “Fewest Bench Press Reps at Any Weight” (the bar alone is surprisingly heavy!) and “Highest Percentage of Body Fat” (mmm, graham crackers).

Other than that, it was hoops all day. Games in the morning, games in the afternoon. I can only say, I wish I’d played more, because when I did play, I had a lot of fun. Trouble was, I spent most of my time with the trainers, as I led the camp in two other categories without even trying: “Most Charges Taken,” and “Most Blocking Fouls Called.” I knew my lack of foot speed would come in handy!

They say, if you want to improve yourself as a basketball player, you need to play against players better than yourself. To which I’d add, you should also play against players taller, faster, stronger, meaner and younger than yourself. I could feel myself improving with every scrimmage. By the end, I knew just which players to (try to) run away from.

FYI: Pro basketball prospects? Not fond of singalongs. I lost three teeth trying to lead the gang in “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.” Hallelu-yowch!

I did, however, finish the camp 1-for-1 in three-pointers. Chased by a seven-foot, three hundred-pound center from Senegal (whom I thought showed excellent lateral quickness) whom I’d accidentally tripped, I threw the basketball back over my head, trying to knock him unconscious. However, the ball sailed a little high, and banked cleanly through the net. Which, by the way, is a shot I practice, because I’ve been in that situation a few times before.

By the end of the camp, I didn’t feel a whole lot different from when I was a kid leaving camp: I was tired and I had the persistent taste of graham crackers in my mouth. Did I bond? Maybe with the sole of that guy’s sneaker.

But the most important question is, did I improve my stock as a draft prospect? I’d have to say yes. I definitely showcased my skills as a specialist. If you need a charge taken, or a blocking foul committed, I’m your man. As I boarded the bus for home, I felt pretty darn good about myself.

Oh, crap! I forgot to make that dreamcatcher! Sorry, mom.

Beechen Declares There's a Draft

Thu, 22 May 08 16:15:00 UT

Sorry, the title should have read, "Beechen Declares FOR the Draft." Instead, it sounds like I’m sitting somewhere breezy. Oh well, it's been a little busy around here.

Adam Beechen hopes to follow in Amare Stoudemire's footsteps and be the next Suns' star chosen through the draft.
(NBAE Photos)

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that I’ve made myself eligible for the 2008 NBA Draft. What? You weren’t watching my press conference at 4 a.m. on Sunday on the Tennis Channel? It was on just between a replay of the 1983 US Open Men’s Doubles Quarterfinals and a really interesting documentary on how to improve your lob.

Well, in any case, I’ve taken the plunge. Okay, I didn’t play in college…or high school…but that just means I haven’t developed any bad habits. And I may be a little older than your typical prospect, but my knees haven’t seen the wear and tear of countless competitive basketball games. And yes, I can’t jump, but the bright side there is that I’m not likely to get faked off my feet.

So you can see why I think I’m a cinch for the NBA. In the weeks leading up to the June 26th draft, I’ll be letting you peek behind the scenes at my journey from Superfan to professional basketball player for (hopefully) your Phoenix Suns, culminating in a draft-day diary that I’m sure will capture all the excitement and emotion of my life changing forever.

The first thing I decided I needed was an agent. It’s never too early to get started on endorsements, getting my name out there in the media, making sure teams are aware of me. Generate a little buzz. Luckily, I live in the buzz capital of America, Los Angeles. You can’t swing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar around here, without knocking over an agent. So I went right to the phone book and called the first agency listed:

RECEPTIONIST: Aaron and Aaron Athletic Management. How may I direct your call?

ADAM BEECHEN: I’d like an agent please.

RECEPTIONIST: Are you calling for anyone in particular?

AB: Best agent you’ve got. Let’s go! Hot commodity here!

RECEPTIONIST (long pause): Hold please.

(“All Out of Love,” by Air Supply plays on a loop for the next two hours and fourteen minutes)

SID: This is Sid.

AB: Sid, baby! This is Adam Beechen, your newest client!

SID: Who?

AB: Adam Beechen! You know, top prospect, just declared for the NBA Draft…?

SID: Uh…

AB: Doesn’t anyone watch the Tennis Channel anymore?!

SID: Tennis? NBA? I’m sorry, you lost me…

AB: Doesn’t matter. You’re an agent, I’m a star in the making! Let’s sign the papers!

SID: I’m not actually an agent. I’m Bernie’s assistant.

AB: Bernie’s the agent? Put him on!

SID: No, Bernie’s Lou’s assistant.

AB: Lou, then.

SID: Lou’s Stan’s assistant.

AB: And Stan is whose assistant?

SID: Stan is the agent, sir. I won’t tell him you didn’t know that. He’d be very offended. Now then, you’d like us to represent you for professional basketball? Tell me all your vital statistics so I can get some basic paperwork going.

AB: Sure. I’m 5’ 9”, I weigh 160 pounds, I’m…in my thirties, and I’m a deadly shooter from just under the basket as long as there’s no one else around and it’s really, really quiet.

SID (long pause): Hold please.

(“All Out of Love.” Twenty six minutes.)

SID: Sorry to keep you holding, but I looked you up in our database, and couldn’t find any record of you as a player at any Division I, II, III or IV colleges. Or high schools. Or middle schools.

AB: Good to know your database is current!

SID: Well, uh, do you have any videotape of yourself you could send us?

AB: Videotape…Videotape…Wait, yes! Yes I do!

SID: Excellent. Just mail it to –

AB: It’s of my Bar Mitzvah. That’s okay, isn’t it?

SID (pause): Does it show you doing anything athletic?

AB: If I remember right, I worked up a pretty good sweat dancing with my Aunt Judith…Incredible footwork!

SID: Well, if it showcases your mobility, then you should –

AB: My aunt, I meant. That lady can move.

SID: Uh huh. You should know that at Aaron and Aaron, we only bring on clients of good character. Do you have any skeletons in your closet we should be aware of?

AB: Yeah, and I’m not proud of it…One day, I was down on the USC campus…

SID: Uh oh.

AB: …and I put a dollar in a vending machine for a candy bar, and it gave me three dollars in change. And I didn’t tell anyone.

SID: I see. Well, uh, Mr. Beechbaum –

AB: Beechen.

SID: -- Right, thank you for calling, but I don’t think a partnership between us would be prudent at this time.

AB (long pause): It’s because of the vending machine, isn’t it?

SID: Okay, sure.

So there you have it. Looks like I’ll be going it alone, without representation. But I remain undaunted. I’m sure I have what it takes to make it in the NBA. Those guys at Aaron and Aaron will regret their decision when the shoe companies battle over who gets to market the “Ground Beechen” high-tops.

Besides, I’m gonna look at the bright side. Without an agent, I can go back and play in college. After all, I still have my freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years of eligibility left.

Suns Hop on Coaching Carousel

Wed, 14 May 08 17:30:00 UT

Well, we haven’t been "here" in a while.

"Here," meaning without a coach and without an immediate plan for succession.

With Mike D'Antoni's departure, the Suns are back on the coaching carousel.
(NBAE Photos)

In fact, the last time it happened for the Suns was in 1988, when the team looked outside the confines of the immediate organization and called on Cotton Fitzsimmons to run the bench and help rebuild the roster. And Cotton was an old pal, having coached the team for two years in the franchise’s early seasons.

Every time there’s been a coaching change in Phoenix since then, the new team leader has come from inside the organization, generally from the ranks of assistant coaches such as Paul Westphal, Danny Ainge, Frank Johnson, Scott Skiles…and Mike D’Antoni. That’s led to great continuity and organizational stability over the last twenty years. With a coach in place, the team has generally had an idea where they were going next, should the coach be fired, retire, or move on to greener pastures.

That’s not really the case, this time. New ownership, new style, new rules. And the team’s likely soon to be heading in a somewhat different direction than the one they’ve been traveling the past couple years.

I’ll miss Mike D’Antoni. We all will. He brought a lot of success and excitement to the Valley. The team was perfectly molded, for several years, to his style and preferences. And, very simply put, the pairing of D’Antoni with Steve Nash was the greatest teaming of coach and point guard since Magic Johnson and Pat Riley (sorry, Sloan and Stockton fans, but I give our guys the slight edge).

I’ll also be surprised if any of D’Antoni’s assistants stay behind to be cherry-picked for the Suns head-coaching job. I’ll miss them, too, if they go. Everyone played a role on the staff, and played it very well. But my sense is that, from a coaching standpoint, the Suns are looking for it to be “clean slate time.” Since player contracts are such right now that meaningful personnel change can’t happen, the rebuilding will start in the coach’s office – new philosophies and, to an extent, a new style.

Already, the newspapers and websites are filling up with names and speculation. Some of the names intrigue me, some don’t inspire me, others frighten me. So I thought I’d make my own list, in ascending order, of who I’d like to see in the head coach’s comfy, but slippery, chair:

3. Paul Silas. Here’s what he has going for him: He’s been with the organization as a player and as an assistant coach, successfully both times. He has championship experience as a player. He gets along extremely well with veterans who have strong personalities, as he demonstrated with Charles Barkley when Silas was an assistant here. He has head coaching experience in the league. He’s tough, and his coaching style reflects that toughness – His players won’t play matador defense because he won’t allow it. Here’s what he has going against him: As a head coach, he hasn’t been super-successful, with a career record forty-five games below .500. But let’s not forget, before being installed as head coach of the Suns, Mike D’Antoni had a career coach’s winning percentage of .280 in a single half-season with the Nuggets.

2. Tom Thibodeau. He’s the hot name among assistant coaches right now, and for good reason. The Suns wanted him last year to replace Marc Iavaroni as the defensive guru of the coaching staff. Instead, he went to Boston and turned them into one of the best defensive teams in the league. He’s proven he can work with, and gain the respect of, veterans like Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, while also helping develop young players like Rajon Rondo. He’s never been an NBA head coach before, but if you want to start truly fresh, that’s the way to do it. Besides, Paul Westphal had never been an NBA head coach before he stepped into the job for the Suns, and he turned out okay.

1. Here’s a name I haven’t heard mentioned at all in speculation, and it stuns me: Marc Iavaroni. He’s a former Suns assistant who worked with many of the players on the current roster. He was well-respected and well-liked here. He has championship experience as a player (on a team where he played alongside a dominant, if not exactly fleet, center in Moses Malone). His coaching forte´ is defense. And while it wouldn’t be a hire from within the organization, a strategy that’s always worked pretty well for the Suns, it’d be the next best thing. I know Coach I just split to coach Memphis a year ago, but coaches leave contracts all the time (see D’Antoni, Mike). And wouldn’t you rather coach the Suns than the Grizzlies?

So that’s my list. Obviously, Steve Kerr and Robert Sarver have their own lists, and they know the candidates and their qualifications far better than I do. Whoever the Suns bring in, I hope it’s someone who shares the vision of team management, and that together they can create a vision of the franchise’s future that extends into the long term, while keeping the team competitive in the short term. I hope it’s a coach who’s going to be here a while and develop an identity as a “Suns Coach,” the way MacLeod and Fitzsimmons did, and then be someone who, when he leaves, passes the torch on to someone who worked under him, developing a new chain of continuity that lasts for decades.

Because the alternative is the carousel, and I’d much rather see the team advance forward along the links of a chain than go round and round like so many other franchises have.

O-Beard-Tuary

Wed, 30 Apr 08 06:00:00 UT

Adam Beechen’s playoff beard died Tuesday night at 9:34 pm in San Antonio after a brief, painful and familiar illness. It was thirteen days old.

Although tempting to list the causes of death as poisonous home cooking, a Haq’d Shaq, and injuries sustained by being repeatedly flopped upon, the official culprits are gaping, bleeding wounds in the defensive middle, severe inflammation of the fumble fingers, and a serious case of psych-out Spurs-itis.

After falling gravely ill late last week, Beechen’s beard made a brief recovery over the weekend but, said one of the physicians treating the case, “it was too much of an uphill climb.”

The physician called himself “puzzled and heartbroken” by the case. “It’s especially frustrating because we’ve seen so many similar cases over the last few years in Phoenix. We know the cure for Spurs-itis exists outside the Phoenix area – we’ve seen it work in other cities – but for some reason, we can’t manage a cure here.” It was hoped that the February addition of a giant antibody to the system might strengthen the playoff beard prior to the postseason, but those hopes proved unfounded.

The beard was disposed of in a private ceremony over a sink in Los Angeles late Thursday night.

Adam Beechen requests, in lieu of flowers, that donations in the form of vehement rooting support be delivered to the New Orleans Hornets.

Two Down

Thu, 24 Apr 08 18:45:00 UT

My Playoff Beard and I are not pleased.

After the first two games of the Suns/Spurs series, this playoff beard needs to be a rally beard.

Here’s how I have spent my playoffs thus far: For Saturday’s Game 1, I was in an Urgent Care facility in central Phoenix, having arrived in town Thursday with a 102-degree fever and severe chills. It was right around the time the physician’s assistant diagnosed me with acute bronchitis that I checked my Blackberry and saw the final score of the game (Inexplicably, the television in the lobby was tuned to the Disney Channel).

For Game 2, I was again home in Los Angeles, stretched out on my couch, having consumed a giant bowl of matzoball soup for lunch, feeling a smidge better, certain that a Suns victory in Game 2 would push me ‘round the corner toward full recovery. Two and a half hours later, the Suns were in an 0-2 hole, and I was doubting the curative powers of “Jewish penicillin.”

Now, the situation – neither the Suns nor my own – isn’t fatal. Teams are supposed to win at home, and that’s all the Spurs have done. They’ve taken care of business on their own floor, and now the Suns are on their way back to the Valley to see if they can’t do the same. The Spurs deserve a good deal of credit – the Suns had them in deep holes in both games, and the defending champs showed the grit and resolve that’s won them so many trophies over the years. In short, they played like champions when they most needed to.

But oh, the chances the Suns squandered! The leads that got away…The easy baskets given up in the paint…The uncharacteristic mental lapses…The turnovers at the most inopportune times…The missed free throws down the stretch…It’s enough to make you want to throw a matzoball through your flat screen.

The Suns had all of their big men in foul trouble in Game 1, and still they were right there. Tim Duncan riddled them for forty points and fifteen rebounds, and still, the Suns were right there. In front of a hostile crowd and facing years of playoff heartbreak, the Suns were right there. And they couldn’t close the deal.

In Game 2, the Suns had the specter of Game 1 looming over their shoulder, and they came out roaring. They played the first half with heart, focus and intensity. They commanded the tempo, the big men played aggressively, cautiously, but above all, effectively. Once again, the Suns were right there. And again, they couldn’t close the deal.

If only NBA games had no halftime. The Spurs stormed back in the third quarter. The Suns couldn’t see, let alone find, the bottom of the net. The lead dwindled, then vanished. Suns fans around the world watched in agony as San Antonio sprinted out to the front. Suns fans around the world tore their hair out when the Spurs went to the Haq-a-Shaq in an effort to extend their lead – a perfectly legal strategy that Shaq defused by calmly hitting his charity shots under extreme duress (and may I say here that Shaq has been everything a Suns fan could have ever hoped). Suns fans moved to the edges of their seats when the Suns made a final run. They were right there.

And once again, the game slipped away.

What’s a poor, ailing, beard-growing Suns fan to do in the face of such repeated frustration?

There’s only one answer, the same answer Suns fans have told themselves since this franchise began forty years ago: Back the team even harder. Back them as they tug on the knee pads and go play Games 3 and 4. Take care of the home court. Send this back to San Antonio with the series reduced to a best-of-three, with two of those games in Texas. Where the Suns have been before. Where they know they can win.

The fat lady has not sung yet. But the Suns have to stop trying to hand her the microphone.

Playoffs 2008: Let the Beard Begin!

Wed, 16 Apr 08 21:15:00 UT

It’s really much more of a tradition in sports like football, baseball and hockey. Every year, once the regular season ends and the “second season” begins, hardy warriors on teams that remain in the hunt opt to not shave their whiskers until their team either wins it all or is eliminated.

Go, Suns, go! Grow, beard, grow!

It’s a superstition and a sign of focus: Nothing other than the team matters. Chores such as shaving can wait for another day when the important work of winning a title is completed, one way or the other (I’m assuming showering remains a priority, but I’m not getting close enough to any of those guys to ask them). In the NHL, where the playoffs last even longer than in the NBA, if you can believe that, you wind up with some pretty scraggly looking guys. They don’t care how they look. It’s all about the team, and if they bring home the trophy, then every stray chin follicle was worth it.

In the spirit of that level of commitment, I’ve decided to grow a Phoenix Suns 2008 Playoff Beard. The regular season ends Wednesday night. Thus, Wednesday morning will be the last day I shave until the Suns are eliminated from the playoffs or are crowned champions. I’ll be documenting my journey periodically with photos so you can see how it’s coming along. Attached to this blog will be the first photo – me, clean-shaven except for my short mustache and beard (which I ain’t shaving so I can start clean – I’ve had this thing for fifteen years and it’s not going anywhere…except that it’s going to get longer, obviously).

I’ve recently started a new job. I’m seeing someone. And in the next week, I’ll be going to two Passover seders. In short, now’s probably a time for me to be pretty concerned about my appearance. But these are the playoffs, these are the Suns, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to support them. If the Suns extend their run into June, I could start looking like a replacement guitarist for ZZ Top. Fine. It’s about the team.

I’m leading with my chin.

Who Could Ask For More?

Wed, 02 Apr 08 15:45:00 UT

Monday's game against Denver had everything you always wanted to see from a Phoenix Suns team. At least for the last quarter and a half.

Amare Stoudemire scored forty-one points in the Suns' comeback win over the Nuggets on Monday.
(NBAE Photos)

After the opening tip, the Suns roared out to a twenty-two point deficit. They gave up seventy points in the first half. They let the Nuggets shoot an ungodly percentage from the field. Carmelo Anthony made baskets off face-up jumpers, spin-arounds, and grand jetés. J.R. Smith threw up and made shots from behind the backboard, the seat of his pants, Rawhide and Show Low. Kenyon Martin was so alone under the basket on several occasions, he actually started crying because he thought no one loved him. Even Marcus Camby got in on the act, venturing out to eighteen feet from the rim to see what it was like out there, and heaving up set shots that found the bottom of the net like Daniel Plainview unerringly tracking down oil.

On the bright side, Denver’s Yakhouba Diawara didn’t hurt the Suns, but that’s only because he played a meager twenty-three seconds.

Meanwhile, the Suns were clanging shots off the rim like Quasimodo on Jolt Cola (Bing Bong Bong Bing Bing Bing Bong), acting as though switching on defense was a crime punishable by revocation of their road trip per diem, and treating boxing out on the defensive glass as the basketball equivalent of eating spinach covered with castor oil.

At halftime, the Suns were down nineteen on their home court. And if you’re a long-time Sun-worshipper like me, you knew what was coming: A scream-salvo from Coach Mike D’Antoni in the locker room, a briefly renewed commitment to rebounding, defense and smart decision-making on offense, followed by a spirited third quarter run to bring the Suns within ten, getting as close as maybe three midway through the fourth quarter before running out of gas and losing by eight.

Many times in their forty-year history, the Suns have been accused of lacking “toughness.” And they’ve been confused about what that term meant. They went out and acquired muscle man after muscle man, only to still be considered “soft.” Remember Truck Robinson? A guy named “Truck” has to make you tougher, right (unless it’s an ice cream truck, I guess)? Remember Maurice Lucas? The only man to make the name “Maurice” sound tough. Remember Xavier McDaniel? Trust me, with hair, he was even tougher. No, whatever “toughness” meant, these guys didn’t make the organization live up to the definition.

“Toughness,” it turns out, means the ability to grind. The ability to get mad. The ability to look adversity in the face and take your game up a notch, under control, with purpose, and get the job done. The ability to hit shots, get stops and make plays when you absolutely need them – and then do it again on the next possession, and the next, and the next.

Since Steve Nash arrived, the Suns have shown flashes of it. His playoff heroics are legendary, but even he hasn’t been able to get the Suns to the brass ring. But now…Watching him pull up on the break for a three-pointer, I’m actually more surprised when he doesn’t make it in a clutch situation than when he does. He was eight of twelve from downtown last night, most of them coming, it seemed, as the Suns were taking over the game and building a double-digit lead. I don’t remember the four misses, do you? Usually, when Nash has to score a lot of points, it means the Suns are in dire straits, that he doesn’t have much company on the offensive end, and the Suns aren’t likely to win.

But did you see Amaré last night? Forty-one points, fourteen rebounds, eight of them offensive. Seventeen of nineteen from the free throw line. One turnover. After a silly double-technical foul shared with the Nuggets’ Nenê, Amare simply went….well…”berserk under control” is the only way I can describe it. Playing completely within the offense, he didn’t take a bad shot, took what the offense gave him, and roared down the lane time and time again for ridiculously easy layups. I know the Nuggets aren’t the best defensive team in the league, but I swear to you, they looked scared. On one Amaré drive, all five Nuggets simultaneously and “coincidentally” went looking for their Gatorade bottles. Hmm. There’s been a lot of local talk about Amaré for MVP this season. Unquestionably, he has the numbers to back that up, and his play since the Shaq trade has been better than anyone else in the league at any position. Personally, I think Amaré has so much talent around him, it’s going to be hard for him to win over the majority of MVP voters, and it’ll still come down to Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James or Kevin Garnett. But of those guys, you can’t tell me Amaré’s not having a better year than KG…which makes him the best big man alive at the moment.

Of course, the Suns now have one of the best big men in history stationed underneath the hoop in one Shaquille O’Neal. And let’s face it, sports fans, he’s been everything we could have asked for. The Suns didn’t need him to get thirty points and twenty rebounds every night. But oh, how nice it is to see an enemy shot go up, and know that we have a Shaquille under the rim to likely collect the rebound when we actually need it. Oh, how nice it is to see the ball delivered into the low post, into Shaq’s giant mitts, and know that two points will likely soon follow. Oh, how nice it is to see opponents manage to get past perimeter defenders and then get that nervous look on their face when they see the Diesel waiting for them in the lane. And oh, oh, oh, how nice it is to see the Big Fella hit free throws, which he’s been doing far more often than not, since he arrived in the desert!

Last night, with playoff positioning on the line with every possession, the Suns needed giant helpings of toughness, and not of the “hard foul” kind. They needed the toughness that comes with looking around the locker room and asking for something more from yourself and the players around you. They needed the toughness of sustained, push-through-it clutch effort. And they scored eighty-one points in the second half, forty-six in the final quarter, and blew the Nuggets halfway back up Pike’s Peak. When they needed it, the Suns delivered to themselves. And that’s toughness.

But it’s one thing to do it for a quarter and a half. Phoenix needs to come through with that kind of effort now for eight more regular season games. And then however many games in the playoffs it’ll take for the Suns to win the championship. There can be no letdown. It’s going to be very, very tough. But that’s okay.

These Suns can do tough.

Campaign Season

Wed, 19 Mar 08 22:00:00 UT

“I’m Adam Beechen’s mother, and I approved this message…because Adam promised me he’d come home for Passover if I did. Don’t forget the matzo, honey!”

Kevin Johnson could use the fact that he dunked on Hakeem Olajuwon as one of his campaign slogans.
(NBAE Photos)

* * *

As the Suns wind up their campaign toward the NBA playoffs, having finally seemed to jell around this new guy O’Neal (who really fills out a uniform), and this other new guy, Giricek, another former Sun is also knee-deep in a campaign of his own. That would be Ring of Honor member Kevin Johnson, who’s running for Mayor of Sacramento.

(First of all, how can KJ be old enough to run for anything? He still looks as fresh-faced as the day he arrived in the Valley. I find it very hard to believe he’s 42.)

Now, anyone who saw Kevin play basketball knows he doesn’t need any help running for any reason. But we’re Phoenix, we back our sons and our Suns, so here are a few campaign slogans for you, KJ, feel free to use them or not as you see fit:

“SOLID LEADERSHIP ON ANY KIND OF FLOOR – JOHNSON FOR MAYOR!”

“VOTE KJ – IMPROVE SACRAMENTO’S FREE-THROW PERCENTAGE BY SIXTY PERCENT!”

“FASTER THAN THE OTHER CANDIDATE – GUARANTEED!”

“I DUNKED ON OLAJUWON, GUARDED JORDAN IN THE FINALS AND HAD A LOCKER NEXT TO BARKLEY…YOU THINK I CAN’T HANDLE CITY COUNCIL?”

All of which got me thinking, just in case any of the current Suns wanted to take a run at any vacant political offices, I’ve got a few more slogans that might be of use:

“EXPERIENCE, DETERMINATION AND PROFESSIONALISM…VOTE GRANT HILL!”

“RAJA BELL, MINISTER OF DEFENSE – CHECK YOUR BALLOT BEFORE HE CHECKS YOU!”

“A MAN WHO TAKES CHARGE ON OUR COURT – NASH FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL!”

“SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR…AND ANYWHERE ELSE HE WANTS TO BE – AMARE STOUDEMIRE!”

“VOTE BORIS DIAW FOR ANY POSITION YOU LIKE.”

“GORDAN GIRICEK FOR DIRECTOR OF INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILES – THE GOOD KINDS, THE ONES WORTH THREE POINTS.”

“YOU MIGHT AS WELL VOTE FOR LEANDRO BARBOSA…YOU SURE CAN’T BEAT HIM.”

“MIKE D’ANTONI FOR PRESIDENT – HE CAN TAKE THE HEAT!”

“SHAQUILLE O’NEAL FOR MAYOR – YOU WANT TO TELL HIM NO?”

And Al McCoy will serve as Speaker of the House – a lifetime post.

In all seriousness, Kevin Johnson, as has been well-documented has done even more good work off the court than he did on the court which, frankly, is hard to believe, given how well he played for the purple and orange. Shooting, passing, defending, serving as a public face for a franchise in the years immediately following a terrible scandal, KJ did it all for the Suns. Now, his St. Hope Academy in Sacramento has helped countless kids, at-risk or not. KJ has dedicated his post-hoops life, as he did much of his life while he was playing, to making the world a better place to live in.

It’s a shame they don’t let Phoenicians vote in Sacramento elections. He’d be a shoo-in.

No Doubt, Win Over Spurs Big

Wed, 12 Mar 08 00:28:00 UT

My friend Dino e-mailed me from New York yesterday. "Shaq is done," he wrote. "Sorry, but he is." I wrote back, "Obviously, you didn't watch the Spurs game Sunday," in which Shaq had 14 points and 16 rebounds against one of the better defensive teams in the league.

Shaquille O'Neal and Linton Johnson enjoy a moment on the bench in the Suns' rout of the Grizzlies.
(NBAE Photos)

Dino replied, "It's just one game. And what did the Spurs care?"

What did the Spurs care? I bet they cared a lot. For the following reasons:

They're in a dogfight for the best overall record in the conference, and every game is crucial.
It was a game against a potential playoff opponent.
It was their first look at the "Big Cactus" Era Suns, a Phoenix squad unlike any they'd played in the last four years.
This is a Spurs team that takes special pride in their "voodoo" over our local favorites. Every win against the Suns is another shot to the purple and orange confidence.

So, these Spurs had every reason to care about the game's outcome. And they were healthy, rested and ready to go. They were as hot as any team this side of Houston, also, coming off a long winning streak, starting their patented second-half "Okay, time to wake up and get ready for the playoffs" push. They weren't loafing, and they couldn't fall back on excuses.

As for the Suns, the reasons why the game was so important were just as numerous, and well-discussed among press and fans:

The team was absolutely reeling, unable to find a consistent winning formula in the games since the Shaq trade.
The defense had been deplorable, allowing teams to run up regular scores of 110+ points and shoot outrageous, unconscious percentages.
The Suns had plummeted in the playoff standings… and some pundits were prophesying the team would even fall completely out and into the draft lottery by season's end.
Criticism of coaching and management had reached a fever pitch.

So what did the Suns do? They went out and pitched a gem. A defensive gem, of all things, limiting the Spurs to 38% shooting, holding them under a hundred points, coming back from deficits, never losing their poise, and winning in a way Suns fans aren't used to seeing – by grinding it out.

If there's been a bigger regular-season win under more difficult circumstances in recent years, I'm hard-pressed to think of what it was.

Now, like Dino said, this is only one game. And trophies aren't handed out for single regular-season games. The future is yet unwritten; the Suns could win their first championship, they may not. But here's what this one game said:

Everyone who's been saying, "It'll take time for the Suns to find themselves after the trade," feels a little more validated for the time being – from Mike D'Antoni to Steve Kerr to Robert Sarver to me.
There's room on the court for Steve Nash, Shaquille O'Neal and Amare Stoudemire.
The Suns can play defense. By which I mean, they're capable of it. They know it, and now we know it, too. They can win games when their shooting is off, or when opponents manage to solve them defensively.
The Suns can beat elite teams at their full power. Their record thus far this season against the cream of the Western Conference hasn't been very good. But can they compete? Unquestionably.
The Suns have no reason to feel intimidated by the Spurs, subconsciously or otherwise. Others will say Phoenix needs to beat San Antonio in a playoff series for the "hex" to be broken, but I think this win gives the Suns confidence they can do that, if they didn't have it before.
It's way too early to write off the Suns as legitimate contenders.

The key, of course, is if the Suns can build on Sunday's win. I'd like to see them blow out Memphis, a team they should clobber, tonight with a wire-to-wire display of superiority on both ends of the floor, then reel off a series of wins that showcase their ability to play in both the open court and half-court, in blowouts and hard-fought battles, games where they need to make stops and do it. The time when it's okay to lay eggs, as in following up the defeat of Boston a few weeks ago with a blowout by Detroit, is over.

Otherwise, what I feel is one of the biggest regular season wins in team history becomes what all the Doubting Dinos out there believe: Just one game.

A Few Questions for Mr. O'Neal

Mon, 11 Feb 08 03:48:00 UT

I was unable to attend the press conference at which Shaquille O’Neal was introduced as the newest member of the Phoenix Suns (I was out with a bad hip), but I had all my questions ready to go. It’s my hope that, by posting them here, he might read them and respond.

1. Who was the first Sun to buy you dinner? I’m guessing it was Sean Marks, since he’ll be facing you every day in practice.

2. What will be the best thing about playing with Steve Nash?

                a. His lob passes for easy dunks?
                b. His reliability as a receiver for fast break outlet passes?
                c. His on-court leadership?
                d. “Steve” is a lot easier to spell than “Dwyane?”

3. Who will win this year’s Super Bowl, the Patriots or the Giants? (I may be a little late with this one.)

4. Do you have any of your patented nicknames already picked out for your new teammates? If not, may I suggest the Big Fella (you), Little Big Fella (Amare Stoudemire), Big Little Fella (Steve Nash), Tough Fella (Raja Bell), Duke Fella (Grant Hill), Speedy Fella (Leandro Barbosa) and Fella From France (Boris Diaw)?

5. What was your first thought on learning you’d returned to the Pacific Division? Was it, “Oh God, now I have to go back to Sacramento more than once a year?”

6. Forget all the worries about your free throw percentage. You’re with the Suns now. How’s your three-pointer percentage?

7. Kazaam?

8. Is there any truth to the rumor that you rent out your old sneakers (size 23) as guest homes? If so, do you have any Spanish Hacienda-style high-tops available?

9. Do you know if the Suns have taken out extra Basket Support Insurance with your arrival?

10. Whose shot would you rather block spectacularly into the twelfth row, sending the shooter sprawling all the way back to half-court?

                a. Kobe Bryant?
                b. Tim Duncan?
                c. Yao Ming?
                d. Pat Riley?

11. Please answer honestly: Does this shirt make me look fat?

12. As part of your announced plan to mentor Amare Stoudemire, will the two of you room together on the road? And who will get the top bunk?

13. Are you aware of Sean Marks’ many charitable works in the community, his status as a national hero in the country of his birth, and how everyone who’s ever met him says he’s just swell, you couldn’t find a nicer guy, and nothing bad should ever happen to him? (Question submitted by Sean Marks.)

Take as much time with your answers as you need, Mr. O’Neal. Feel free to respond in between dunks over Andrew Bynum.

Everything Is Going To Be Okay

Thu, 07 Feb 08 20:53:00 UT

When the dust cleared yesterday and the Shaq-for-Shawn deal was finalized, many of my friends checked in with me to see if I was all right, mentally and physically. I admit it, I spent the first part of yesterday feeling confused and unsure.

I imagine many of you are still feeling the same confusion I experienced. But consider this: Steve Kerr, David Griffin, Mike D’ Antoni and Robert Sarver are not crazy, impulsive types who would make a panic move in direct response to the Lakers’ trade for Pau Gasol last week, as is being portrayed throughout the media right now. While I can’t claim to know any of these men personally, I’ve met all of them, and my impression is these guys know basketball, and I think they know their team. Historically, the Suns are not prone to bonehead trades. Sure, there have been a few (DJ for Rick Robey??), but none in a long time. Griffin and D’Antoni have good track records in this regard, and while Kerr is the new kid on the block, my sense of him has always been that he’s got a sharp basketball mind. They wouldn’t make this deal unless they’d really thought about it, and really thought it would help the team.

Is this trade an admission that the Suns’ style of play doesn’t work? No. My hoops-savvy pal Kenji reminded me that the 1972 Lakers, which won the NBA title and set the record for consecutive wins, was very much a running team, and they did it with a center, Wilt, who was not fast. Further, the Showtime Lakers didn’t have a running center either – but rather Kareem. So I think the Suns will still run and score a lot of points.

The Suns’ biggest weaknesses in the Nash era have been defense and rebounding. Specifically, interior defense and offensive rebounding. Night after night, they have trouble handling opposing centers, doesn’t matter who. Andrew Bynum, who is admittedly emerging as a good center, eats the Suns for lunch. Al Jefferson posted consecutive career highs in points and boards against the Suns in two games this season. Even Nick Collison destroys the Suns inside. The Suns actually play pretty good perimeter defense. It’s on the inside where they get killed, by easy dunks out of the half-court set, or by put-backs.

So, the reasonable question is, why didn’t the Suns keep Kurt Thomas, who could address those issues at a fraction of the price? Well, because Kurt’s good, but he doesn’t force a team to plan their offense against him. He’s not a shot blocker, and he lacks, for lack of a better term, presence. Shaq may not be the mega-star he used to be, but when he’s healthy enough to play, there’s three things he can still do better than most centers in the league: defend, rebound and pass. The West is, obviously, loaded with centers, from Yao to Chandler to Duncan (come on, he’s a center) to Bynum to Kaman. The Suns simply haven’t had an answer for those kinds of guys this year, and it’s made it harder than in the past for the Suns to control tempo, and when they haven’t been able to control tempo, they’ve been cooked. Shaq gives them a viable presence in the low post on both defense and offense, something the Suns haven’t had since Danny Schayes (kidding).

Steve Nash is 34. Grant Hill is 36. Amare is 25, but has had three knee surgeries. The Suns aren’t thinking about long-term success here — It’s all or nothing time. Shawn Marion is a fabulous player, and I won’t bash him on his way out of town, but while he offers a lot of superlative skills in a lot of different areas, of the Suns’ old core (Nash, Marion, Stoudemire), his skills were the easiest to replace at reasonably close to the same level. The Suns will miss him most on defense, but Shaq should take up some of the slack there, Diaw is underrated on defense, and Hill has shown commitment to that end of the court. The Suns still have plenty of guys to finish on the break (and now Amare can be one of them, as he won’t be called on to rebound as much), and plenty of three-point shooters.

The key phrase in all of this, of course, is “if Shaq can stay healthy.” Recent history, in all honesty, doesn’t suggest he can. He’s played fourteen seasons, and has played four games since the end of December. Even when he has been “healthy” this year, his numbers have been down across the board, suggesting he may have more little things nagging at him than just a bad hip. But reports are that he’s at as low a weight as he’s been in a while, and aside from the hip, in good condition. He’s not going to play a lot for the Suns right away, and he may not help them win games right away. I predict a lot of impatience and second-guessing around the Suns for the next few weeks.

I think the Suns might be willing to sacrifice the top seed in the Western Conference. Look what it did for Dallas last year, and this season, the West is so tight that the top 8 teams will be practically interchangeable. I think the Suns can easily win enough games, with or without Shaq, to secure a playoff spot on sheer talent alone. I think the team will severely limit Shaq’s minutes in the regular season, resting him often, maybe for several games at a time, in order to let him acclimate and recover as best he can for the playoffs. I think the hope is he’ll play just enough to develop chemistry with his teammates, and them with him, to get to know his role in and become comfortable with the team’s schemes. During the regular season, he’ll play most against the teams with centers the Suns could likely meet in the playoffs, but even then, they’ll limit him to 20-25 minutes. In the playoffs, they’ll hope he’ll be reasonably fresh and can be a factor.

In the meantime, the Suns will slide Amare back to power forward, where he should dominate and run. A lot. Diaw will likely start at the small forward spot, and he’s played much better lately as a starter. He seems to thrive on starter’s minutes – as proved in last night’s game against New Orleans. Grant Hill will come off the bench, which he’s shown he’s more than willing to do. There’s a scenario in which this could all work out. It’s a gamble, but it could work. High risk carries high reward.

Down the line, the Suns will rebuild around Amare, Barbosa and, presumably, Diaw, which is still a better-than-decent core. But this deal was made strictly for this May and June. Not for the years after, and not, I don’t think, for February, March and April. People will be quick to call it a success or failure right away or in a few weeks, but the real results won’t be seen until May and June.

Can you dig it?

The No-Win Situation

Thu, 31 Jan 08 22:50:00 UT

The Suns cannot win tonight against the San Antonio Spurs.

Sure, they may score more points than the Spurs, in which case their victory tally will increase by one, but no one outside the greater Phoenix area (and maybe even some people within it) will acknowledge it as a meaningful win.

If the Suns do come out on top, critics will squawk that they beat a team without their starting point guard and one of their most indispensable players, Tony Parker. Until the Suns at full strength beat San Antonio at their full strength, any victory over our esteemed rivals to the southeast will be considered hollow.

By contrast, if the Suns lose tonight, we’ll hear more of the same old, same old: The Spurs have a borderline mystical hold on Phoenix, their voodoo owing to the Spurs’ innate superior basketball IQ and tine-tested toughness, and the Suns’ much-discussed weaknesses on defense and rebounding.

The Suns just can’t win.

Every game, to some degree, has taken on that kind of frustrating atmosphere for the Suns. If they win…well, they’re supposed to win. They have a high-powered offense studded with stars and a proven system. If they lose, well, they’re soft, perennial pretenders to the throne, and maybe the system doesn’t work in the long run, and blah blah blah.

The days of the Suns being fun-to-watch underdogs surprising the league with their play are over. Now, it’s “What have you done for me lately?” time.

So, given that the Suns can’t win in the court of public opinion, they may as well focus all their attention on winning on the court. Just let people say what they will, and use the hot air as fuel for the playoff stretch drive.

Initial signs are that the Suns are doing just that. Grant Hill’s appendicitis might prove to be the biggest blessing in disguise since Dick Van Arsdale’s broken wrist in 1976. Just as that injury prompted the Suns to move Ricky Sobers into the starting lineup and reconsider Van as a primary bench piece, priming them for their unlikely moon shot, Hill’s time out of the lineup appears to have aligned Boris Diaw’s stars. As a starter, he’s played at a consistently excellent level not seen around these parts in a long time. And Grant Hill, mature enough to handle coming off the bench for a contender, gives the Suns the second-unit ball-handler they’ve been craving, as well as another explosive scorer to pair with Leandro Barbosa when Steve Nash takes a seat.

I like where the Suns are headed. I’m optimistic. I expect big things. What I don’t expect is for people to think a win tonight is anything special.

But with the beating the Suns have taken in the press and among followers of the NBA this season, every win, particularly now as eyes turn to the not-to-distant playoffs, particularly as the Suns make fine-tuning adjustments that hopefully get all their players performing at their peaks at the same time, is important.

It doesn’t matter who the opponent is.

The True Chemical Imbalance

Mon, 14 Jan 08 19:26:00 UT

So the Suns are tied for the best record in the West at 26-11, they have the lead in the their division, they have the fourth-best road record in the NBA, and Phoenix fans are inching out on skyscraper ledges like stock brokers on October 29, 1929, waiting for the final bell from Wall Street.

Amare Stoudemire and the Suns are working towards the championship in June, not in January.
(NBAE Photos)

Well, as the bartender asked the horses in his pub, why all the long faces?

It seems the Suns are winning, but not by enough, not by as much as they used to. They’re winning, but not always easily, not as easily as they used to. Clearly, there must be something deeply, desperately, horribly, painfully wrong, for a team to have fallen this far.

Is it the defense? Well, the Suns are never going to remind anyone of the great shut-down clubs of all time, and their interior defense is very much a work in progress, but they’re scoring five points more than their opponents, so that means, by definition, they’re playing better defense than the guys they’re playing against, right? Suns opponents have lower field goal, free throw and three-point percentages than Phoenix, and the Suns dish out a whopping seven assists more than the teams they play.

No, say all the experts on all the websites and all the networks who’ve watched the Suns play on television a few times, the problem is chemistry. Player X thinks Player Y is a meanie. Player Z thinks no one loves him and is going to sulk in the corner. All this is a recipe for doom, proof that the system doesn’t work, that the window of opportunity has slammed, and that major, major changes are needed.

Well, for the record, I think there are chemistry problems around the Suns. But I think it’s the fans and critics that have them.

I think, because of the Suns’ spectacular, revolutionary success these past few years, people have come to expect certain things from the Suns. They expect high-flying, belief-defying runs of offensive brilliance, triple-digit victory margins, wins, wins, wins, and steady forward progress towards the franchise’s first NBA championship. And not all of that is unreasonable. With several years of Coach Mike D’Antoni’s system in place, the Suns should have it pretty much perfected, and they should continue to improve. With the Suns’ essential core (Amare Stoudemire, Shawn Marion and Steve Nash) having played together for several years, they should be moving further towards ultimate success.

But I also think that, having seen the miracles the Suns have accomplished in the desert now for those several years, other teams have either adopted much of the Suns’ system, or learned how better to defense it. In short, the rest of the league has caught up a little bit to the Suns…who nevertheless still have the best record in their conference.

Winning breeds expectations and impatience to see those expectations fulfilled. But it’s made us, the fans, a little chemically imbalanced. Let’s temper those expectations with a little bit of reality. The NBA season, as the saying goes, is a marathon, not a sprint. The Suns happen to be very good sprinters, however, and we sure like watching them blaze by opponents. But no NBA championship was ever won in January. Teams grow, develop and find themselves over the course of a season. The Suns remain a team that lost a starter in the off-season (Kurt Thomas) and gained another who plays a very different style (Grant Hill). These Suns are still growing an learning.

Let’s look, for a second, at a Suns team that should have had, by all rights, zero chemistry. They started the season with an underaged rookie center at a time when the position held more talent that at any time in the league’s history. Their forwards were a journeyman who’d been unceremoniously dumped by a championship team, and a skinny shooter past his prime. Their guards were a newcomer who’d never started before, and another creaky vet starting to break down physically. They got off to a decent start, then completely fell apart. Picked to finish dead last in the division, they appeared ready to fulfill everyone’s expectations. At the All-Star break, they traded the highest-profile player they’d ever drafted, who was just coming into his own, for another undistinguished journeyman rebounder. Then, the most reliable player in the franchise’s history, the backcourt veteran, broke his wrist, forcing the team to start yet another rookie and place in him the primary ballhandling responsibilities and charging him with guarding the opponents’ best scorer.

They barely knew each other to begin with, traded guys who’d been in the locker room for a couple years, and jumbled their starting lineup twice during the regular season. It’s a wonder these guys even knew each other’s names. So what happened?

They finished in a rush of success, made the playoffs by the skin of their teeth, won two playoff series in which they did not have the home court advantage, one against the defending world champions and everyone’s pick to win it again, then made in into the NBA Finals against the league’s most historic franchise, against whom they played the greatest game in basketball history before finally succumbing in six hard-fought games. The year was 1976. Alvan Adams was the rookie center, Paul Westphal the newcomer guard, Curtis Perry and Gar Heard the unheralded forwards, and Ricky Sobers the midseason replacement at point guard.

My point is, talent didn’t get them to the Finals. Chemistry did. And that chemistry wasn’t there from the start of the season. It developed over 82 games. That’s the thing about chemicals – It can take time for them to react properly. The good scientists allow it to happen in its own time. They don’t hover over the Petri dish and worry…or boo the chemicals.

Come off the ledge, Suns fans. Take solace in the fact that the Suns are where they are, and they haven’t played their best basketball yet. It’s how you finish, not where you stand with less than half the season played.

P.S. After thirty-seven games in 1975-76, the Suns were 16-21.

The Christmas Miracle

Thu, 27 Dec 07 17:30:00 UT

Yesterday, I witnessed a Christmas Miracle. No, three wise guys didn’t show up at my door, having been given directions from some celestial GPS.

No, the miracle wasn’t the Lakers beating the Suns. Much as I despise them, these Lakers are too good for any of their victories to count as miracles. Kobe Bryant is willingly sharing the ball and getting his points, the team is playing with a lot of confidence, and the rest of the Western Conference better watch out.

No, it wasn’t Andrew Bynum scoring a career high 28 points, yanking down 12 rebounds, and thoroughly outplaying anyone the Suns threw at him in the middle. Bynum’s a pretty fair center, but he’s not THAT good. Rather, the Suns have made it a practice this season of making “not that good” centers look “that good.” For every Chris Bosh you pretty much expect to score more than forty points against Phoenix, the Suns have made lesser lights like Erick Dampier, Nick Collison and even Hilton Armstrong look like world-beaters.

No, the miracle was witnessed outside of Staples Center two hours before yesterday’s tipoff. I’d arrived early, thanks to the total absence of traffic on the roads (a miracle in itself on Los Angeles), and as I was walking the length of the building to the ticket window, I saw up ahead of me two people, walking side-by-side. A man and a woman. He wore a (now) vintage Shaquille O’Neal Laker jersey. She wore a Steve Nash Suns jersey.

I hurried to catch up to them. Surely, they were strangers to each other, maybe not even noticing their proximity. But as I got closer, I could see, no, they were definitely walking together.

Well, then they must be exchanging trash talk. Yeah, fans of opposing clubs had bumped into each other outside the arena, and were only walking the same path long enough for some good natured pre-game jawing. That must be it. But no, now I was within earshot, and they were talking perfectly pleasantly about their Christmases.

I looked around, confused. There were no frogs falling from the sky, blood raining from the heavens, or other signs of the apocalypse. What the heck was going on here? I caught them at the northeast corner of the building. “Excuse me,” I said, interrupting them, “What the heck is going on here?”

His name was Eric. Her name was Cathy. They both lived in Los Angeles.

I asked if they knew how rare it was that a Suns fan could be seen walking with a Lakers fan. “I don’t know why more Laker fans don’t respect the Suns,” Eric said. “The Suns have played so well over the last few years.”

The pair was just back from following the Suns on an East Coast road swing. “We follow the team on two or three road trips a season,” Cathy explained. “They’re just so much fun to watch.”

A Laker fan? Traveling with a Suns fan? To watch the Suns play three thousand miles from Los Angeles?

“I always root for the Suns,” Eric said with a shrug. “I’m a Laker fan first and foremost, but the Suns play basketball right.”

My ears were ringing, and I felt lightheaded. I turned to Cathy in my disbelief. Clearly, her friend was deranged. But what about her? How could she share oxygen with a Laker fan? “I don’t mind Laker fans,” she said, before wrinkling her nose with distaste. “It’s Kobe fans I don’t like.”

She went on to say, “I was a Laker fan until about five years ago. Then, with all their squabbling, I looked around for a team that was more fun to root for. And there’s nobody more fun than the Suns. They’ve brought basketball back, and everyone wants to copy them! Even the Lakers are playing like a team!” Eric nodded his vehement agreement.

I bid them farewell and a happy holiday, then stood there reeling on the sidewalk. Inside, soon enough, there would be predictable chants of “Phoenix sucks!” and catcalls toward Raja Bell. One Laker backer even yelled, “Hey Nash, go back to South Africa,” the creativity of which suggested that not only were film and television writers on strike, so too, apparently, were qualified hecklers.

But for now, under the snowless skies of Los Angeles, Christmas spirit surrounded the Staples Center. Cathy and Eric had showed me that there really was such a thing as peace on earth, goodwill towards man.

Even if he happens to be a Laker fan.

My All-Star Campaign

Fri, 21 Dec 07 18:34:00 UT

The 2007-08 NBA All-Star Game in New Orleans is fast approaching, and ballots can be found online, at the arena, just about everywhere. It’s speckled with Suns players, as it should be, and come February, I expect to see Planet Orange thoroughly represented on the court.

However, there seems to be one glaring omission from the ballot:

Me.

Yes, there are positions for Center, Forward and Guard, but not Blogger. And the odd thing is, having searched extensively through NBA records, it doesn’t seem a Blogger has been elected to the All-Star Game in the extravaganza’s history.

Well, that has to change.

Starting today, I’m beginning my campaign to be selected to represent the Western Conference as Blogger. Though my contributions may not show up in the statistics, I feel they’re undeniable:

- Consistency: No matter how much Suns VP of Interactive Services Jeramie McPeek wishes I wouldn’t, I consistently turn in blog entries that he then has to run.
- Words-To-Typo Ratio: How many misspellings have you found in my blogs? Hardly any, right? You won’t find that kind of quality in the Cleveland Cavalier blogs, I bet.
- Team Player: I’m always the first one out of my seat at time outs, clapping, ready to welcome the players back to the bench with a high-five or a pat on the back. The fact that I’m at home on my couch in Los Angeles and not at the game so I can’t actually greet the players shouldn’t count against me.
- Prominence: Seriously, name another blogger who’s had a better season than I have. You can’t, can you? The fact that you can’t name a blogger for another team shouldn’t count against me.

In addition to these credentials, check out the accolades that have been rolling in, praising my work.

“Adam is a wordsmith whose creativity never fails to amaze.” – Adam’s Mom

“Adam Beechen is solid and dependable, with a fresh take on the often stodgy world of professional sports.” – Adam’s Mom

“Mr. Beechen brings all the enthusiasm and energy of a true fan to his dispatches, giving voice to the guy in the cheap seats who wishes he were on the end of the bench.” – Adam’s Mom

“We don’t have to pay him.” – Jeramie McPeek, Suns VP of Interactive Services

So, here’s what I’m asking you to do: Next time you go to the game, or the next time you’re at NBA.com, or simply the next time you have an opportunity, grab a double armload of All Star ballots. After you’re done punching out the chads (don’t leave any hanging – you know what can happen) for the Suns players, write in “Adam Beechen, Blogger” at the bottom of the ballot. Encourage your friends to do the same. Encourage your friends to encourage their friends. When you send your holiday cards, include a note reminding people to write me in. Make this an Internet craze. Wave signs at the games. Get people talking. Let’s do this.

If enough of these ballots rain down on NBA headquarters, the league will have no choice but to send me to New Orleans, where I will represent you, the true Suns fans, and typical sports-loving Joes everywhere by blogging multiple times daily about the experience. What’s it like backstage at the Slam Dunk contest? I’ll make sure you find out (if I don’t get arrested for not having a press pass). What’s it like on the floor during the Skills Challenge? I promise to give you the scoop (if my Chris Paul disguise is convincing enough). What’s it like in the huddle amongst the biggest stars of the game during a timeout with two minutes to go (I’ll be sure to ask someone).

Further, I promise not to get arrested outside a nightclub at three in the morning. I run faster than any policeman.

Now, I want to make this clear (especially if Commissioner Stern is reading – and if you are, thanks for the holiday cheese log, sir, it was very tasty): No one officially in the Suns organization condones ballot box-stuffing. This is strictly an independent operation. I want to represent you at the 2007-08 NBA All-Star Game as your Western Conference Blogger.

I mean, who else would you want there? A Laker blogger?

Beechen in ’08!

Chin Music with Brian Skinner

Mon, 17 Dec 07 18:00:00 UT

In recent weeks, Suns forward-center Brian Skinner has attracted almost as much attention for his stellar defense and timely offense as he has for his distinctive two-tone goatee.

Who has the best facial hair?

(Daniel Banks/Suns Photos)

Glue-on Skinner beards have popped up in the stands at US Airways Arena (generally attached to someone, not so much just showing up on their own), reminding fans of the Rambis Youth years, when Suns faithful would turn out in thick-framed spectacles in honor of Kurt Rambis.

Hopefully, in the weeks to come, cheers for B. Skinner’s jumpers and rebounds will prove louder than chatter about his whiskers.

But not too long ago, I happened to visit the Suns, spend a little time with the man, and compare notes on our facial hairiness.

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Before I get to the transcript of that encounter, however, let’s take a look back at some great moments in NBA mustache-and-bearded-ness with these trend-setting styles:

THE VAN DUNK
As worn by hoops legend Wilt Chamberlain, this menacing mustache-beard combo told opponents, “I can score 100 points on you anytime I want. And then maybe I’ll score with every woman you know.”

THE SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN
This look, modeled by former ABA and NBA great Artis Gilmore, says, “I may look genteel and refined, but I’m perfectly willing to ram this basketball up your left nostril without saying, ‘Excuse me.’”

THE UPPER LIP OF AUTHORITY
Thinking thirty years ahead, Suns Coach Mike D’Antoni sported this neatly-trimmed ‘stache, which tells players, “Make fun of me all you like…One day, I’ll be Coach of the Year.”

THE “WHAT THE -- ?!”
As modeled by former Nets guard Mike Newlin, this, uh…unique…style says either, “I’ve forgotten to shave for the last seventeen years,” “I am Bigfoot’s nephew,” or, “I’m covering scars from a nasty knife fight,” we’re not sure which.

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On to more contemporary modes, which brings me to my conversation with Brian Skinner. I’ll set the scene: I approach Skinner after practice, moments before the Suns are to leave on a road trip. He’s due on the bus. But, good guy that he is, he makes time to talk fashion. I introduce myself as a Suns.com blogger, eager to get his opinion on my own Van Dyke (that’s what they call the beard/mustache-no sideburns thing). Our exchange goes something like this:
BRIAN SKINNER: It looks like it’s coming in pretty good. How long have you been growing it?

ADAM BEECHEN: Well…fourteen years.

BS: Oh. Uh…It’s definitely getting there.

AB: Based on your experience with just having the goatee, would you recommend I shave the mustache and just go with the chin-fuzz?

BS: Well, that all depends on the shape of your face…

AB: Uh huh, and with the shape of my face, what would you suggest?

BS: A ski mask. Just kidding! I think you’ve made the right choice with the Van Dyke.

AB: Okay, here’s one thing I’ve really been wondering. How do you get the beard to grow half black, half orange?

BS: Excuse me?

AB: I mean, I thought maybe it was diet-related, so I’ve been eating a lot of orange foods, like peaches, carrots, the boxed macaroni and cheese flavoring powder…Um, what else…?

BS: …Oranges?

AB: Oranges! Why didn’t I think of that? Let me write that down…

BS: I really have to be catching the team bus to the airport…

AB: Right, right…One more question: What does it take to have truly NBA-worthy facial hair?

BS: A chin on a head at the top of a 6’ 9”, 255-lb. body.

At which point, Mr. Skinner ran for the bus, which I’m told he made by the hair of his chinny-chin-chin.

Our Swiss Army Knife is French

Tue, 27 Nov 07 23:08:00 UT

Every time I walk into a hardware store, among the Leathermen, utility sets, adjustable wrenches and multi-head screwdrivers, I expect to see a new, versatile product on the market, "The Amazing Boris."

Boris Diaw could be the key to a Suns championship this season.
(NBAE Photos)

The marketing for such a product would be simple: “It does everything well – scores, rebounds, passes and defends.” Below that blurb, it’d read: “When operating to full capability, extremely dangerous to other team.”

Boris Diaw can (and has) played all five positions on the court, and he’s a matchup nightmare at each one. He’s too fast for most centers and power forwards, too strong for most small forwards, and too big for most guards. He’s given us tantalizing glimpses of awesome skills, most notably a couple years ago in the playoffs when he came from nowhere to be a focal point of the Suns’ offense and defense in the absence of Amare Stoudemire.

But, “When operating to full capability.” That’s the key phrase, right there. Boris has taken a lot of abuse from Suns’ fans and the press for not always living up to that performance in the years since. Some of it has been deserved – He admitted to not being in the best of shape prior to last season, and he never really found his legs during the year. Plus, there was the adjustment of playing alongside Amare, healthy once more. Boris wasn’t sure how aggressive he needed to be, or what exactly his role was. I think he’s still figuring it out.

But when fans are inclined to complain that Boris doesn’t score more, consider this: The Suns don’t need him to score more. They have plenty of scorers. They don’t need Boris to pile up huge numbers of assists or rebounds – The Suns have players who excel in those areas. What the Suns need is for Boris to augment all of those categories across the board, to do a little here and there, whatever it takes, whatever is needed on a given night.

Think about it: Just about every championship team has had a great role player, without whom it would have been impossible for the team to take home a title. For the Bulls, it was Dennis Rodman. For the Lakers and Spurs, it’s been Robert Horry. With his skills in every area, as well as his intelligence (everyone who’s spoken with him knows how smart he is), Boris should, and I predict will, become the ultimate role player.

Consider his statistics from the other night against the Warriors: 26 minutes, 8 points, 8 rebounds (3 on the offensive glass), and 7 assists. Do any of those numbers jump out at you? Not particularly, but with another bucket, two more boards and 3 more dishes, that’s a triple-double, and there isn’t a team in the league that wouldn’t take a player capable of such production with such apparent ease on a night-to-night basis.

(Yes, I’m aware the Suns lost to the Warriors, but that had more to do with an uncharacteristically large number of Phoenix turnovers and some lights-out shooting by Golden State’s big guns than anything Boris did or didn’t do.)

He’s a one-man bench, the ultimate luxury, the ultimate plug-and-play hoopster. And there are 29 general managers around the league praying Boris never realizes consistency for his oh-so-tantalizing “full capability” we’ve all glimpsed, because if he does, they might as well cancel the next two or three seasons, because there won’t be much point in playing. Just leave the championship trophy in the desert for a while, and take a few years off, everybody.

I’m a Boris Believer. I’m convinced that he’s the key to the Suns’ fortunes, that Nash, Marion, Stoudemire, Hill, Barbosa, Bell and everyone else are going to give them exactly the excellence we’ve come to expect, but if Boris blossoms, that’s what’s going to send them over the top.

“The Amazing Boris.” There’s no one like him, and he’s not available in any store.

And ain’t I glad.

Voices From the Picket Line

Mon, 19 Nov 07 17:36:00 UT

As some of you may have heard, there’s a strike going on here in Los Angeles. The writers of film and television have stopped working for the studios and production companies as they try to hammer out a fair and equitable working agreement.

I’m a writer. That means, for the first time in my life, I’ve been walking a picket line.

We, the writers, are all very committed to our goals in this strike (I won’t bore you with details – this isn’t the forum for it), and it’s been impressive how many have turned out to support the Writers Guild of America. We march with pride and purpose, and we have no intention of stopping.

Most days these last two weeks, I’ve walked four hour shifts, carrying a sign outside a television studio, and trying to convince passing cars and trucks to honk and show their support. Occasionally, there’s a little bit of chanting (“Writers! United! We will not be divided!”). But outside of that, pretty much all we do is walk in ovals back and forth across a driveway.

That being the case, we have to find something to talk about to fill the minutes – and the laps from one end of the pavement to the other. So I’ve made the most of the opportunity – trying to talk basketball with as many people as I can.

It’s been interesting, surveying folks as to their favorite teams. Most, of course, say the Lakers, but a surprising number proclaim their support for the Clippers. “We’re writers,” one woman told me. “We root for the underdogs.” There’s a sense of oppressors versus oppressed when it comes to Clipper fans…I wonder if they can go on strike against the purple and gold?

I’ve noticed that, among the cars that cross our picket line to enter the studio, drivers with Laker bumper stickers are much less likely to treat the picketers in a friendly way. Some do, don’t get me wrong, but some definitely don’t.

In all honesty, I’ve yet to see a car with a Clippers bumper sticker.

Laker fans among the strikers tend to fall into two categories: Lifers who have been here forever and are truly passionate about the team, and bandwagoners who are relatively new arrivals, seduced by the glitz, Kobe’s style, and the team’s shiny history. When I ask either group about Kobe, they say basically the same thing: “He’s a great player, but…” I get the sense they like watching him do what he does, but that they might be happier if it was anyone else doing it. Lamar Odom, Dick Cheney, Attila the Hun…Anybody.

But when I ask one man if he favors the Lakers trading Kobe Bryant, he squints at me, and answers with a question: “What would we get back for him?”

It’s Hollywood. Everything’s a negotiation.

Among picketers who have a preference for neither LA team, there are a fair number who don’t watch or care about basketball. I keep a list of those people, to remind myself who not to stand next to as I march. Some have hometown loyalties, so I marched the other day with a (God help him) Bucks fan. I’ve also come across a “Jazz nut,” (her words) and a couple Easterners with sad expressions who admit to rooting for the Knicks or Sixers. Boston fans, I’ve noticed, have a bounce in their step, but I guess I should expect that, since the Celtics and Patriots are undefeated, and apparently the Red Sox had a pretty good year.

When I mention to anyone who knows even the slightest glimmer about basketball that I’m a Suns fan, their eyes immediately light up with delight. “Steve Nash!” they exclaim. Apparently, it’s a new slang expression, interchangeable with “Awesome!” or “Too cool!” More educated fans compliment me (though they really mean the team, I’m pretty sure) on the Suns’ style of play, and how it’s helping rejuvenate interest in pro basketball.

Not one Laker fan gives me any grief over Raja Bell’s altercation with Kobe Bryant in the playoffs two years ago. A couple non-Laker fans recall the moment with guilty grins. A few grins aren’t even guilty.

I ask how they would respond if the players were in our situation, striking against their employers for better conditions, wages, or whatever. Would the players’ salaries, higher than most ordinary humans to begin with, make it hard to support them? I find myself agreeing when one woman answers, “Not a bit. It’s not their fault how much they get paid. They’re being paid what the market will allow. Their peak earning years are very short – eight to ten years, if they’re lucky – and they should do whatever they need to protect their financial futures and security.” It’s a pro-labor stance, obviously, which is to be expected, since we’re all feeling pretty pro-labor out here at the moment.

I like walking with these people, feeling part of a united community of writers. I like talking basketball with them, too. But we all have places we’d rather be – generally at keyboards in front of computers, telling the stories we love so much, rather than wearing treads in the asphalt as we shuffle along carrying our signs.

Our strike essentially coincided with the start of the basketball season. We’re hoping it doesn’t last nearly as long.

Some Eras Never End

Mon, 05 Nov 07 04:55:00 UT

Is it any coincidence the 2007-08 Phoenix Suns gave their first real display of grit, pep and verve on the same night Jerry Colangelo was inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor? After all, the man practically invented grit, pep and verve.

Jerry Colangelo, shown here with his wife, Joan, after being inducted into the Suns Ring of Honor.
(NBAE Photos)

Prior to Colangelo arriving in the Valley in 1968 with the mission of bringing a game called professional basketball to the sunburned masses, Phoenix wasn’t even on the sports map. Oh, sure, the ASU Sun Devil football team under Coach Frank Kush had some pretty good seasons, but who knew about them? Not the major media, that’s for certain – perennially underappreciated in the polls, the Sun Devils wouldn’t become national “somebody’s” until the Pac-8 decided to swell to ten some years later. And there was a rumor that there was a professional baseball team in town, but they were what the rest of the sporting world considered Phoenix to be – strictly minor league.

But Jerry Colangelo understood what it meant to be out in the then-Wild West, so like any good rodeo rider, he grabbed the reins with utter confidence, endured the inevitable bumps and bruises, and eventually tamed the Valley, showing them that basketball was good, it was fun, and it was worth rooting for. In a mere two years, he had the franchise in the playoffs, where they almost upset a team with guys named West, Baylor and Chamberlain. The Suns won the hearts of the city, and the team was firmly, forever, theirs. Colangelo was barely thirty years old.

And he was just getting started.

Over the next thirty-five years, he’d build the team into a perennial contender. He’d make the organization into a prominent player in local and national charities. He’d spearhead the drive to revitalize downtown Phoenix (maybe not the right word, actually, since downtown Phoenix may have never been “vitalized” to begin with) with the construction of US Airways Arena. He’d introduce the Valley to arena football. He’d bring Phoenicians their very own professional baseball team, which would play in its very own downtown stadium, and win its very own World Series trophy. And he’d bestow upon Phoenix a women’s pro basketball team that’s done pretty well for itself too, particularly lately.

With Colangelo’s face taking its place in the Ring of Honor, there’ll be lots of talk about the passing of an era. I don’t buy it. The Colangelo Era will continue in Phoenix for as long as the arena stands, for as long as the ballpark stands, for as long as the Suns are in the city, for as long as there’s a downtown. The history of Phoenix itself since 1968 has been written in large measure by Jerry Colangelo, and he’s left his fingerprints on its future for decades and decades to come. Those who follow him in professional sports in Arizona’s capitol will build their own legacies and, perhaps, dynasties, but they will do so while standing on Colangelo’s broad shoulders.

Without him, I wouldn’t be writing this. And you wouldn’t be reading this.

We are fortunate, as Suns fans, as sports fans, and as Phoenicians, to know him.

Thank you, Mr. Colangelo. May the rim always grant you the friendly bounce.

A Time When It's Okay to Say, "Boo!"

Tue, 30 Oct 07 23:09:00 UT

Happy Halloween from the end of the bench.

Adam Beechen ready to play for the Suns.

(Courtesy Adam Beechen)

Time To Get Pumped Up Again

Mon, 29 Oct 07 15:10:00 UT

I've been having a tough time, these last few weeks. I don't want to bore you with details, it's personal stuff, but let's just say the last month or so hasn't been the happiest of my life.

We all go through times like these, and we all have our routines, the things we do, to pull ourselves out of them. Albums or songs we play, old movies we watch, old books we re-read, hikes we take, friends or relatives we call. They’re the comfort food our soul needs as it heals. In some cases, in fact, it’s actual comfort food that makes us feel better.

For me, it’s basketball.

It always has been. I’ve got an old-time manual scorekeeper’s book, and I’ve been known to watch a classic game on television and keep score by hand, just for the fun of it. I’ve got a giant collection of books about pro hoops, mostly from or about the 1970s (weird, I know, but hey, it’s my collection – go get your own). I’ve got tons of old issues of Sports Illustrated, dating back to that period, all with articles about basketball. I have DVDs of old games, featuring stars I admired, players I loved and looked up to (literally). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone through all of them, to the point where I have some absolutely memorized. But it makes no difference – they never fail to cheer me up.

I guess it’s an escape for me, the way science fiction or fantasy is for others. Like them, I’m reading about, or watching, people doing what for me seem like superhuman feats – flying, running faster than normal humans, performing acts of incredible strength. And when I read or hear fantastic stories about these people, my imagination just wanders and soars, and I forget, at least for a little while, about the things that have been nagging at me.

And I just realized why it’s such an escape for me – because I’ve never gone to a game, even one where the Suns have lost a heartbreaker, and had a bad time. I’ve been disappointed with the results, and I’ve played in basketball games and had a bad time, but I’ve never actually been to an arena and left wishing I’d just stayed home. So I associate anything to do with basketball with that kind of happy experience.

This go-round with melancholy, as with so many others, I’ve turned to the sport I love best. I’ve spent the last couple days with the new Sports Illustrated season preview (which I’ll save and put with the last 37 such issues). I’ve been concentrating furiously on pre-ranking my players for my forthcoming fantasy league draft. I’ve been scouring the Internet for news of my Suns, and the rest of the league. Last week, my friend Kenji invited me to be his guest at a Clippers/Suns preseason game, giving me my first look at this year’s team (We look good, people…and Amare didn’t even play).

And I even laced up my sneakers, pumped up the old Spalding, and shot jumpers for an hour, which I haven’t done in way, way too long. I found comfort and peace with the familiar geometry of the sport, the free throw circle, the parallel lines of the lane, the angles necessary for a clean bank shot from fifteen feet out.

I realize I’m romanticizing a simple game. I realize this isn’t the cure for some deadly disease we’re talking about. I’m not trying to make this more than it is, which is just my way of feeling a little better when I’m not feeling so well. It works for me. And the baby steps I’ve taken this last week or two, they’ve left me feeling lighter, more myself than I have in some time.

It’s almost November. Preseason is just about done. I can’t wait to get to the arena and get that old rush of being part of a screaming crowd. I’m getting that little flutter in my stomach just thinking about it. That’s how I know I’m doing okay.

It’s almost basketball season. And I couldn’t be happier.

One Step Forward

Mon, 15 Oct 07 17:31:00 UT

So the Suns have played their first preseason game, and they won, which is great, but for me, the best part of the evening was the fact that Grant Hill walked not just on the floor, but off it.

Grant Hill smiles at the camera as he is introduced at a Phoenix Suns press conference.
(NBAE Photos)

I’m not sure what my worst fear was, perhaps that at some point his foot would just fly off his leg into the third row. Everyone knows the woes this superstar has endured with his ankle over the last half-decade, the surgeries, the missed games, the comebacks and the setbacks. Last year, he was finally healthier than he’d been in a long time, played in more games than he’d played in a long time, and both of those circumstances went a long way toward the Suns bringing him in as a free agent this summer.

I, for one, was cautiously thrilled. Grant, at his best, can do literally everything on the basketball court. Run, shoot, pass, defend, slash, dribble, you name it. And he’s nothing but a positive presence, the kind of teammate any player would want. But I was cautious, because his ankle…Any conversation about Grant Hill inevitably features the phrase “but the ankle…”

Like Grant, I’ve broken my ankle. Unlike Grant, I don’t rely on mine to make my living. I don’t pretend to have endured what he’s gone through, or anything close to it, but from the fraction of what we’ve endured that we do have in common, I can’t help but admire his commitment, his dedication and his sheer will to persevere. They’re more reasons I’m glad he’s wearing the orange and purple.

I am not much of an athlete. I grew up playing sports and loving them, but I’m not at all gifted athletically. I’m a typical weekend warrior – pickup basketball here and there, and a semi-regular appearance at a Sunday softball game played by fellow writers here in Los Angeles. I joined that league a couple years ago, and had a steep learning curve. I’d never played bat-and-ball sports as a kid, and was really only learning the nuances of the game as an adult. My fellow players were very kind to me about it, and stationed me way out in right field on defense – actually in foul territory – where I couldn’t hurt anyone and would see minimal action.

I was a little better in the batter’s box, and could usually slap through a hit and get on base. Well, one Sunday, I was on first base, and a guy singled up the middle, and I ran around second toward third, and our third base coach started yelling, “Slide! Slide!” So I started to slide. And then I realized I don’t know how to slide. And running full speed is not the time to really stop and try to figure out the mechanics, you just sort of have to either commit to trying to slide, or don’t. I, of course, tried something halfway between trying to slide and not sliding, and wound up about six feet short of the bag with a broken ankle. I was out, by the way.

I’ve never been in more pain in my entire life.

And I screamed. I’m not too macho to admit it. I screamed and screamed, hoping maybe to disperse some of the pain in the form of sound. It didn’t work. I swore. Loudly. And I kept repeating, “I don’t know how to slide!” As if anyone needed reminding, at that point.

So I got a nice ride to the hospital in an ambulance, a few Vicodin (whee, pretty colors…), some X-rays and some crutches. Come back tomorrow and see the orthopedist, Mr. Beechen.

I went back the next day (someone had to drive me, as I’d broken my “driving” ankle), and I got into the elevator with two older women and a man I’d never seen before. The women looked at me sympathetically, and asked how I’d broken my ankle. I told them. The man asked, “Were you at Beeman Park?” I looked at him, surprised, and told him I had been. He nodded. “I heard you.”

Did I mention I had yelled pretty loudly?

Anyway, the orthopedist told me it was a simple fracture, very clean, six weeks to heal, a little physical therapy, good as new. But it was hard. Hard to deal with the pain the first few days, hard to be off my feet for several weeks, and really hard to be away from playing sports I loved so much. Then, when I was able, physical therapy was hard, too. And when I got back on the basketball court, back on the softball diamond, then came the hardest part: Trusting my ankle, to the point where I could run full speed, make cuts, jump and not worry about coming down on someone’s foot and cracking the bone all over again. The psychological hurdle. Even now, years later, it’s still there in the back of my mind. It probably always will be.

And that’s just me, Average Adam, who suffered the cleanest, simplest bone break you could ask for. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a world-class superstar athlete like Grant Hill who’s been down that track with more serious injuries to the same joint multiple times. But I can admire him for how he kept pushing, how he kept working, how he returned to form last season, and how he (and the Suns, and their fans) expects him to flourish this year. Not hopes. Expects.

Welcome to Phoenix, Grant. We’re delighted you’re here and wish you good health, lots of baskets, and a championship ring.

And because we wish you those things, don’t be surprised if, should I ever see you on a softball field, I turn on the sprinklers so you can’t play.

Report From the Future

Mon, 01 Oct 07 22:12:00 UT

With many of my fellow Suns.com bloggers delightedly and justifiably posting about their excitement at the prospect of training camp’s opening, I thought I’d save everyone a little time, jump ahead a few months, and blog from next June.

* * *

June 16, 2008

I just got back from the victory parade.

I’m dehydrated from the heat, hoarse from cheering, and bumped and bruised from squeezing in among half a million Sun Worshippers. I have no idea if any of my three hundred photos will turn out, because I had to hold my camera high above my head to get shots of the distant stage and hope for the best. But it was all worth it. Not just today, but thirty-plus years of unfailing optimism in the good times, heartbroken depression in the bad times, and passionate devotion at all times.

It was all worth it to see that trophy.

As soon as the Suns beat Utah two weeks ago (Joe Gilmartin was right – Suns in six!) to advance to the NBA Finals against Boston, I hopped in my car and sped across I-10 to get home to the Valley. I didn’t have a ticket for a single game, but I had to be there, at least in the city limits, for the Finals. I had to be among friends.

Just before the playoffs began, with the Suns riding the sixteen-game winning streak that propelled them to the best record in the league, Paradise Valley voted to rename itself “D’Antoniopolis” for the duration. Picking up Phoenix radio driving through the desert, I heard Glendale (“Amare Heights”), Peoria (“Nash-ville”), Chandler (“Bellburg”), and Gilbert (“Strawberry Fields”) decided to follow suit. Goodyear, meanwhile, changed its name permanently, to “Great Season,” because this was far more than just another good year.

Much of the national spotlight was on Boston, which had returned to prominence after acquiring Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in the off-season, jelled at the right time in April, and burned their way easily through the Eastern Conference playoffs. Still, the smart money was on the Suns, as the Celtics really had no answer for Phoenix’s brilliant and deep backcourt, and not much of anyone had an answer for NBA MVP Amare Stoudemire up front. A man on a mission all season long, he’d set career highs in scoring, rebounding and blocks-per-game averages and, in honor of his upcoming showdown with the Big Ticket, Garnett, had taken on a new nickname: The Golden Ticket.

I rounded up old friends to watch the Finals games in big parties, boring them with my endless stories of how this was a rematch of the legendary 1975-76 NBA Finals, which the Suns lost to the Celts in six games. But right from the tip-off for Game One (Amare to Nash to Diaw for a dunk), it was clear things were much, much different. The Suns rolled in that game in front of a crowd so loud, television commentators simply had to give up three times in the third quarter and let the pictures talk for themselves. Amare ran amok for more than forty points, and Alando Tucker, who’d earned the nickname “Sunrise” for his ability to wake the team up with points off the bench, burned Boston for twenty more. But the key was Steve Nash, whose passes were everywhere. He’d played tremendously unselfishly all season long, absorbing the hit to his scoring average to post a career high in assists, and he served notice that the Finals would be no different, offering up seventeen dimes.

Game Two was another Suns victory, although Boston made it closer by trying to slow the tempo. But, as everyone else discovered this year, the Suns only ever slow for so long, and this time it was Leandro Barbosa pushing, pushing, pushing, erupting for thirty-five points as the Suns pulled away. Grant Hill, who had played all eighty-two games during the regular season, added twenty-two. Meanwhile, Ray Allen lost his cool in a postgame press conference, cursing out Raja Bell and D.J. Strawberry for punishing defense that had limited the All-Star to point totals in the low teens in the first two games.

The Suns flew east to Boston for the next two games, but all of Phoenix remained poised in front of their television sets. Yes, things looked good, but Suns fans had been down this road so many times before – They weren’t about to believe it was over until Commissioner Stern handed that trophy to Robert Sarver. There’s a thread of hard-won fatalism in even the most committed Suns fan, a sense that, somehow, the team could be up four games to none in a best-of-seven series and still the fates would conspire to somehow turn it into a best-of-nine that would ultimately go to the enemy.

Their backs to the wall, the Celtics nipped the Suns in Game 3 at home, playing their big three of Garnett, Pierce and Allen for 48 minutes each. But now everyone was starting to really notice the series Steve Nash was having. In addition to those seventeen assists in Game One, he’d tallied eighteen and fifteen in the next two…with only three turnovers total. “Unprecedented” was the word being bandied about. A record local television audience watched the Suns cruise to victory on the Celtics home floor in Game 4 (Nash: nineteen assists and one turnover; Stoudemire: thirty-four points and twenty-one rebounds in fouling Garnett out of the game; Diaw: his sixth triple-double of the playoffs; Brian Skinner: eight crucial rebounds), and the Suns were heading home with a chance to clinch.

I’m proud to say I was one of the fifty thousand that turned up at Sky Harbor Airport to greet our heroes, taking one of the city’s specially created shuttle buses to ease parking at the airport that night. The plane touched down at two a.m. The players were home and in bed by three. We were still there cheering at five.

Parties before Game 5 began hours prior to tip-off, but there was still a lingering nervousness, a “what if” sense that hung over the city like a cloud over Camelback Mountain, despite parade arrangements being announced in the papers. Phoenix so desperately wanted a victory parade, not a “we love you anyway” parade, like the one in 1993.

The game started close, Boston playing with grim desperation, led by the precise execution of their three veterans. And when Nash went to the sidelines with tightness in his back in the second quarter, Suns fans steeled themselves for the possibilities – a delayed parade at best, the crushing heartbreak of unprecedented collapse at worst. But, with the Suns down by six in the fourth quarter, Nash limped back into the game to the loudest roar anyone had ever heard, and brought the Suns back, forcing overtime. And with six seconds remaining, the score tied, the Suns ran a play for Amare. He caught the ball down low, and Garnett defended from the front, Paul Pierce from behind. In his younger days, STAT would have bulled to the hoop regardless, but instead, he alertly whipped the ball to the open man, who drained a nineteen-footer at the buzzer, bad back and all. Steve Nash raised his fist, and the Suns had their first championship.

Even so, someone in the living room where we watched the game grumbled, “We still don’t have the trophy yet,” exemplifying the typical Suns fan mindset – Anything that can go wrong…But this wasn’t that kind of night, or that kind of year. Sarver raised the trophy high, next to Nash, raising his Finals MVP trophy.

Two days later, the parade, in 108-degree heat. Suns old-timers, the ones who built the franchise, turned out. Connie Hawkins, Alvan Adams, Walter Davis, Kevin Johnson, Tom Chambers, Dan Majerle, former trainer Joe Proski and many others…But the loudest cheers were for Original Sun Dick Van Arsdale, who probably hurt his elbow, waving so much. On the victory podium, Al McCoy served as master of ceremonies, his proud voice catching in his throat several times, only to be restored by thunderous cheers every time. A massive video board behind the dais showed Suns highlights from throughout their history, culminating with the 2008 Finals.

Every Suns player took the microphone to thank the crowd (Amare pointed to the NBA championship trophy and roared, “This is the only stat that really matters,” while Grant Hill praised “the healing powers of the desert sun”), followed by the coaching staff and General Manager Steve Kerr, who cracked everyone up (“So that’s all there is to being a General Manager?”). Robert Sarver yielded some of his time to a surprise guest – a teary-eyed Jerry Colangelo, who managed eight words: “I love you, Phoenix. Always have, always will,” before embracing the team’s current owner. And when Sarver looked at the trophy, then out at the crowd, and whispered, grinning, “Who wants another one?” the cheers could be heard in Los Angeles, Dallas, San Antonio and Utah.

I looked around – everyone had a sunburn, the same as me. Tomorrow, we’d be in happy pain, but for now, we all looked alike, Suns fans who had come so far together, unified by our love for the team, and now, by our bright, shining faces.

Planet Orange.

When the Injury Bug Swats You

Tue, 18 Sep 07 15:10:00 UT

The news out of Portland last week wasn't good. Greg Oden, the first overall pick in this year's draft, would need microfracture surgery on his knee and he would miss his entire rookie season. The injury to the franchise player will almost certainly cost his franchise any chance of success.

Steve Nash checks on Joe Johnson after his nasty fall in the playoffs.
(NBAE Photos)

Suns fans everywhere, hearing the news, first felt deep sympathy for Oden and the Blazers, because we’ve been there before (more specifically, Amare Stoudemire has been there before). Second, Suns fans wished Portland was still in our division, so we’d have some easy wins this year.

Hey, you’ve got to be practical.

Regardless, the news brought me back to Amare’s microfracture surgery, and the impact it had on the Suns. With a core of Nash, Marion, STAT and the newly-arrived and better-than-anyone-thought Boris Diaw, the Suns were poised two years ago for a serious run at a championship before the devastating news that Stoudemire would be shut down. Thanks to the superhuman efforts of the remaining members of that core, the Suns pushed Dallas to the limit in the playoffs before bowing out.

It’s no coincidence that the teams that stay the healthiest over the course of the season tend to do the best. Too much injury can be too much adversity for any team to overcome. It’s certainly happened to the Suns a few times, over the course of their history:

Here’s Looking at You, Joe: The year before Amare’s knee injury, the Suns were also rampaging through the playoffs before Joe Johnson went up for a dunk against Dallas and landed on his eye. Ever landed on your eye? There’s a reason humans aren’t supposed to land on their eyes, it turns out. His orbital bone fracture threw off the Suns’ timing, rotation and balance in subsequent games, and the Suns were sunk.

If You Find A Penny, Please Don’t Pick It Up: It was supposed to be the year of “Backcourt 2000,” with Penny Hardaway arriving to team with Jason Kidd to give the Suns an unstoppable pair of guards, delivering the ball up front to talent like Tom Gugliotta. In short order, however, Hardaway hurt his foot, Gugliotta suffered a life-threatening seizure and then blew out his knee, and Kidd broke his ankle late in the season. The Suns had to beg Kevin Johnson out of retirement to help them make an unlikely push into the second round of the playoffs, where the Lakers showed their sympathy by clobbering Phoenix in five games.

The Quiet Manning: Danny Manning joined a loaded Suns club – Charles Barkley, Dan Majerle, Kevin Johnson, Wayman Tisdale, Cedric Ceballos – in 1994, and seemed to be the missing bench piece the team needed to get them over the top. Naturally, he was assaulted by Joe Kleine’s foot (which denied being on the Laker payroll) during a morning practice and tore an ACL for what I believe was his record 38th time. The Suns made the playoffs, but had their hearts broken by Houston for a second consecutive year.

Down Goes Davis: The 1984-85 season slipped away when Walter Davis slipped on the floor of Los Angeles’ Forum, spraining three knee ligaments. Conspiracy theorist that I am, I’d claim Laker treachery, except that Magic Johnson nearly killed himself slipping on the same floor during the same game. Still, Magic was an awfully good actor, and the whole thing might have been a setup…

Talk to the Hand – er, Elbow: It was a meaningless freakin’ pre-season game, for Pete’s sake, but when it was over, so was the Suns’ season, because Walt Davis fractured his elbow leaping for a rebound. Hooray for preseason!

Low, Low Miles: When Truck Robinson arrived in Phoenix in late 1978, he was hailed as the scoring, rebounding, scowling power forward the “soft” Suns had needed for so long. Unfortunately, Robinson spent a lot of time in the shop, none more crucial than during the 1980 playoffs, when he sprained his knee. Paul Westphal’s flu didn’t help, either, and the Suns faded in the second round of the playoffs against the Lakers, who swore they didn’t send their spies to sneeze on Westy.

Boo Hoo, Shu: In 1974, the Suns lost their own first round draft pick, and a big part of their immediate future, when John Shumate was forced to sit out the season with blood clots in his lung. In sympathy, the rest of the team sat out as well, pretty much.

The Dangers of Climbing Mount Smith: In one of the grislier accidents I’ve seen, Suns guard Charlie Scott tried to sky over Lakers (curse you, Lakers!) center Elmore Smith during a 1974 game, only to fall what looked like seventy feet to the floor, fracturing his arm and writhing in agony. I remember watching film of the injury during a screening of Suns “highlights” at summer basketball camp. You’ve never seen so many kids turn away from a horror movie.

Fox Hunted: The Suns, in only their second year of existence and their first trip to the playoffs, had a three games to one lead over the Lakers of Chamberlain, West and Baylor. Unquestionably, Connie Hawkins, Paul Silas, Gail Goodrich and Dick Van Arsdale led the way for the Suns, but of underappreciated importance was center Jim Fox, whose outside shooting kept Wilt out of the paint, and whose speed kept the Dipper running around. When Fox sprained his ankle, Wilt camped in the lane, and the Lakers came back from their deficit to beat the Suns. Gee, notice how many times the Lakers figure into these stories…?

So, Portland, we feel your pain. Of course, every franchise has had its injury sob stories over their histories. Injuries are part of the game, they never come at good times, and they always leave you wondering, “What if?” In those times, I suggest you do what Suns fans have learned to do to cope with any and all kinds of misfortune:

Blame the Lakers.

Almost Back to School Time

Wed, 29 Aug 07 21:00:00 UT

It rained here in Los Angeles over the weekend, just a sprinkle, but enough to break the heat for a day and give us our first faint whiff of fall. And, like any right thinking person, autumn makes me think of NBA training camps.

The rookies are about to head to NBA school.
(NBAE Photos)

(Someone told me football was starting soon, and I just stared at them blankly until they made kicking motions and said very slowly, “You know…football?”)

Now, everything is making me think of the Suns’ upcoming season. The news that DJ Strawberry has come to contract terms. Watching Amare play in the Tournament of the Americas. Even walking through the drug store, looking at all the shiny new school supplies makes me think that the Suns themselves will be going back to school soon, studying up on how they might bring Phoenix its first NBA championship.

So I’m smiling a lot these days. I’m picturing a gym in Tucson, where the Suns will hold training camp, and Raja Bell taking DJ, known for his defensive skills in college, aside and saying, “You know what else really bugs Kobe Bryant? When you tickle him under the arms while he’s dribbling. Also, when he drives, whisper ‘Two playoffs in a row.’ He hates that. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about Ginobili and Iverson. Oh, and here’s some tips on shooting three-pointers…” Then Steve Nash wanders over and says, to Ra-Ra, “Let me borrow the new kid for a few minutes for floater-in-the-lane practice, and to show him how to penetrate against defenders with four times the foot speed.”

You know who else used to do stuff like that? Veterans teaching their eventual replacements the tricks of the trade and the team system? The old Boston Celtics. The ones that won every championship in the 1960s but one. They played without ego and put team first, each man wanting the organization to succeed because if it did, it meant they did. Championships equalled enhanced individual reputation, which equalled better contracts.

So Frank Ramsay taught John Havlicek how to be the consummate sixth man, never worried that the younger player would take his job away. Ramsay had a fine contract and an important place in the organization. The important thing was keeping the good thing the team had going. And when Ramsay was unable to fulfill the responsibilities he’d shouldered for so many years, Havlicek stepped in and the Celtics didn’t miss a beat. They just kept measuring rafter space for banners.

Now, I’m not naïve. I know those Celtics existed in the days before big-time free agency, when players couldn’t shop their services to the highest bidders. Players can, and should, look out for number one – Their careers are too short, and their risk of injury too high, for them to do otherwise. It’s increasingly rare for players to stay with the same team for their entire careers, to develop rapports with their communities and their organizations. Therefore, the incentive for veterans to teach younger players – and the young players are a lot younger than they used to be, coming out of college now as early as after their freshman years – is pretty low when they feel they have their own livelihoods to protect. And I’m sure some veteran/rookie mentoring already goes on, and I have a feeling the guys on the Suns are better about it than most other teams.

But still…

Nash, Bell, Amare and ‘Trix aren’t going anywhere (if the Suns didn’t move STAT and Shawn this off-season, they’re simply not going to), and they all make kajillions of dollars. Their window to win is still open, and they can keep that window open longer if they help the coaching staff train these youngsters to be contributors faster than they’d learn otherwise. And then everybody benefits. Our current stars stay stars longer (and get paid better accordingly) because they have a better supporting cast that allows them to perform better. The organization wins more games. The fans stay happy. And maybe we measure our own rafter space for banners.

Ooh, just had another vision: Shawn Marion and Alando Tucker standing at midcourt in that gym down in Tucson. The Matrix hands the kid a basketball, takes one for himself, and says, “Now, follow me…I’m going to show you how to fly.” And then they glide to the rim.

I can’t wait for school to start.

* * *

Personal note, Suns fans: I’ll be in the Valley this weekend, signing comics at two local shops, SpazDog Comics on the west side on Friday, August 31, from 6 until 8 pm, then Atomic Comics in Mesa on Saturday, September 1, from 2 until 5 pm. Come on out and say hi, and we’ll talk a little hoops in between arguing who’s stronger, Superman or the Hulk (everyone knows Amare's the strongest)!

Hello, He Must Be Going

Fri, 24 Aug 07 18:49:00 UT

Quick, name one man who coached the following basketball legends in his career:

Connie Hawkins, Dick Van Arsdale, Charlie Scott, Gus Johnson, Bob Lanier, Dave Bing, Bill Bradley, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain and Pete Maravich.

Here’s a hint. His initials were WH”B”VBK.

Basketball lost one of its great characters, and the Suns lost a small, but interesting, piece of their history earlier this week when Willem Hendrik “Butch” van Breda Kolff passed away in a Spokane nursing home.

To the hoops world at large, Butch will be remembered either as the man who coached Bill Bradley in college at Princeton, or as the man who left Wilt Chamberlain on the bench in the fourth quarter of the seventh game of an NBA final. But around Phoenix way, he’ll be remembered for having the shortest coaching tenure in Suns’ history – seven games in 1972 – after being hired to replace Cotton Fitzsimmons, who’d departed for Atlanta after winning 97 games in two seasons…and missing the playoffs both times.

Butch’s record wasn’t particularly terrible in those seven games – the team got off to a 3-4 start – but the team’s play was pretty unstructured (He’d call it “freewheeling,” which was a pretty good description of Butch himself, who had a reputation as a guy who enjoyed a good time), defense wasn’t a priority, and VBK clashed with then-General Manager Jerry Colangelo, then-owner Richard Bloch, and NBA referees (He got thrown out of his first regular season game…in the third quarter). So after 16 days of regular season action, Butch was let go. Colangelo stepped in as interim coach for the second time in four years, finishing out the season, then the club was turned over to John MacLeod for an unprecedented period of coaching stability.

Butch? Well, he went on to coach some more. A lot more. The man was a lifer, who tried to walk away from the game time and again, only to be drawn back by the thump of the ball against the hardwood, and wherever he went, he coached with the same passion, sense of fun, energy…and combative spirit when it came to referees. His vagabond career took him from Phoenix to the ABA, to New Orleans with the Jazz, back to college, to a women’s pro team, and even back to high school.

Butch wasn’t the right fit in Phoenix. You could make the case that he wasn’t the right fit in a lot of places. But if that many people hire you for that many jobs over the course of your career, you’re doing something right. VBK knew a lot about basketball – He made it his life’s work, whether he was living in luxury in Los Angeles coaching three Hall of Famers to the Finals, or shacking up in a run-down cabin while coaching high school ball in Picayune, Mississippi.

No matter where he was, whether he was coaching stars or kids, Butch van Breda Kolff cared about basketball. And basketball will surely miss him.

The Tasmanian Devil and Me

Wed, 15 Aug 07 16:50:00 UT

I literally can't tell you how long I've been looking for the photo that accompanies this blog.

Taz and Adam Beechen
(NBAE Photos)

For the last eleven years, I've had a ton of stuff in a storage locker. Since moving to Los Angeles, I've never had a residence big enough to allow me to keep it all with me. Like most people’s storage lockers, it was filled with a little bit of everything: old golf clubs, school papers, photo albums and scrapbooks, severed heads floating in jars (Wait, that’s the storage locker in "The Silence of the Lambs," not mine. See what living in Hollywood does to you?)...

But two weeks ago, I rented an office. For years, I’d worked out of my living room, and wished for a place that could be a separate workspace so I don’t spend all my time surrounded by the same four walls. Now I have one. And it’s big enough that I was able to move all my stuff out of storage and into the office with me. In doing so, naturally, I did a little spring cleaning, and not only brought back a lot of memories, but found some actual ones as well - trophies from my childhood days playing in the basketball leagues at the Phoenix Jewish Community Center; decades-old autographs of former Suns players; group photos of the campers at former Suns Coach John MacLeod’s summer basketball camp, and so on. They were all great to see.

But the photo that runs alongside this blog...that was the Holy Grail. I’d searched photo albums for it for years, both mine and my mother's. And then, there it was. I’m on the right side of the picture, accepting a trophy from Suns guard Ronnie Lee, the guest presenter at our awards ceremony for our PJCC basketball league. The year is probably 1977, and that means I’m eight years old.

Far too few Suns fans remember Ron Lee today. He was the team’s first round draft pick for the 1976-77 season, a muscular guard out of Oregon who was so athletic, he was actually drafted in three different sports (football and pro soccer, as well). He endeared himself immediately to the Suns faithful as the team’s sixth man - he played fierce defense, ran like the wind, and spent more time on the floor than my carpet. Literally. When Ronnie wasn’t running, he was diving. Or crashing. Or smashing. He led the league in steals one year. He came close to winning Rookie of the Year, which would have given the Suns three winners of that award in a row (he was sandwiched between Alvan Adams and Walter Davis, losing the title to Adrian Dantley). His non-stop, whirling-dervish style earned him the nickname "The Tasmanian Devil."

I thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. The energy level in the old Veterans' Memorial Coliseum ratcheted up six notches when Taz came into the game. On the playgrounds, we all strawberried our knees trying to dive like Ronnie. If the Suns had sold Ron Lee afro wigs in those days, all of my friends and I would have had one each. He worked so hard on the court, never quit, played with such joy, and did anything and everything to help his team win. In short, he was a terrific role model for young people in general, and particularly young basketball players like myself, who had no idea they’d grow up to be five-foot-nine and resoundingly uncoordinated.

So you can imagine how I must have felt, walking up there to receive that trophy from Taz himself that night. What he said to me and what, if anything, I said back, are lost in the mists of time, but I imagine I probably said something snappy like, "Wow, your hair really IS big!"

Ronnie didn’t stick with Phoenix very long, unfortunately, because he was the key Sun in a multiplayer deal made with the New Orleans Jazz (With a name like "Jazz," you didn’t think they started in Utah, did you?) for power forward Truck Robinson, who was supposed to bring toughness to Phoenix. My friends and I knew the Suns had just traded away the toughest guy in the league.

One guy who remembers Ron Lee is Larry Bird. There’s a new book out that basically asks NBA legends who they considered the best players they ever saw in a bunch of criteria - best shooter, best defender, best athlete and so on. When asked who hustled the most, Bird thought back to Taz, diving into the stands after a loose ball during a meaningless game when Ronnie played for Detroit. Bird was a young player then and Ronnie's actions taught him something he carried with him his entire career.

I never forgot Ron Lee either. Maybe I don’t play basketball for a living, but he’s still one of my role models (no, not for the hair), a reminder that, when you’re down, you just have to dig in, sacrifice, do whatever it takes, and most importantly, find the joy in whatever you’re doing.

I felt a lot of joy seeing this photo again. I hope you don’t mind my sharing it with you.

Suns Big Throughout Galaxy

Thu, 02 Aug 07 06:16:00 UT

I just got back from the 2007 International Comicon, which is usually reported by some smirking news anchor saying, "Hundreds of thousands of nerds descended on San Diego this weekend to trade action figures, talk comic books and dress up like aliens."

Superfan and the Boy Wonder hang out at the 2007 International Comicon.
(NBAE Photos)

I’m not the least bit embarrassed or angry. It’s all true.

On the non-Suns side of my life, I write, among other things, comic books for one of the major publishers. I also write television animation, and that’s a big deal at Comicon as well. So I go to San Diego every summer for the show – It’s one of the major business networking events of my year.

And it’s a blast. I shmooze, I see old friends, I speak on a few panels, and spend some time sitting at the booth run by my publisher, ostensibly to sign autographs, but really just watching the artists that are there do sketches for fans, because fans aren’t likely to hang writers’ autographs on their walls.

As I’m sitting there, I tend to have a lot of time on my hands, so I talk to the fans in line. About anything, whether it’s a costume they happen to be wearing (WAY too many Pirates of the Caribbean this year), where they’re from, or what they’ve seen at the convention that they’ve enjoyed. The fans are very personable, very willing to chat and, best of all, very non-judgmental…which is a good thing, since there was a guy this year walking around in green briefs and nothing else, carrying a tinfoil trident and telling people he was the Prince of Atlantis.

As it happened, when I arrived at the convention center last Wednesday night, I was wearing a Suns shirt. I didn’t think twice about it…until, as I was watching my neighboring artist sketch away, I heard a voice ask, “So, is Grant Hill gonna help you guys?”

I looked up, and there was Superman.

Okay, not Superman, but a (rather portly) fan dressed as Superman, asking me, with dead seriousness, a basketball question. So we talked for about ten minutes, a perfectly enjoyable conversation about pro hoops with a surprisingly well-educated fellow fan.

In a convention filled with unexpected sights, sounds and, in some cases, smells, it was maybe the last thing I expected.

And it got weirder. And more fun. I wore my Suns watch all weekend long, and at least three people a day noticed it and asked me basketball questions. They ranged from everyday comics fans in Batman t-shirts and Spiderman hats (“Do you think Boris and Amare should have been suspended for that playoff game?”), to editors from various comic companies (“I love Alando Tucker; I saw him play in college.”), to Klingons (“Steve Nash will never burn out…He’s a machine!”). So I spent the weekend talking about my two favorite things: basketball and comics.

And it turns out I’m not the only geek in the Suns family. Suns VP Jeramie McPeek showed up with his son in tow (or perhaps it was the other way around), and fellow Suns.com blogger Brad Faye stopped by to say hi and drop off the rather excellent comic book he wrote himself…and he was wearing a Leandro Barbosa jersey to boot.

Sometimes I get self-conscious about my interests. The intensity of my fanhood (Is that a word or a super-villain? “The Fearsome Fan-Hood!”) for the Suns can cause even the biggest of basketball fans among my friends to occasionally back away slowly, smiling nervously like they would at a suspected axe murderer. And my job writing comics, which I love…Well, let’s just say it tends to be a conversation-stopper when I’m at a dinner party with lawyers and doctors, and someone asks me what I do. I’m usually asked to move to the “kids’ table” (I have a better time there anyway).

But the San Diego Comicon pretty much has it all for a guy like me. It’s a place where I can feel good about what I do and what I’m into, because chances are, there’s a lot of people there just like me. I knew going in I’d find fellow comics fans, but finding as many Suns fans as I did – among the faux Dark Knights, the ersatz Wonder Women, and the ever-present Imperial Storm Troopers -- that was a thrill.

Next year, I’m going back, of course. I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and new, and talking Suns roundball and superheroes. And I’ll be prouder than ever.

But not so proud that I’ll wear green briefs and carry a tinfoil trident, don’t worry.

The Next Voice You Hear...

Thu, 19 Jul 07 15:41:00 UT

I've given it a lot of thought, and as much as I love the sport of basketball and the Phoenix Suns, I'm not sure I'd actually want to play for the team, as was my most cherished dream when I was a child. I like the ACLs I was born with... And who wants to visit Sacramento that many times a year?

But there’s one job with the team I definitely would love to have. Since the very first time I stepped into the old “Madhouse on McDowell,” the Suns’ original home of Veterans Memorial Coliseum, and heard the late, great Stan Richards boom out, “And now, the starting line-up for YOUR! PHOENIX! SUNS!” I’ve been fascinated with the notion of being an arena public address announcer.

I’ve sat pretty high up at some games and the action, as we all know, moves pretty fast – particularly in recent years with the Suns. It isn’t always easy to spot the uniform numbers after a quick hoop or keep up with mass substitutions to know who’s in the game. The game announcer is key to helping fans know just what’s going on at any given moment. And the way they speak, the tone of their voice, the enthusiasm they lend to certain moments or phrases… They go a long way to shaping the experience of the fan – and even toward making a casual observer a fan at all.

So I’ve cleverly wrangled my position as a Suns.com blogger into an opportunity to interview Suns arena announcer Jeff Scott, so I can ask him absolutely everything I’ve ever wanted to know about his job.

* * *

AB: Okay, most important question first: What’s the hardest name to pronounce in the NBA?

JS: There are several, but Sarunas Jasikevicius (Sha-roo-nuss Yassa-kevih-chiss) of the Warriors comes to mind, just because of all the syllables. (Suns TV voice) Gary Bender and I have gone over that one a thousand times.

AB: Do you stay up all hours praying the Suns won't acquire Eastern Europeans? I imagine you wanted to strangle someone when the Suns picked up Nikolosz Tskitishvili.

JS: Oddly, I don't get that concerned with difficult names on the Suns roster, because once you figure out how to pronounce them properly, you're used to them. It's the opponents tricky names. Players who aren't stars, and therefore don't have familiar names, that can pose the biggest challenge. More than likely, most people won't notice your mistake as long as you're consistent. As Miles Davis once said, "If you make a mistake, make it twice".

AB: Okay, let’s back up and talk about how you got to the position you’re in. What's your background and how did you land your gig as the Suns’ game announcer? Did you come from radio? Theater? Voice-over?

JS: My backround is in radio news. I spent twelve years as a news anchor/reporter at KTAR in Phoenix (from 1983 to '95, the last five as News Director), where I also had the chance to cover the Suns and the other local sports teams on occasion. When Jeff Munn was hired to replace Stan Richards in 1991, I was hired to replace Jeff as the PA voice for ASU men's basketball, a position I continue in along my position with the Suns. Jeff often had conflicts, and through the years, largely because of our professional and personal friendship, I'd served as his "backup" for the Suns, Diamondbacks and ASU football. As Jeff became more involved in radio play-by-play, he gave up his public address gigs. I took over as the stadium voice of ASU football in 2001, and replaced Jon Dupree as Suns PA man in 2005.

My "day job" has me working at Skyview (radio) Networks, where I run two state radio news networks (Arizona and California News Radio). In addition to my role as News Director, I anchor the morning newscasts on both networks, which are heard on more than 60 radio stations throughout Arizona and California.

AB: What was your first NBA game like? Obviously, you’d been on the air a lot before then in other venues, but just how big were the butterflies?

JS: My first regular season NBA game was when I filled in for Jeff in 1994. I couldn't sleep all week, and I stayed up late watching videotapes of games to make sure I was familiar with the NBA rules. It was back in the Barkley era and I was a wreck. It went pretty well, though I have a tape of my starting lineup intros and you can hear my voice trembling, as if I was on a treadmill.

AB: Now that you’ve been there for a while, do you have any kind of pre-game ritual to prepare yourself or get yourself psyched up to perform?

JS: A light pre-game meal in the press lounge, and a cup of hot decaff coffee to warm up the vocal chords. Seeing the seats fill up to capacity is plenty to get me psyched...

AB: In a big way, you set the tone for the fan experience of the game. In some stadiums, announcers are very demonstrative and have catch-phrases ("Deee-troit bas-ket-ball!!!"). Are you into that, or does it drive you crazy? What do you feel is your role?

JS: I think the public address announcer is like the crowd's dance partner. There are many nights when you need to lead, and other nights, when the crowd is obviously into the game on it's own, you just help them along and join in with them. The Suns style of play makes it easy to get excited throughout much of the game, and certainly, an important part of (Director of Game Operations) Kip Helt’s and my role is to keep the atmosphere upbeat and enthusiastic when game circumstances have quieted things down.

AB: All right, I have to ask: What's the goofiest thing you've heard yourself say over the stadium address system?

JS: I once sneezed over the public address system at Sun Devil Stadium. There's about a second and a half delay before your voice goes over the stadium sound system, so not only did I sneeze -- I got to hear it in all it's glory just like everyone else.

FYI, the most embarrassing moment came when, during a timeout routine in 2005, I was supposed to lead the crowd in a rendition of "Happy Birthday" to the Gorilla. I can't sing. I figured I'll sing/talk the first few words, everyone will join in and I'll be off the hook. No one joined in. Kip kept pointing to me to continue singing and I just couldn't. I wouldn't. I just turned red instead. This past season, same routine. I sang this time and got a text message from my brother, who was at the game, saying "Don't ever do that again."

AB: Do you ever get any kidding from Suns players or coaches, or their opponents, for things you've said?

JS: A few years ago, I announced at the Suns pre-season scrimmage in Flagstaff. When it came time to announce the coaches, I drew a blank on (then Suns assistant) Frank Johnson and announced him to the crowd as Frank... Robinson. In unison, Frank, Scott Skiles, and virtually every player on the team turned and looked at me, and mouthed "Frank ROBINSON???" I spent the rest of the night searching for a hole to climb into.

AB: Do you consult with players on the pronunciation of their names, or what nicknames they'd like?

JS: Nicknames are pretty much left up to Kip and his staff, and the marketing department. We discuss names and sayings (Steeeve for threeee...etc.), and I work them in at, hopefully, the appropriate times. It was passed along to us that Amaré Stoudemire was not a fan of the "Stat-man" moniker we used early last season.

AB: Do you ever get recognized in public just from the sound of your voice? Like, when you tell the cashier at the grocery store, "You have two minutes -- TWO MINUTES -- to give me my change?"

JS: I do occasionally get comments about the sound of my voice, but I don't think they place it with that of the voice they hear at the arena without all the noise to accompany it. Those who know me and know that I work the Suns games talk to me as if I'm a member of the coaching staff, rather than an announcer. I was recently on a Cub Scout camping trip with my son, the week after the Suns were eliminated by the Spurs. Non stop Suns talk for three days.

AB: During games, do you have a “spotter” who assists you, in case the action moves so fast you might not see who exactly scored a basket or who made an assist, or in case you might not hear or see a referee’s call?

JS: I don't have a spotter, per se, but I do sit next to Jerry Heck, the longtime official scorer, so if I miss something, he usually picks me up (and likewise). Kip is on the other side of me, so he's another set of eyes. I have an excellent vantage point (courtside, center court), so it's hard to miss TOO much.

AB: How hard is it to keep yourself from cheering a great play by either team during a game?

JS: I don't try to keep it to myself. To the contrary, I have the opportunity, via the sound of my voice, to convey my "cheer" via the way I announce that player's name after they've made that great play. How cool is that?

AB: Finally, I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this, but I want to hear you say it: What's the best part of your job? Being part of the organization, part of the total game experience, having a courtside seat for every game, or the whole package?

JS: The whole package. Great seats, great organization full of people who couldn't be more professional and fun to work with, and just an enormous opportunity to play a role in the game-night experience during one of the most exciting times in this franchise's history. I can't believe how lucky I am, as a longtime fan, to have this particular job at this particular time. I try desperately to enjoy it as much as possible each night out, and not to screw it up!

* * *

See what I was talking about? Coolest job ever. Except when Sarunas Jasikevicius comes to town.

The Best Suns Draft Ever

Mon, 25 Jun 07 19:58:00 UT

Draft week always sends me scurrying back through Suns' history, looking at players come and gone, seasons of success and not-so-much-success. It's a good time to consider what's come before, when you're about to get a dose, in some form or other, of what's going to be.

The Suns drafted George Gervin in the third round of the 1974 NBA Draft.
(NBAE Photos)

There’s been a lot of talk this off-season about the Suns’ past few drafts; players that didn’t pan out, players the team might have drafted and passed on, deals that did or didn’t work. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

Did you know the Suns drafted the following notable players who never put on the purple and orange: ABA/NBA ironman and all-star Ron Boone (1968 – 11th round), ABA/NBA legend and scoring champ George Gervin (1974 – 3rd round), 70s scoring ace Billy McKinney (1977, 6th round), and man-mountain shot-blocker Mark Eaton (1979, 5th round)?

Of course, those were the days when the NBA draft had something like two hundred rounds, and in some cases, there was the ABA, a whole other league, to contend with, so the science of selecting players was a bit less defined.

Also, back then, fewer underclassmen and almost no Europeans made themselves eligible for the draft, and the emphasis wasn’t as much on potential as it was on ready-to-play athletes; there was a better chance of finding a hidden gem in a late round (remember Alvin Scott, the Suns’ 7th round pick in 1977?

He went on to play most of a decade for the club as a super-sub). Nowadays, as there are no late rounds, and every pick is absolutely crucial, from a financial standpoint, and from the standpoint of improving your team. You get just a few shots in the draft now, so you better be right about your picks…which is why the entire city of Portland is sweating bullets as I write this.

The Suns pick 24th, 29th and 59th in this year’s draft, and there are so many scenarios swirling over what the Suns might do with their picks that I can’t keep them all straight. I have my preferences, but I’m notoriously bad at eyeing talent that I think will help the Suns (years ago, when now-Suns staffer Steve Koek called to tell me the club had traded Eddie Johnson for Xavier McDaniel, I confidently predicted the NBA could forward the championship trophy to Phoenix immediately), so I’m just a nervous, hopeful observer.

So, to pass the time, I donned my 20/20 spectacles to look back at previous Suns drafts in hopes of determining which one did the most for the franchise. My criteria were: 1) Impact players for the team. Not guys who may have gone elsewhere and had great careers. What did Suns draftees contribute to the Suns? (2004 Suns draftee Luol Deng may turn out to be a great player, just not here) 2) Depth of draft. The Suns have landed many strong players in drafts where they only had one or two picks (Shawn Marion in 1999 and Amare Stoudemire in 2002, to name two) – which is all you can ask for in this day and age, but I want to reward the team for reaching for those hidden gems. So, naturally, earlier drafts are weighted a bit heavier than more recent ones.

For me, it came down to two Suns drafts. Narrowly finishing in second place was the draft for the 1975-76 season. Only two players from that draft played for the Suns that season (a third, Bayard Forrest, came aboard later), but they were crucial in turning the team into an NBA force, starting a winning tradition that has continued, nearly uninterrupted, to this day. Phoenix had two first-round picks, and used the first (Number 4 overall) on an undersized, high-post, underclassman center from Oklahoma, Alvan Adams.

The second (Number 16 overall) became Ricky Sobers, a two-fisted guard from Shawn Marion’s alma mater, UNLV. Both emerged as starters. Adams became the Suns’ first Rookie of the Year. And thanks in no small part to the efforts of these young players, the Suns made it to their first NBA Finals in 1976. In other words, Adams and Sobers were crucial to turning the franchise around and setting them on a successful track. Sobers didn’t stay with the Suns long, but his initial impact was powerful. Adams, of course, never left the Suns, remaining with them to this day. In his playing years, he was long the face of the franchise, and a cornerstone for the team to build around.

But the best draft, in my opinion, came a dozen years later, for the 1988-89 season. It was a season of enormous change for the Suns. Wracked by devastating drug scandal rumors, poor records in previous seasons, coaching changes, and whispers of a possible move to another city, the Suns completely overhauled their roster and their image. At the end of the previous season, the Suns had shipped their franchise player, Larry Nance, to Cleveland for Mark West, Tyrone Corbin and Kevin Johnson, and it was clear all three players would make an impact on the Suns’ future. Sharpshooting sixth man Eddie Johnson had come aboard in a trade. Cotton Fitzsimmons had returned to the Suns as Director of Player Personnel, and would soon be named Head Coach once more. The off-season yielded a proven superstar as a free agent, Tom Chambers. The Sun with the longest tenure on the team was a young guard named Jeff Hornacek (himself a hidden gem in the draft, once upon a time). The Suns were priming themselves to resume their position as a perennial contender. But the draft would be crucial – there were holes to fill, and this would be their chance.

I was an intern at KPNX-TV that summer, carrying tripods for photographers, mostly, and trying not to wilt in the heat. But I finagled my way into a hotel ballroom along with our news crew for the Suns’ draft party, and watched with great interest as Cotton and Assistant Coaches Paul Westphal and Lionel Hollins, from the stage, announced the Suns’ picks.

As I recall, I fervently hoped the Suns would take a big man with their first pick at Number 7, probably Rony Seikaly or Will Perdue (sorry, Mark West, like I said, I’m a terrible judge of draft talent). Instead, the Suns went with Tim Perry, a high-flying forward from Temple I didn’t know much about. The pick was greeted with some indifference, if I remember right, and while Perry never proved to be the most consistent player, he had his moments, and he figured prominently in the trade that brought Charles Barkley to town some years later…so give the Suns points for that.

The Suns had another pick in that first round, Number 14. After not selecting a “big name,” there was grumbling in the crowd. Gary Grant had been in for workouts, and was a big name from Michigan. Rod Strickland of DePaul was still available, and so was Notre Dame’s David Rivers (remember, Kevin Johnson was more promising than proven then, so the Suns’ interest in a point guard would have been understandable). Instead, the Suns picked Dan Majerle…and there were boos. No one had ever heard of him. His description didn’t help him. He was from Central Michigan (where?), where he had played center at 6-foot-6 (what?). I proudly state that I didn’t boo…but I wasn’t happy either, even when Cotton told us, “I cannot help how you feel…You will be sorry you ever booed this young man.”

He was right, of course. Thunder Dan became one of the most popular players in team history, beginning his career as a role player extraordinaire, a la John Havlicek, a slasher, a defender and a tireless worker. He’d go on to become one of the most feared three-point shooters to ever play, and was a key cog in the Suns teams that became perennial contenders in the Western Conference throughout the Nineties.

In the second round, the Suns finally selected a big man, a baby-faced center from Arkansas named Andrew Lang. He never put up the biggest numbers, but he was a capable player who worked hard on defense and protected the rim, and for a franchise that hadn’t really had a lot of success in the middle over the years, they were welcome traits. Lang played serviceably for several years with Phoenix before also figuring in the trade for Barkley, a trade that paved the way for the franchise’s second Finals appearance in 1993.

Three picks, three players that figured prominently and favorably in Suns history. All three were key components in making the franchise a force, restoring its place not just in the NBA, but in the hearts of Phoenix sports fans. At the team’s lowest ebb, they helped bring it back from the brink.

There was one other pick of note in that Suns draft, by the way – a scrappy guard with a bad knee and very little quickness, but with great basketball intelligence and a deadly stroke from downtown. He played college ball down the road at the University of Arizona, meaning even if he didn’t make the team, he’d at least be a fan favorite.

Steve Kerr didn’t play long for the Suns, but he lasted longer in the NBA than anyone else the Suns took in that draft, and the championship rings he collected from Chicago and San Antonio attest to his value. He also ended his career as the NBA’s career leader in 3-point shooting efficiency.

Okay, but what was his long-lasting impact on the Suns? What did he do that changed the franchise, and helped make the 1988 draft the most significant in franchise history? Well, he never cut his ties to the state, and on June 2, 2007, he accepted the post as the Suns’ General Manager and President of Basketball Operations, so we’re about to find out. And we’ll start this Thursday at the 2007-08 NBA Draft.

Who knows? Maybe, in nineteen years, we’ll be talking about it as the best in Suns’ history.

Trade Rumors

Tue, 19 Jun 07 19:54:00 UT

Ah, summer. When the inconsequential NBA Finals are over at last (all NBA Finals that don't involve the Suns are inconsequential), and a young blogger's thoughts turn to wheeling, dealing, drafting...and trade rumors.

If you have a basketball card of Paul Mokeski, the Suns just might want to talk about a deal.
(NBAE Photos)

For me, thinking about next season began the day the Suns were eliminated from the playoffs. Who will stay? Who will go? How will the Suns look to improve themselves for next year’s run at the trophy?

Now, with action on the court finally at an end, other teams and their fans are wondering the very same things. Can we pry that superstar away from his team with an offer of only three stale hot dogs, Paul Mokeski’s rookie card, and one alternate throwback road jersey once worn by our trainer’s sister? Is that Bratislavan combo guard with crossed eyes and a peg leg able to create his own shot, and thus worth taking in the first round? The draft is a week or so away, and we’ll begin to get some of our answers then. Until that time, however, all we have is speculation… and rumors.

No doubt, you’ve seen the names of some of the current Suns surface in these rumors. Some of the names show up every offseason, it seems, while others are making their first appearance. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of these rumors ever come to fruition, meaning they’re mostly a source of irritation for these players… it’s not like any of them are loading moving vans at the first whisper of trade possibility. And some of the rumors are downright ridiculous.

Which is why I’d like to use this space to deny some of the more outrageous trade rumors I’ve heard thus far in the off-season…involving ME.

• NO, the Suns are not trading me to the Lakers even-up for Kobe Bryant. The Suns would never trade me within their own division.

• NO, the Suns are not trading me to the Timberwolves for Kevin Garnett. My contract specifically allows me to veto any trade to any city where hockey is more important than basketball, and where the temperature never rises above, “I don’t think my lips are supposed to be blue.”

• NO, the Suns are not trading me to their arena maintenance department. The maintenance department staff didn’t want to upset their chemistry. I can respect that.

• NO, the Suns are not trading me to Indiana for Jermaine O’Neal. However, they have said that if they can get Tito, Marlon, Jackie, and Michael O’Neal in the deal, they might consider it.

• NO, the Suns are not trading me to Chicago for a package including Luol Deng, Andres Nocioni and Thabo Sefolosha. Reportedly, the Bulls felt “Adam” was too difficult a name to pronounce.

• NO, the Suns are not trading me to Orlando for Billy Donovan. Donovan reportedly has the right to accept, refuse, accept, refuse, accept and refuse any deal (Sorry, couldn’t help myself).

• NO, the Suns are not trading me to Boston for Theo Ratliff, Delonte West and the Celtics’ first-round draft pick. The ghost of Red Auerbach insisted the Suns throw in the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert, and the Suns backed off – after much discussion.

• NO, the Suns are not trading me to the Nets for Vince Carter, as New Jersey feels exchanging “Half-Man, Half-Amazing,” for “Half-Man” isn’t an even swap.

• NO, the Suns are not trading me for Commissioner David Stern’s mustache, circa 1984. Apparently, the mustache failed its physical.

• NO, the Suns are not trading me to Atlanta for Joe Johnson, whom the Suns would send back to Atlanta for their first round picks in 2010 and 2011, the 2010 pick being lottery protected and the 2011 pick being non-lottery protected, which the Suns would then send back to Atlanta along with their own second-round pick in 2009 and the Hawks’ 2008 first-rounder, which isn’t lottery protected, for Joe Johnson and a conditional third-round pick from 1987 because everyone’s heads exploded and their was no one left to do the deal.

• NO, the Suns are not trading me to Portland for the draft rights to Greg Oden. Yes, as a Suns fan, I feel kind of bad about that one, too.

So there you have it. I hope that puts all these scandalous rumors to rest once and for all. I am a Suns.com blogger now and forevermore, and the Suns have no plans to move me to any other franchise, no matter how big the offer might –

Excuse me, that’s my phone.

Hello? Yes, this is he. I’m what?! To where?! Oh, for Pete’s sake, I just got done writing a column saying this wasn’t going to happen! Well, where am I going? Really? They still have a team? Well, what did you get for me?

Paul Mokeski’s rookie card? Not bad!

Summer Reading List

Tue, 05 Jun 07 19:38:00 UT

Sure, the NBA Finals are about to start, but I'm already going through pro hoops withdrawal.

I’m moderately excited to see how LeBron James will perform in his first Finals and I’m certainly rooting for the Cavaliers, but I don’t have much interest in seeing the Spurs play another four to seven games, so I’m not sure how much of the series I’ll actually watch. Instead, chances are I’ll probably settle in with six or seven good books about basketball and wait for the draft, then the summer leagues, then training camp, then the start of the 2007-2008 season.

You may be looking for a good page-turner as well right about now (especially if you’re a Suns fan), so I thought I’d list here ten of my favorite basketball books. Some of them may be easier to find than others. These days, I scour the Internet for odd, out-of-print hoops books, and a couple of those show up on this list. I have a bias toward books about basketball in the 1970s and biographies of players from those days, I think because that’s when I started paying attention to the sport. I also like team histories, where I can learn about the personalities of teams over time. Not all of these are about the Suns, and I don’t claim that these are the best basketball books ever written, they’re just my favorites. If you’ve got your own, I’d love to hear about them, and if you read any of these as a result of this list, I’d love to know what you think about them.

1. THE LITTLE TEAM THAT COULD…AND DARN NEAR DID! THE FABULOUS RISE OF THE PHOENIX SUNS, by Joe Gilmartin

It all started here, for me. In the summer of 1977, I attended Phoenix Suns basketball camp at the Jewish Community Center (Side anecdote: At that camp, Suns forward Curtis Perry led us through a rebounding drill where we started on one side of the lane, tossed the ball off the backboard, then caught it as we leapt to the other side of the lane. I tossed the ball OVER the backboard, where it got stuck in the rigging behind the hoop. Curtis looked down at me, patted my eight-year old head, and said, “Play guard.”), and all campers were handed a copy of this book. I read it countless times that summer, and I’ve read it roughly once a year since. Written with great wit and love by Suns.com’s very own Mr. Gilmartin, who’s been there since the beginning, the book traces the team’s history from prior to its inception to its first glorious title run in 1976.

If you’re a Suns fan curious about the early days of the team, this is THE book. Not only will it give you insight into the history of the squad, you’ll get a sense of Phoenix as a sports town in the days before pro sports mania really hit the Valley (“In sports…Phoenix is an incorporated Rodney Dangerfield.”). You’ll learn about little-remembered coaches like Butch van Breda Kolff, who led the Suns for a grand total of seven games in 1972 (“The first signs of trouble appeared in an exhibition game…against the Lakers. The Lakers were having troubles of their own, so many that they scored only 142 points in a 48-minute layup drill, even though the Suns kept throwing them the ball.”) You’ll learn about Leapin’ Lamar Green, the Suns forward who once sprained his ankle during a jump ball…by getting it tangled in an opponent’s shirt. And you’ll find out about Cotton Fitzsimmons’ first tenure as a Suns coach, read tales of the legendary Connie Hawkins (“Connie Hawkins was somebody everybody got mad at; Connie Hawkins was somebody nobody could stay mad at more than five minutes.”), and of course chart the rise of the Suns team that bowed to Boston in one of the great NBA Finals ever played (“Phoenix fans really cared! Desperately, deeply, loudly, longingly, lovingly, and, in the end, tearfully.”).

It’s just a wonderful book, and it’s inspired me and my writing as much as anything I’ve ever read. I can quote it from memory in places…but you might expect that, given how many times I’ve read the darn thing. I even bought a second copy, since my first one is almost worn out.

2. LOOSE BALLS, by Terry Pluto

This was the book I wanted to write, and I was desperately upset when it came out. But then I read it, and it was everything I wanted to read, and more. Pluto traces the history of the upstart American Basketball Association during its 1960s and 1970s run, the league that brought us slam dunk contests, the three-point shot, spectacularly large Afros, the red-white-and-blue basketball, and Dr. J. It’s an oral history, meaning it’s told in the direct quotes of the people who were there, like Larry Brown, Bob Costas, and even Pat Boone, with Pluto chiming with valuable clarifications, statistics and information.

The number of anecdotes in this book that will make you laugh out loud is off the charts. My favorite is about the player who refused to board a plane that would change time zones, meaning an arrival technically EARLIER than the departure, saying, “I ain’t gettin’ on no time machine.” It’s a terrific snapshot of pro basketball in the 1970s, when the personalities were as fun as the game.

3. THE BREAKS OF THE GAME, by David Halberstam

The tragic recent death of Halberstam robbed the world of one of its great writers, period, but also of a particularly great basketball writer. Halberstam wrote this book about the 1979-80 Portland Trailblazers, having traveled with the team for the entire season. It’s as good an “inside the locker room” book as has ever been written, capturing the turbulent ups and downs (in this case, mostly downs) of an entire basketball franchise. Player personalities, coaching styles, game strategies, internal conflict and fragile camaraderie…It’s all here as Halberstam takes notes on the end of the Bill Walton era in Portland.

4. TALL TALES, by Terry Pluto

Yes, Pluto again. He followed up LOOSE BALLS with a similarly structured oral history of the NBA’s earliest years that’s almost as diverting as BALLS. The personalities may not have been quite as big, and the style of play not as flashy, but it’s nonetheless fascinating to read about the league’s early movers and shakers, like Auerbach, Gottlieb and Kerner. And the legendary players, from Cousy and Russell to Baylor, West and Chamberlain, are here too. Yes, there was basketball before Michael Jordan, and it was every bit as interesting as basketball today. Maybe more.

5. BREAKING THE RULES, by Mike Tulumello

Longtime Valley sportswriter Tulumello wrote this excellent book about the Charles Barkley era in Phoenix during the mid-1990s. Barkley transformed the franchise, helping bring it tremendous success, but Tulumello intelligently discusses the positive and negative sides of that transformation. Barkley’s presence affected everybody involved with the team, and the author uses that to explore Suns legends like Kevin Johnson, Dan Majerle, Tom Chambers, Cotton Fitzsimmons and Paul Westphal. Though Barkley’s at the center of the book (no surprise – he was at the center of everything else in his career), it’s a total picture of the organization at a very specific time in its history.

6. THE LAST BANNER, by Peter May

It wasn’t quite the end of an era, but there was definitely the sense that the end was nearby when Boston won its most recent title, in the 1985-86 season. The core of the club, Robert Parish, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Dennis Johnson, had been together for several years, and while they couldn’t be considered ancient (Okay, maybe Parish was ancient), they were definitely aging. This book presents us with their remarkable chemistry and is a smart, inside portrait of a team of veterans and how they pace themselves through a season.

7. FOUL! By David Wolf

Suns fans looking for the full story of Connie Hawkins and his tumultuous journey to the NBA and Phoenix need look no further than this fantastic biography. From childhood to obscure semi-pro leagues to the Harlem Globetrotters, Wolf follows Hawk’s dogged desire to make it in basketball after being falsely implicated in a point-shaving scandal, and when he finally gets his chance, the reader breaks down in tears just like the player himself. The book closes with a Hawk’s-eye view of the Hall-of-Famer’s first season in Phoenix, followed by the team’s first-ever playoff run, and near-upset of the mighty Lakers.

8. THE LAST SEASON, by Phil Jackson

I can hear the gasps. “A book about the Lakers makes your Top Ten list?! Beechen, we don’t even know who you are, anymore!” I know, I know. But reading an account of the downfall of the Lakers’ early-decade dynasty, especially a well-written account, is just too much fun to keep the book off the list. Jackson wrote this as a kiss-off, thinking he’d never be back with the Lakers organization, so he doesn’t spare anyone criticism, even himself. Ever wonder what a coach REALLY thinks of his players? The answers can be pretty surprising. This is my favorite book by a coach, a great view from the front of the bench.

9. WHAT’S HAPPENIN’? by Blaine Johnson

This one’s hard to find, but highly entertaining. Johnson, a reporter for a Seattle newspaper, spent the 1976-77 season with the Supersonics, much the way Halberstam would spend a season with the Blazers a few years later. This book lacks Halberstam’s gift for the larger context, but it gets closer to the players, and the Sonics had some great personalities in this period: Slick Watts, Downtown Freddy Brown, and Tall (7’ 4”) Tommy Burleson. Best of all, their coach was none other than Bill Russell, and he emerges as a real enigma – very detached from the team, almost a non-presence, except when he criticizes. Much of the book is given over to the players – and the author – trying to figure Russell out…and everyone comes away scratching their heads.

10. THE PUNCH, by John Feinstein

In a regular-season game on December 9, 1977, Lakers forward Kermit Washington, during a brawl between his team and the Houston Rockets, wheeled and leveled Rockets forward Rudy Tomjanvich with a devastating punch to the face – and nearly ended his life. The event had huge and long-lasting implications for both men, as well as for the entire league. Feinstein, one of the best sportswriters around, examines the effect of that single punch in minute detail, and how it reverberates today. It’s a sad, scary, fascinating book, whether you’re old enough to remember seeing the videotape of the event, or not.

Whew! Hard list to come up with – I’m already second-guessing myself about more books I treasure that I wish could be on the list, like THE RIVALRY, by John Taylor; THE PIVOTAL SEASON, by Charley Rosen; FIND THE KEY MAN, by Hal Higdon; FORTY-EIGHT MINUTES, by Terry Pluto (him again!) and Bob Ryan; THE PRIDE OF PORTLAND, by Frank Coffey and Tom Biracree; THE SHORT SEASON, by John Powers and THE BULLS AND CHICAGO, by Bob Logan. And that’s just a small sample.

Hopefully, if any of these interest you, hunting for them and then reading them will keep you occupied during these dry, hot months of baseball and then football, otherwise known as the “dead zones” between Suns’ seasons. They’ll certainly make the “wait ‘til next year” a lot more enjoyable.

A Tense Renegotiation

Tue, 29 May 07 11:12:00 UT

Enough head-hanging at the season gone by, Suns fans. The NBA draft is a month away, and soon after, it'll be time for free agent signings, then the Vegas summer league, and then, before you know it, it's training camp time for the 2007-08 season.

It’s time to look ahead, to think about the future. That’s what I’m doing, and I started the process last week by holding talks with the Suns organization to renew my status as a blogger for the Suns.com website.

Such negotiations can be tense. If talks between players and a team are nearly as nerve-wracking as talks between a blogger and a team, then it’s a wonder team officials and pro basketball stars have any fingernails left, let alone knuckles or wrists. In the interests of continuing to use my somewhat special status as a typical fan officially associated with the Suns to bring other fans “beyond the curtain” whenever possible and share glimpses of what goes on behind the scenes, I thought it might be educational to present the transcript of my renegotiation talks with the organization. Present for the conference call were Suns VP of Interactive Services Jeramie McPeek, my Agent, and myself.

McPeek: Hello?

Beechen: Jeramie! My man!

McPeek: Who is this?

Beechen: It’s Adam Beechen!

McPeek: (silence)

Beechen: From the website!

McPeek: Website…

Beechen: The Suns website. I write a blog. From the fan’s perspective.

McPeek: Oh, right. How did you get my home number, and why are you calling me…at 3 am?

Beechen: Oh, well, see, I read in this book about negotiating contracts that you’re supposed to use the element of surprise, and hit up your employer when they’re not expecting it! Are you surprised?

McPeek: Yeah…So are my wife and children, who were sleeping soundly. “Hit up your employer” for what?

Beechen: About extending my contract to continue my blog for Suns.com for the 2007-08 season! I’ve got my agent right here on the phone!

Agent: *snoring*

Beechen (loud whisper): Mom! Wake up!

Agent (startled): Adam! Is there an intruder in the house? What do I smell on your breath? Are you on drugs?

Beechen: Heh heh…Just lulling you into a false sense of security, Jeramie…You should know we’re very prepared for a brutal series of negotiations, and we have a lot of leverage on our side.

McPeek: Leverage?

Beechen: Yep. I hate to break it to you like this, but the Milwaukee Bucks have made me a very lucrative offer…

McPeek: To write a “Superfan” blog for them?

Beechen: That’s right.

McPeek: But you’re not a fan of the Bucks in any way, shape, or form.

Beechen: Well, no. I was going to try to convert their fans into being Suns fans…

McPeek: Uh huh. What are they offering to pay you?

Beechen: Pay me?

McPeek: Are you telling me their “lucrative offer” was just to LET you write a blog for them? The same as we do?

Beechen: They offered to match anything I was receiving from the Suns.

McPeek: We don’t give you anything, except a little bit of bandwidth for your blog.

Beechen: Exactly. So you better sweeten your deal with me, if you want to keep me around!

McPeek: Sweeten it how?

Beechen: Oh, I have a list of demands! My agent will read them off.

(long pause)

Agent: *snoring*

Beechen (loud whisper): Mom! The list of demands!

Agent (startled): Huh?! Oh…Adam demands season tickets.

McPeek: No.

Agent: Adam demands Suns locker room access and a ride to and from every game with Steve Nash.

McPeek: No and no.

Agent: Adam demands a spot in the Ring of Honor, with a special halftime induction ceremony during the regular season opener.

McPeek: Heck no.

Agent: Adam demands lambada lessons from Leandro Barbosa.

McPeek: What?

Beechen: I’m aware it’s a forbidden dance, so I’m flexible on that one. Keep going, Mom.

Agent: Adam demands a spot in the team photo for 2007-08, his own bobblehead doll, an autographed foam finger from Robert Sarver, and a bag of the Gorilla’s toenail clippings.

McPeek: I’m going back to bed. Adam, good luck in Milwaukee.

Beechen: Wait! Jeramie, wait! You know I don’t want to go to Milwaukee! I’m a Suns fan for life! Negotiations are supposed to be give-and-take…Tell me what you’re prepared to offer me, and we’ll go from there!

McPeek: What we’re prepared to offer you? How about your own fan blog on Suns.com for another season?

Beechen: That’s it?

McPeek: That’s it.

Beechen: How about at double my current salary?

McPeek: Well, we’re not paying you anything, so two times nothing is nothing.

Beechen: I know, I know, but it’ll sound good in my press release. Is it okay if I say I’m getting twice as much?

McPeek: Whatever.

Beechen: Then it’s a deal! I’ll have my agent draw up the papers, we’ll send them over, and then we can start discussing plans for next season! I’m thinking I’ll fly everywhere with the Suns on the team charter…

*Sound of McPeek's phone hanging up*

Beechen: Yes! Back with the Suns for another go-round! I’m a veteran, now! Sure feels good. Although, I gotta say, I kind of expected more from you as my agent, and I’m seriously considering cutting your percentage of my new contract down to four percent from five. Still, all in all, I think everything worked out pretty well, don’t you? Mom?

Agent: *snoring*

Soft No More

Thu, 17 May 07 19:03:00 UT

Two years ago in the playoffs, the Suns' Joe Johnson got his face broken in a game against Dallas. He coolly got up and shot free throws. The Suns responded in the next game with a gutty comeback. Still, they were called "soft."

Raja Bell and the Suns showed toughness despite their Game 5 loss to the Spurs on Wednesday night.
(NBAE Photos)

Last season, the Suns ran to the Western Conference Finals without Amaré Stoudemire and, for the most part, Kurt Thomas, and overcame a suspension at a critical time against Raja Bell, who would later play through a painful calf injury. Still, they were called “soft.”

Last night, the Suns ignored suspensions to Amaré Stoudemire and Boris Diaw and played one of the grittiest games I’ve ever seen, leading the nearly-full-strength Spurs for 43 minutes before running out of gas. It was, by any measure, a heroic stand by a severely undermanned team. And though the Suns fell just short, if their efforts last night didn’t wash away the dreaded “soft” label once and for all, I don’t know what will.

For as long as I can remember, literally, “Suns” and “soft” have been linked together in NBA conversations. Going back to the MacLeod Era, when the Suns started an undersized center at the high post, and their offense was predicated on fast breaks and pinpoint passing, they were characterized as “pretty,” just another word for “soft.” It was a characterization that led the Suns to trade for noted tough guys like Truck Robinson and Xavier McDaniel. Didn’t help.

In 1992, the Suns acquired one of the toughest men ever to play the game, Charles Barkley. Hoops watchers shook their heads in disdain at the Suns teams that followed over the next few years. “Chuck is tough,” they said. “The Suns aren’t.”

The “Bad Boy” Pistons of the late 1980s and early 1990s were considered tough. They bludgeoned, clubbed, mugged and didn’t care how many flagrant fouls and ejections they ran up so long as they won. The Knicks of the mid-1990s were considered tough. They turned “winning ugly” into a popular phrase, setting Slob Screens and mowing down opponents with elbows and knees.

That’s not the kind of tough I want my team to be. I want my team’s definitions of tough to be, “won’t back down from a challenge,” and, “faces adversity and ratchets up the effort when it’s needed most.” I want their toughness to come from playing hard, playing well, and playing honorably. I want their toughness to be in their hearts as well as their biceps.

“Tough” should be Kurt Thomas playing more minutes last night than in any game since anyone can remember, spending most of it isolated on one of the best players in the league, and contributing not only on defense, holding that player to a sub-par game, but providing stellar efforts on offense and on the glass, all the while remaining out of foul trouble.

“Tough” should be Shawn Marion, overcoming a reputation for playoff inconsistency, turning in a double-double in the first half, when the team had trouble scoring as a whole, when the team absolutely needed him the most.

“Tough” should be Steve Nash, having already taken six stitches to his nose, a knee to the groin, and a scorer’s table upside the head, still darting again and again into the heart of the best defense in the NBA, coming out with his own double-double.

“Tough” should be the fact that none of these players, nor anyone else who played for the Suns last night, blamed their loss on the absence of one of their best players and one of their top reserves.

Using those definitions as standards, last night, the Suns proved themselves once and for all to be as tough as anyone could want. And the final score doesn’t impact that a bit.

Don’t agree? Tough.

The Letter of the Law

Wed, 16 May 07 01:19:00 UT

A few years ago, Temple University basketball Coach John Chaney sent one of his deepest bench players into a game for the sole purpose of incapacitating an opponent's best player.

The poor scrub dutifully did as he was told, and then sat our the length of his ensuing suspension, while the opponent’s star was lost for considerably longer, essentially ending any hope his team had for a season of success. It was a horrible piece of calculated gamesmanship that paid off perfectly – in the short run, Temple won the game. But in the long run, all of basketball lost.

For the record, I don’t believe for a second that the Spurs’ Robert Horry body-checked Steve Nash into the scorer’s table at the end of Game 4 with the intention of hurting the Suns’ star, and I don’t believe he did it with the intention of luring two of the Suns’ best players off their bench and into debilitating suspensions at the most crucial stage of a playoff series. Nor do I think Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich, or any member of his staff, encouraged or ordered Horry to deliver an unnecessarily hard foul to any Suns player with the intention of doing that player harm or seeing opponents suspended.

I think what happened was this: Robert Horry blew his cool. Simple as that. Frustrated by the Spurs’ collapse in a game they had largely dominated, upset at seeing the home court advantage they had fought to steal be stolen from them, he made a mistake and unloaded on Steve Nash. I didn’t see any post-game quotes from Horry, but I bet he’d say much the same thing. And I bet Popovich either read Horry the riot act after the game before the press entered the locker room, or he knew that, since Horry has been in the league since prior to the invention of the shot clock, that he didn’t have to, because Horry knew exactly how badly he had screwed up.

The players of the NBA, while they may not always get along as individuals, are a fraternity. No one wants to see anyone else’s health damaged or career threatened. And the Spurs are a class organization. They don’t make any more “dirty” plays, intentional or not, than any other team in the league. They don’t need to resort to dirty tricks to win games or championships. They’ve proven that in the past. They’re simply a hard-nosed team that plays a very physical brand of basketball, and has a lot of success doing it. Obviously, they’re the villains of this piece to every Suns fan, but trust me, dirty play is not part of their institutional culture.

Still, the unintentional result of the incident is that the Spurs are left without a valuable role player for two games, while the Suns are left without their leading scorer, and one of their top two reserves. Based on that, even though Horry’s action was not premeditated, it works out to be a brilliant bit of gamesmanship that essentially neutralizes the Suns’ regained home court advantage. It’s a trade that definitely works in the Spurs’ favor, and any protests to the contrary, they have to be pretty happy about it. I know if it happened the other way, I’d certainly be glad to come out ahead – though I’d keep it to myself.

Boris Diaw and Amaré Stoudemire, seeing their teammate and leader take a cheap shot, left the immediate vicinity of the bench to come to his aid. That’s a fact. Doing so was a clear violation of NBA rules. That’s a fact. The penalty for violating that rule is a mandatory suspension of at least one game. That’s a fact. In terms of the letter of the NBA law, Boris, Amaré and the Suns received just punishment. It doesn’t matter that Amaré stepped out barely onto the court simply to get around other players. It doesn’t matter that neither player made it as far as half-court because of the heroic restraining action of the Suns’ assistant coaches. It doesn’t matter that, as others have been saying, Tim Duncan and Bruce Bowen may have stepped onto the court in the second quarter of the same game when it looked like another altercation might take place (I didn’t see that play, so I can’t comment). It doesn’t matter what went before in the series’ physical play. In this case, the NBA got it right, according to the letter of their law.

Now, that letter of the law can (and probably should, and probably will) be debated – in the off-season. It’s an ironclad rule with no room for flexibility, and maybe there should be some flexibility built into it for future seasons. But now, in the middle of a playoff series, isn’t the time to rewrite a rule, however inappropriate to a situation it may be. I don’t believe Stoudemire and Diaw deserve their sentences, based on what they did when the incident occurred. I think most people who saw the play, maybe even some of them in San Antonio, would feel the same way.

Doesn’t matter. The rule is the rule.

And the truth, however unpalatable to Suns fans, is that Amaré and Boris should’ve known better. Their reaction to seeing Steve Nash laid out was one hundred percent human and absolutely natural. I have no doubt that, in the same situation, I’d have been hard-pressed to remain in my seat and resist the urge to rush to my teammate’s aid. But however hard it would have been, they should have resisted. They’re young guys, and this is a terrible way to learn a hard lesson. But they’ve learned it. Time to move on and look to Game 5.

Can the Suns win Game 5 without Diaw and Stoudemire? Of course they can. Will it be easy? Of course not. But they’ll be fired up beyond belief, and so will the crowd. And this is why teams have benches, and the Suns have a bench filled with playoff-tested veterans. While they may not have played much this season, they know what to do and what is expected of them. Someone will need to step up, shake off the rust, and justify the organization’s trust in them, whether it’s Jalen Rose, James Jones, Pat Burke, or someone else. It can definitely happen, and hopefully it will.

If the Suns lose, and go on to lose the series, it’ll be pretty obvious that the suspensions will have played a role in the ultimate outcome of the match-up. But that doesn’t mean Suns fans will be justified in griping, or that the playoff series should be assigned an asterisk in the record books. It’s all part of the game, at the moment, and maybe the NBA will address the situation after the playoffs are over, maybe they won’t.

It stinks, but it’s life. And in this case, the Suns simply came out on the short end of the stick.

If anything, I’m grateful Steve Nash didn’t break his arm when Robert Horry checked him into the scorer’s table Monday night. Or rupture tendons in his knees that might have finished his playing career. Because, if the same situation had resulted, the Suns would have lost three players to the Spurs’ one, one of them (a two-time MVP) forever, again with no legal recourse as the NBA handed out its justice, however undeserved.

It’s hard to say the Suns got lucky in this case, but at the moment, the Suns’ fans have to take their good luck where they can find it.

Suns: Lovable. Spurs: Not so much.

Wed, 09 May 07 02:42:00 UT

Once upon a time, I am ashamed to admit, I thought the Spurs were kind of cool. I was a kid, mind you, and I didn't think the Spurs were cooler than the Suns, of course, but there were some things about them that I liked.

They had a great logo. I’ve always been a big fan of sports team logos, and the Spurs’ fascinated me, the clever way the “U” was an angled spur, the solidity of the letters, and so on. I even had a Spurs pennant for a little while (it’s important to note it hung beneath the Suns’ pennant on my wall). They almost ruined it a number of years ago by adorning the logo with pastel stripes, but luckily thought better of it and got rid of them.

(Smaller notes on logos: The NBA used to have some great ones. The old New Orleans Jazz logo was a masterpiece, the Buffalo Braves with their stylized letter “B” that incorporated a Native American feather, and the all-time best, the Atlanta Hawks, with their brilliant use of negative space to show a hawk’s profile. Nowadays, by far the best logo in the NBA is the Suns’ “firebird” logo, with “PHX” stretched across the basketball. No other team logo even comes close)
They came from a strange place. Not just San Antonio, which seemed about as accessible and familiar to me as an 8-year old as Neptune (I’ve since been there, and it’s lovely), but somewhere even more peculiar… the ABA. My first year of interest in pro basketball was the American Basketball Association’s last year of existence, so it has always been, to me, a league of stories and legend, somewhat mysterious and exotic, related to the Suns only in the sense that Connie Hawkins once played there, briefly. When the Nuggets, Nets, Pacers and Spurs made the NBA scene in 1976, it was like they’d walked in from the wild, wild, west.
The Spurs had great, flamboyant personalities among their players, some of whom were pretty terrific. Any discussion of Spurs history starts, of course, with George Gervin, the Iceman, originally a Suns draft pick (it’s true), a rail-thin scoring machine, and the man of a thousand finger-rolls. I think every kid my age had that famous poster of him sitting on those blocks of ice (For his sake, I hope that was a quick photo shoot). There was Larry Kenon, a small forward who was pretty talented, but maybe not as talented as he thought he was. He gave himself the nickname “Mr. K,” and once famously declared himself the best small forward in the NBA – whereupon every small forward in the NBA lit him up like a pinball machine for the next three weeks. There was James Silas, a point guard graced with the nickname, “The Late Mr. Silas,” not because he was, you know, dead, but because he regularly exhibited heroics at the ends of games. And their center was the enormous, utterly immobile Billy Paultz, who will forever be known by the wonderful nom du hoops, “The Whopper.” Later on, they even picked up one of my favorite players ever, Artis Gilmore, who had the biggest Afro I had ever seen, and who I once saw block a shot by reaching up through the net, catching a jumper, and flipping it back – then professing astonishment and outrage as he was called for goaltending.

Those Spurs were fun. They ran a lot. Their defensive strategy called for them to hold you to two fewer points than they scored. They won a lot of games and looked like they had fun doing it. It was sure fun to watch them.

The current incarnation of the Spurs, the Spurs of the Tim Duncan era? Well, you have to admire what they’ve accomplished. They’re brilliantly coached, superbly disciplined, play excellent defense and exhibit remarkable poise. They’ve won three championships. Tim Duncan ranks among the greatest big men to ever play the game, Tony Parker is faster than perhaps anyone in the league except Leandro Barbosa and is a solid floor leader to boot, Bruce Bowen is a defensive demon, Manu Ginobili is “Mr. Intangible,” and on their bench, they have one of the best big-shot specialists ever to play in Robert Horry.

But I’d rather watch almost any other team play.

The Spurs are a methodical team that finds your weakness and exploits it efficiently, not spectacularly. Tim Duncan, for all his brilliance, makes highlight packages only when he gets thrown out of games for laughing – which only happens when he’s off the court. Tony Parker, of course, doesn’t need our love – he has Eva Longoria. Seriously, how do you root for Tony Parker? You root for the guy to GET Eva Longoria, not after he’s already done it – after that, you just wish someone would bonk him on the nose with their forehead during the critical stages of a playoff game (wait a minute…). Enough people have questioned Bruce Bowen’s defensive practices for me to look at him with a jaundiced eye every time someone he’s guarding misses a shot. Manu Ginobili flops more than Dick Fosbury (who?), and I keep expecting him to get off the bench to go into a game, only to fall over the end line…and have the referee call a foul on the opposing team (seriously – watch how many times he hits the deck during a game at the slightest contact). And Robert Horry has broken Suns fans’ hearts (and the hearts of every other team’s fans) too often for anyone to root for him other than his own immediate family. Besides, Suns fans will never forgive Horry for, during his short tenure as a Suns player, responding to a request from Head Coach Danny Ainge by whipping a towel in the coach’s face.

In fact, the only current Spur I kind of like is Michael Finley, and that’s just because he was once a Sun of good standing.

Of course, all of this is good-natured grumping and sour-graping until the Suns finally prove the Spurs no longer have their number. And right now, all the numbers are in their favor: The Spurs hold a 12-4 advantage over the Suns since Steve Nash rejoined Phoenix; The Suns are 3-4 all-time against the Spurs in playoff series, but only 1-4 in the last five series; the Spurs have those three championship banners in their rafters and the Suns have none; and most crucially, the Spurs lead the current playoff series, one game to nothing. The Spurs just win. Over and over and over again. You have to – HAVE to – hand it to them.

The Spurs are a team to admire – but the Suns are a team to love. Great players, great system, exciting plays, wonderful individual stories, the hope of the future of professional basketball play, and a franchise long overdue for the ultimate success. How could anyone outside the San Antonio area code NOT root for them? You see my point, right?

So do what I’m going to do. Paint your face purple tonight (or orange if you prefer). Comb your hair forward in your best Nashian ‘do. Cover your nose with sympathy bandages. And root, root, root for your Phoenix Suns to bring home Game 2 and win this thing in six. San Antonio’s been there, done that, and you have to appreciate them for it.

But now it’s our turn.

The 2007 Suns.com Blogger Summit

Mon, 30 Apr 07 22:37:00 UT

With the Suns in Los Angeles last weekend for their first round playoff series against the Lakers, it seemed like the perfect time to convene my fellow Suns.com bloggers for our first annual summit.

The first annual Suns.com Blogger Summit was exhausting.

(Josh Greene/Suns Photos)

I submitted my request to my writer colleagues, but unfortunately, Steve Koek wrote back that he would be busy “washing his hair.” Tom Leander, James Jones and Aaron Nelson likewise replied that they would be doing the very same thing. So did Gary Bender, Brad Faye, Ann Meyers Drysdale, Joe Gilmartin, Marcus Banks, Jeramie McPeek, Jamie Morris, Adam Green, Erik Phillips, Eddie Johnson, Aaron Kimberlin, and the Suns Dancers.

Rather than be suspicious and insulted by this incredible coincidence, I decided to applaud them for their water-conservation efforts, as they are all, apparently, showering together.

Luckily, Suns center Sean Marks proved to be available for the landmark summit I had in mind. Not that I gave him much choice – I staked out his locker.

The following is the transcript of our historic conversation.

* * *

ADAM BEECHEN: Sean, thanks for taking the time to speak with me.

SEAN MARKS: Sure. Excuse me, though, you’re in my chair.

AB: Oh, sorry. I’ll just sit over here.

SM: That’s Boris’ locker.

AB: Okay, I’ll hop up on this table…

STEVE NASH: (passing by, to Suns trainers) Hey, who’s this on the training table?

AB: Maybe I’ll stand. Okay, let’s get started. How did you enjoy your regular season?

SM: Well, it was tremendous. We played great, everyone gets along really well, and we feel like, with the playoffs here, the best is yet to come.

AB: No, I meant your BLOGGING season.

SM: My blogging season?

AB: Yeah. I mean, personally, I feel like I had a terrific rookie campaign. Sentence construction worthy of a veteran, very few spelling errors… Sure, there are still some things to work on, like making sure I always write in active voice and not passive, but man, I really feel good about it. How about you?

SM: Oh, um… Sure. I enjoy doing the blogs and I feel good about them.

AB: No, I meant how do you feel about MY blogs?

SM: Uh… Great. I think you did really good work.

AB: Thanks! Now, it’s a long season, we all know that. How do you keep from wearing out? How do you keep from hitting “the wall?”

SM: We’ve got the best training staff in the NBA, and they always make sure we’re at our physical peak. Life on the NBA’s courts is so rugged and physical, your body has to be prepared to deliver a 110% effort every night, and –

AB: Actually, I was more talking about “the wall” for blogging. You know, when you just can’t think of anything because you feel like you’ve written everything there is to write, and you stare at the ceiling for hours, and you cry a lot, and you eat four containers of ice cream in a single sitting because man, it just tastes so good, and nothing else will fill the dark, yawning pit of emptiness inside you, and –

SM: (nervous) I just write about whatever’s going on.

AB: Yeah, me too, pretty much. So, how about those blogging injuries?

SM: Excuse me?

AB: Like, back in February? I typed an entire blog with this really painful hangnail on my left ring finger. Hitting those “s,” “w,” and “a” keys was excruciating, but hey, the team needed me, so what was I gonna do, sit on the bench?

SM: You injured yourself BLOGGING?

AB: You’ve got to play through the pain, am I right?

SM: Yeah, that was really… courageous of you.

AB: Thanks! Okay, let’s talk about the playoffs.

SM: Thank goodness.

AB: You’ve been around the league some… What can you tell us about the Suns’ opponents and who we might face down the road?

SM: Well, with the Lakers, first and foremost, you’re talking about Kobe Bryant, who’s such a complete player and can hurt you in so many ways… San Antonio has Tim Duncan, and he’s fundamentally brilliant and so hard to stop. Dirk Nowitzki’s in Dallas, and talk about hard to stop… When he gets rolling, you have to throw everything at him but the kitchen sink!

AB: Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki all do blogs?

SM: I have no idea.

AB: I’m talking about other teams’ bloggers, not players. Are they fluid typers? Can they tap with their left hands? Can they pull up and hit the space bar?

SM: I don’t read other teams’ blogs that often…

AB: Yeah! That’s the spirit! To heck with those other teams! Sure, your quote might make their locker room blackboards, but who cares?

SM: I seriously doubt other teams will care.

AB: Lastly, who do you think wins the MVP this year?

SM: (long, long pause) …You?

AB: (laughing) Dude, obviously I don’t play in the NBA! Come on!

SM: In that case, of course we’re all rooting for Steve Nash to make history and win the award for a third straight year.

AB: Wait, he’s already won it TWICE?!

AMARE STOUDEMIRE: (approaching, to security) Hey, who’s this leaning against my locker?!

AB: Well, Sean, looks like we’re about out of time. Thanks for participating in the first annual Suns.com Blogger Summit!

SM: It’s been a pleasure, I guess.

AB: (being dragged away by security) We’ll do it again next year!

AS: Who was that, Sean?

SM: No idea.

Mr. Beechen Goes to the Playoffs

Fri, 27 Apr 07 19:07:00 UT

The first thing I notice is that I have no locker.

STAT chats with the media after Thursday night's game.
(Josh Greene/Suns Photos)

With the Suns in Los Angeles to play the Lakers in the first round of the 2007 NBA Playoffs, Suns senior staffers Jeramie McPeek and Julie Fie have generously finagled me a press pass for the game. “We figure it might give you some ideas for future blogs,” they tell me.

So here I am, completely through the looking glass, technically press in that I write for Suns.com, but not exactly a respected member of the media corps, more of a typical fan given an incredible opportunity to see a pro basketball playoff game featuring his favorite team from an unbelievable angle – from inside. And I’m in the Suns’ visitors’ locker room at Staples Center before the game, feeling about as much a part of the team as a typical fan can possibly feel. And there’s only one problem: I have no locker.

What’s up with that? Don’t these people know I’m Superfan?!

* * *

A short time before, I went to the press entrance at Staples, and asked the gentlemen at the desk if there might be a credential with my name on it. Indeed there was. So I affixed it to my belt, entered the arena, and hopped on an elevator down to the Chick Hearn Press Room, where I found Jeramie and fellow Suns staffer Josh Greene in line for their pre-game meal. Act like you’ve been here before, a little voice in my head said. So I complained about the food.

The only seats available to us happened to be at the same table as Lakers Assistant Coaches Frank Hamblen and Tex Winter. Act like you’ve been here before. So I mumbled something about the Triangle Offense by way of greeting, and sat down. I took a casual look around the room. There was former NBA No. 1 draft pick Mychal Thomspon, now a color commentator for the Lakers. There was TNT broadcaster Doug Collins. There was former Suns great Paul Westphal, now serving as a studio analyst on Laker broadcasts (and I can’t begin to tell you how that makes me feel). And there was TNT sideline reporter Craig Sager, noted for his, um, eclectic taste in suits, tonight wearing an eye-meltingly blue number with alligator shoes to match and a luminescent orange tie, flitting around looking for tidbits and anecdotes he could use during tonight’s broadcast. He asks Tex Winter his age, and Winter replies, “Eighty-five.” I’m genuinely shocked. “You shouldn’t lie to the press,” I admonish the coach. “You don’t look more than sixty.” (Which is true) He smiles politely and goes back to his food. Maybe he didn’t hear me.

After dinner, we head for the dark tunnel underneath the stadium so Jeramie and Josh can get shots of the players arriving. Sager’s hanging around down there as well, his blue pants providing us with illumination to film by. We follow the Suns to their locker room (at the far end of the hall, past the Lakers, the L.A. Kings dressing room, and the Laker Girls’ locker room – Jeramie has to pull me away from that door, and doesn’t seem to buy my excuse that I mis-read the nameplate next to the entrance).

* * *

And then, there I am, in the Suns’ locker room before a big playoff game, players changing into their game gear, Assistant Coach Marc Iavaroni scribbling game instructions on a dry-erase board, locker room attendants scurrying this way and that, and press everywhere, trying to get a few pre-game quotes as the players stretch and loosen up. So I figure I better do the same – stretch and loosen up, that is. After all, I have a strenuous night of blogging ahead of me.

I look around for my locker…but there isn’t one. Probably just an oversight, I imagine. I consider pulling a diva act and complaining, but… Act like you’ve been here before. So I play the good soldier, drop my bag at an empty chair and sit down. I’m about to unpack my stuff when a locker room attendant taps me on the shoulder. I look up to turn down the inevitable autograph request when he gestures to the uniform hanging behind me in the locker. “Stoudemire,” it reads.

Oh.

So I get up and move to the next unavailable seat, but apparently Boris Diaw has claimed that one for himself. I’m about to ask Shawn Marion if I can share some of his space when the locker room attendant chases me away. I should’ve known the Staples Center Lakers staff would be unfriendly.

Okay, no locker for me. I can take it. I drop my bag in the middle of the locker room and go about my pre-game ritual anyway. I strip down to my shorts (I don’t want to get my game gear all sweaty ahead of time) and start into my stretches right there. I’m starting to feel good, feel loose, when I look up and see the players, coaching staff, trainers and media all staring at me with wide, wide eyes. I don’t blame them – I’ve seen this look before. I’m pretty flexible, and proud of it.

After being escorted outside by security, I quickly dress and follow Jeramie and Josh out onto the Staples Center floor to get a few shots of Suns players doing early shooting warm-ups. If you’ve never been down on the floor of an NBA arena before a game, it’s pretty impressive. The lights, the glitzy fans filing in, the players starting to put on their game faces…I look around and wonder how players can keep their focus with so much going on around them. The place isn’t close to half full yet, and it’s already loud down here.

Overwhelmed by the spectacle, and by the simple fact that I’m actually here, I plop down in a chair near the Suns’ bench to catch my breath. But before I can, I’m tapped on the shoulder by an usher. “You can’t sit there,” he tells me. “That’s Jack Nicholson’s chair.”

Oh. At least that explains all the gold statues under the seat.

I retreat to the tunnel that serves as the players’ entrance onto the court, as well as the VIP entrance to the seats of the highest-rolling fans. The Suns sprint past me toward the floor. I stick my hand out and get a few slaps. I’m still reeling from the excitement of that when I notice Queen Latifah about to pass me by, on the way to her seat. Act like you’ve been here before.

“How’s it going, Queen?” I ask, friendly.

Maybe she didn’t hear me, and only made that face because she had something stuck in her teeth.

I climb into the elevator that will take me to the press box, from where I’ll watch the game. The press box at Staples Center is high above the court. Very high. Higher than the cheapest seats. So high that, if it were any higher, the press would actually be watching the game alongside late Lakers announcer Chick Hearn.

I’ve never been to a press box before. But I’m prepared. I’ve watched movies. So, after reaching my seat, I pull out my fedora (the one with the card that says “PRESS” sticking out of the brim) and a tweed sport coat with patches over the elbows. I set up my manual typewriter. And I pull out a handful of thick, smelly cigars. I can’t decide which one to smoke first, so I light three of them. Then I get a tap on the shoulder.

You can’t smoke in press boxes anymore? Really? When did they make that change?

Anyway, after a wondrous first quarter in which the Suns look like they never got the memo that Game 2 actually ended, the Lakers gamely battle back, chipping away at the Suns’ lead to take command and protect their home court with a win. The Suns still lead the series 2-1.

After the game, I head back down to the Suns’ locker room, digital recorder in hand, to try and get some quotes from Suns players. The atmosphere is quiet, more subdued than pregame, and understandably so. But we members of the press still have our jobs to do, so we crowd around players and jam our microphones uncomfortably close to their faces and ask questions like, “What happened?” Again, I marvel at the players’ ability to keep their control. Personally, I’d bite someone’s arm.

As it is, I can barely get a microphone anywhere near the players, so fierce is the battle among cameramen and reporters to get good “spots.” I’m reduced to snaking my arm through a tangle of torsos and hoping my recorder is in the general vicinity of a player’s mouth, and not directly beneath a cameraman’s nose, or something worse. In this manner, I get quotes from Raja Bell, Boris Diaw, Shawn Marion, Kurt Thomas, Leandro Barbosa and James Jones.

By the time I get to the crush around Amaré Stoudemire, I’ve been battered, bruised and bumped. I finally have a good “spot,” and my microphone is right up (way up) where I can get Amaré’s deep voice loud and clear. But that’s when a veteran NBA reporter shows up and crowds me over so he can get his recorder close to Amaré. He’s only doing his job. I shouldn’t get mad. I should act like I’ve been here before, but I’m as frustrated as the Suns after a loss, so I do my best Pat Burke imitation and, like I’m fighting for position underneath the basket, I block out for all I’m worth, forcing the reporter back, back, back…until he falls over a pile of sweaty towels. Flush with success, I pound my chest, kiss my bicep, and I wag a finger in his face, Dikembe Mutombo-style. “How ya like me now?” I scream. Then I look around, smiling, expecting to be offered a three-year contract as a power forward.

After security escorts me out, I move across the hall to where Steve Nash is meeting with the media. He’s tired. I’m tired. The “PRESS” card in my hat’s brim has completely wilted. But I suspect I’ve had a lot more fun than he has tonight. As the press conference winds down, I whisper thanks for this incredible opportunity and farewell to Jeramie, wishing the team well on what I hope will be a long journey through the playoffs. I’ll be with them in spirit, sending blog dispatches along the way.

Steve Nash rises from his stool behind the podium, having answered the last question. He smiles wearily. “Buenos noches,” he says.

Good night, everybody.

Notes on a Perfect Sunday

Mon, 02 Apr 07 09:49:00 UT

It was a crystal-clear, 70-degree day here in Los Angeles (this would actually be a pretty great place to live, if the Lakers weren’t here). I took a long walk by the beach with a beautiful woman. And then I came home and watched the Suns kick the absolute stuffing out of the Dallas Mavericks.

Amaré Stoudemire thows down two of his 24 points in Sunday's win over the Mavericks.
(NBAE Photos)

Do Sundays get any better?

                                                * * *

I recorded the game on TiVo (I hope you understand, Suns fans – not many things take priority over a nationally televised game between my team and the top team in the league, but I’m a sucker for a good romantic walk by the beach), and avoided score reports on the radio on my way home. Arriving at my apartment, I checked my phone messages, which included one from my father in Chicago. He said, “Go Suns,” which meant either, a) he was being sarcastic and the Suns got killed or they lost a heartbreaker or b) the Suns won. My dad knows how seriously I take the Suns and generally knows better than to needle me about hoops, so I had a pretty good feeling as I sat down to watch the game.

And I wasn’t disappointed.

What a welcome return to sharpness! The Suns looked like everything they hadn’t in the previous eight or so games. Their passes were crisp, their spacing precise, their defense tenacious, and their resolve solid. Yes, the Mavericks were missing their center, Erick Dampier, but you can’t tell me the difference between the Suns and the Mavericks comes down to Erick Dampier. The Suns simply turned on the jets in the fourth quarter and blew the best team in the NBA out of the building. When they play that well, there isn’t a team in the league today that can hang with them.

Now the question is, can they bottle the performance and use it as a spark the rest of the way?

                                                                        * * *

If Amaré Stoudemire perfects his mid-range jump shot (and from the looks of it Sunday, he’s pretty close to doing so), the NBA may as well close down for the next ten years.

If power forwards or centers lay off of him, he’ll knock down ten of those jumpers in an evening. If they come out to guard STAT, he’ll blow by them and posterize the weak side help that comes over to stop him. He’ll become as much of a force, if not more of a force, than Karl Malone.

                                                                        * * *

A few columns back, I said Dallas had no marquee superstars outside of Dirk Nowitzki. I was wrong. Josh Howard may not be quite in Nowitzki’s league, but he’s definitely a superstar – just one you don’t hear anything about. He hits the three, runs as well as anyone in the league, plays amazing defense against any of four positions, and absolutely cleans up around the rim on garbage buckets and tough rebounds. There’s a lot of Scottie Pippen in him.

Shawn Marion has long held the title of “most underrated star” in the NBA, but now that title has been so over-used as pertains to Trix that it doesn’t really apply anymore. How can you be underrated if everyone’s talking about how underrated you are? Shawn is a bona fide superstar – true followers of the league and the team certainly know that now. The Suns aren’t the Suns without him playing at his best, and their troubles during his recent recovery from a hand injury reflect that fact. Howard is genuinely underrated…and he’s just as important to the Mavericks as Trix is to the Suns.

                                                                        * * *

Around this time every year, columns start appearing about which NBA assistant coaches are next in line for head coaching jobs, and Marc Iavaroni’s name always seems to top the list. It’s inevitable he’ll get a top slot, he’s too good not to, and of course I wish only the best for him, but it’ll be quite a loss the day he leaves the Suns’ bench. In addition to being a quality coach who has made the Suns immeasurably better, he’s been a key part of the chemistry of the coaching staff, which can be as important as the chemistry of a team.

Speaking of underrated, the Suns’ assistant coaches in general don’t get nearly enough credit. Alvin Gentry, Phil Weber, Dan D’Antoni and Iavaroni…each brings something critical to the Suns’ success to the table and has left an imprint on the team’s accomplishments in recent years. Mike D’Antoni and the Suns’ front office deserve a round of applause for assembling not just a great team on the court, but a great team in the coaches’ seats.

                                                                       * * *

That’s a lot of compliments to pass around in a single blog, but I guess I’m just feeling filled with the milk of human kindness. I had a pretty good Sunday, and so did the Suns.

The Suns That Might Have Been

Fri, 23 Mar 07 22:45:00 UT

As a writer of both frequently fanciful cartoons and physics-challenging comic book adventures, occasionally I get involved in the “what if” stories.

Neal Walk manned the middle for the Suns from 1969-74.
(NBAE Photos)

You know, stories where one altered detail from the past completely changes the future. What if Superman’s rocket had landed on Mars instead of Earth? What if Bruce Wayne had been shot by the thief that murdered his parents, and never had the chance to become Batman? Things like that.

I also find such questions fascinating when applied to real life, particularly sports. Case in point:

Around the time of the recent NBA All-Star Game, NBA TV ran a marathon of “classic” All-Star Games from the past. There was Jerry West’s famous three-quarters court shot. There was Magic’s triumphant return to the NBA spotlight after his premature retirement. And so on. Included among the list of games was the 1975 All-Star Game, played at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, the first time the Suns had hosted the midseason classic (They’ve since hosted one more). I’d never seen it before.

The “home” Western Conference All-Stars wore white uniforms, and the “visiting” Easterners wore road purple. That’s right, purple. The uniforms for the game were modeled after the Suns’ own, so there were guys like Rick Barry, John Havlicek, Bob McAdoo and Elvin Hayes running around wearing western-style lettering across their chests, and sunbursts on the sides of their shorts. It was kind of disorienting, to tell you the truth, but it also made you wonder what it might have been like if those guys had actually worn the purple-and-orange on a regular basis.

Nothing, however, was more disorienting, and at the same evoked more of a sense of “what if,” than seeing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then in his last season with the Milwaukee Bucks, in an approximation of a Suns uniform during that All-Star Game. For the Suns missed out on the chance to draft the league’s all-time leading scorer by just the width of a single coin.

That was just before Phoenix’s second season in the league. In their first year, they’d piled up a 16-66 record, qualifying them for the “Super-Flip,” the flip of the coin that, in those days prior to the NBA draft lottery, determined which of the league’s two worst teams would have the right to draft first. The Flip had begun in 1966, and over the years yielded such players as Cazzie Russell, the aforementioned Elvin Hayes and Bob Lanier. Portland participated in the Flip an impressive four years in a row, “losing” twice (and drafting Sidney Wicks and soon-traded Jim Brewer) and winning twice, selecting LaRue Martin and someone named Bill Walton.

In any case, the Suns qualified for the Super-Flip in 1969, maybe the super-est (flippy-est?) of all Super-Flips, because Kareem (then Lew Alcindor) was at stake. The other team to qualify was another second-year club, the Bucks. In his account of the Bucks’ first season, then-owner Marv Fishman as much as admits that Milwaukee played their inaugural schedule simply to get through it and hopefully wind up with that coveted first pick. The Suns were given the right to call “heads” or “tails” in the coin flip, and put the choice to a fan vote. The fans overwhelmingly selected “heads.” So, when the Super-Flip was staged via conference call, Commissioner Walter Kennedy asked Jerry Colangelo to call the coin, and Colangelo firmly answered, “Heads.”

And it was tails.

To which then-Suns Coach Johnny Kerr hopefully offered, “Maybe Milwaukee won’t pick Alcindor.”

But of course, the Bucks did, and in Kareem’s second season, Milwaukee acquired the great Oscar Robertson, then went on to win the league title. For the remainder of Abdul-Jabbar’s time there, the Bucks were a perennial contender, reappearing in the Finals in 1974. Then Kareem departed for the more cosmopolitan and less pasture-like pastures of Los Angeles, and…well, some Laker-blogger can tell you what happened after that.

The Suns, meanwhile, determined to take a big man in that 1969 draft, selected Neal Walk, who went on to be a pretty good player for Phoenix, even averaging more than 20 points and 10 rebounds per game one season (and folks, that was not the world’s deepest draft – after Kareem and Neal, the only players in that draft to go on to make an impact were Lucius Allen and JoJo White. The next year, by contrast, Bob Lanier, Dave Cowens, Pete Maravich, Rudy Tomjanovich, Calvin Murphy and Tiny Archibald all joined the league. Timing has never been on the side of the Suns). By virtue of losing out on Kareem, the Suns qualified for a second “Super-Flip” with the next worst team in the league, Seattle, for the rights to negotiate with Connie Hawkins, who was at last being admitted to the NBA after years of exile. The Suns won that coin toss, and the Hawk went on to be the first Sun to have his number retired. But the Suns never won a championship…and they still haven’t.

But, but, but…

It’s the writer in me, but I can’t help but wonder…What if that coin had come up heads, instead of tails? What if we’d seen Jerry Colangelo smiling wide next to all 7-foot-2 of Abdul-Jabbar at his introductory press conference in Phoenix (can you picture the reporters and photographers gawking?)? Where would the Suns have gone from there?

Well, let’s see…First of all, the Suns would never have had the chance to sign Connie Hawkins, and they would not have drafted Walk. But they also would never have felt the need to trade Paul Silas to Boston a few years later for Charlie Scott, so the Suns would have had a front line of Lew Alcindor, Paul Silas and Dick Van Arsdale (who played forward in those days). It’s hard to imagine a better, tougher, stronger set of bigs in the league in 1969. Gail Goodrich might have stuck around to play point guard, or maybe not. But I think the Suns would have won a championship with Alcindor in the pivot and Silas and Van flanking him. They’d have dominated the ball – other teams would have been helpless on the glass – and they’d have been murder in the half-court defense, despite not being the fastest team around. And the Suns would have had at least as much talent aside from their giant big man as Milwaukee did (Robertson, though fading, was still great, of course, but Van and Silas were far better than anyone Milwaukee had after Robertson).

Would Phoenix have won more than one championship in their Alcindor years? They’d have at least as good a shot as Milwaukee did. And what epic wars they’d have had with the Wilt Chamberlain Lakers! Maybe the Suns and the Lakers would have blossomed into the real rivalry I mentioned a few columns back.

But ultimately, I think Kareem would have wanted out of Phoenix, just as he did in Milwaukee. I think he’d still want a big city, with the culture and diversity a big city offered (which Phoenix couldn’t, in the mid-1970s). However, I don’t think Colangelo would have traded him to Los Angeles, but rather to New York – Kareem’s home town and, more importantly, out of the Suns’ division. What would the Suns have gotten back? Impossible to know. But they probably would have wound up in the same position Milwaukee did after trading Abdul-Jabbar – sinking just below mediocrity and waiting to be rebuilt by a new coach…maybe John MacLeod. Lots of the pieces would have been different (without Charlie Scott and Connie Hawkins, Paul Westphal and Keith Erickson never would have played with the Suns), but maybe there would have been a Sunderella team in 1976, just as it happened in real life, or maybe not.

Certainly, New York’s fortunes would have been much different. And I smile when I think of LA not getting Kareem…and probably not Magic and James Worthy after that.

But it didn’t happen that way. The Suns did not get to draft the greatest scorer in the history of the game. They did not get a championship to go with a moody, aloof superstar who would have most likely left them in a lurch as soon as he could.

The Suns got the unique Hawk and his charismatic swoops. They got Neal Walk and his tireless efforts and pronounced year-to-year improvement. They got Paul Westphal and his leadership, cool and charisma. They got Alvan Adams and his poise, passing and grace. They got Sunderella. They got the foundation for everything that has made the franchise what it is today, the team that has inspired my loyalty for so many years.

I, for one, wouldn’t wish for history to have happened any differently.

And Now... Deep Thoughts

Tue, 13 Mar 07 19:10:00 UT

There’s no better cure for a slump than a blowout of a playoff contender. It did my heart good to watch the Suns batter the Rockets, but not nearly as much good as it did the Suns, who’ve spent the last two weeks expressing concern over a lack of focus. They looked plenty focused last night.

Shawn Marion shoots his classic jumper.
(NBAE Photos)

Of course, if going 9-1 in the ten games prior to last night’s dismantling of Houston can be considered a slump, then give me lots of slumps. Bless you, friendly Schedule Maker, for lining up a lot of league patsies at just the moment the Suns needed to work out a few kinks.

                                *     *     *

I don’t hear many quarters criticizing Shawn Marion’s jumper these days. In the old days, he couldn’t take a three from the corner without some announcer squawking, “fundamentally unsound,” or “awkward!”

Two of the biggest reasons to change a shooter’s mechanics are a) to keep the shot from getting blocked and b) to ensure the shot has proper spin. Well, a) Trix gets off the ground and gets up so high, so fast, his shot is practically unblockable and b) he gets an ungodly amount of backspin from his current mechanics.

Watch him shoot a free-throw sometime, it’s fascinating: His shot reaches the apex of its arc, and then the backspin takes over and the ball seems to drop straight down through the hoop. I’m glad no “shot genius” decided to re-make his jumper. I bet the Suns are glad, too.

                                                                    *     *     *

I’m not sure how Dallas is doing it. I give the Mavericks a ton of credit, because I look at their roster on paper, and I just don’t see how they can be this dominant. Outside of Nowitzki, they don’t have a marquee player. They didn’t add any big names between last year and this. They just play great team ball, move the rock exceptionally well, and have a roster overloaded with “glue guys,” role players that do whatever it takes.

They’re having a historically great season, and it’s obscuring the fact that the Suns are having one of the best years (maybe the best year) in their history (largely owing to the fact that they essentially “added” Stoudemire to the roster after his injury-plagued 2005-2006 season). For my money, this is the best, most loaded Suns team since the Barkley-led squad that made the Finals in 1993. Maybe even better than that team.

Maybe that’s an okay thing, that Dallas is having such unprecedented success. It keeps the Suns hungry, for one, and keeps league and media attention in Texas. The Suns aren’t lurking in the weeds and aren’t going to sneak up on anyone, but Dallas has a bigger bullseye on their backs than Phoenix.

                                                                    *     *     *

Everyone knows I’m an NBA history nut, so it’s natural for me to ask this question: Has there ever been a point guard like Steve Nash?

The natural comparison is John Stockton, but Nash is a better scorer, or at least has more aggressive scorer’s instincts. Certainly, he’s a better scorer than Bob Cousy. Tiny Archibald led the league in scoring and assists, but I’ll always think of him as a scorer first, and he had far more speed at his disposal than Nash. Mark Price? Mostly forgotten now (even more forgotten is the fact that his dad Denny was once John MacLeod’s assistant with the Suns), he was a sweet-shooting point guard with strong passing skills…But he didn’t have the court vision Nash does, nor was he as unquestioned a leader as Nash, and he wasn’t in Nash’s league as a passer. KJ? Kevin Johnson’s greatest asset (among many, many assets) was his speed…and Nash can’t and doesn’t rely on his. In terms of numbers and overall effect on a game, the point guard Nash comes closest to is probably Magic Johnson…but Magic had five inches and thirty pounds on Nash, and Magic could play five positions. There’s one spot and one spot only for Nash.

We’re seeing something truly unique in Steve Nash. Take mental snapshots every time you see him play so you can tell the grandkids.

                                                                    *     *     *

“The Suns don’t play any defense. They can’t win a championship with their style.”

It makes me want to pull my hair out when I hear a commentator say this, which is guaranteed to happen at least once in any national broadcast. Are these people unaware the Suns are third in the league in point differential?

The Suns rarely get blown out, and their offensive scheme can keep them in games even when they’re not shooting particularly well, simply because it gets them so many cracks at the basket. Their supposed defensive weakness in the post? Well, with Amare showing a strong commitment to defense, the Suns are more capable than ever of getting a stop down low when they need one. Folks, Yao Ming went one-for-nine last night. One-for-nine.

No, the Suns aren’t the defensive-minded Bad Boy Pistons of the late 1980s. Do they need to be?

                                                                    *     *    *

A few weeks ago, STAT had a stat line of 43 points and 16 rebounds in a game, and I said, “Uh oh.” But I said it with a smile on my face. Those, in the words Joe Gilmartin used a few decades ago when discussing a big game by Wilt Chamberlain, are “ominous numbers.”

Amare’s overall numbers may be down from his first peak (I say “first peak” because I don’t believe for a second he’s reached his potential) a few years ago, but he’s playing better team ball and doing more things that don’t show up in a box score, but still help a team win. However, as the numbers above show, he’s still capable of putting up those big figures and devastating an opponent. My gut tells me he’s got a bunch of those waiting for unlucky playoff foes.

                                                                    *      *     *

Though his statistics aren’t what they were a year ago, the Suns are simply a better team when Boris Diaw is on the floor. They move the ball much more crisply and seem much more in sync. He does all the little things to keep the gears turning.

                                                                    *     *    *

Historical perspective again: Who are the fastest players in NBA history? KJ? Randy Smith? Isiah Thomas? Tiny Archibald? Slick Watts?

Were any of them faster than Leandro Barbosa? I’d have a hard time believing that. Regardless, he’s a step and a half faster than anyone in the game today, and a joy to watch.

                                                                    *     *    *

They get no ink – or playing time – but the Suns bench gives me a good “warm blanket” feeling. I just like knowing that there are guys like Jumaine Jones, Jalen Rose and Eric Piatkowski over there, heady veterans who can understand a system and their role in it even if they don’t play major minutes every game. These are guys who can slide in at any given time, if needed, and keep the machine working. Even better, any of them can, and has, hit a clutch shot.

                                                                    *     *    *

Okay, I’ll get back to a column full of obscure historical Suns factoids next time, as opposed to the two or three found above. It’s just, sometimes a team is too good to go un-commented-upon, you know? And after watching last night’s blowout, I felt the urge to do some commenting.

Rivalry Weak

Thu, 08 Mar 07 03:31:00 UT

This past weekend, I found myself in the strange position of being at a comic book convention and talking pro basketball.

The Lakers are the closest thing the Suns have to a true rivalry.
(Noah GrahamNBAE Photos)

For those of you who have never been to a comic book convention (I write comics and collect them, which makes me a geek in two fields, I suppose), talking pro basketball at such an event is a little like talking trout farming at a quilting bee.

But there I was, talking to an editor who happened to be a big Portland Trailblazers fan. He said he wasn’t much of a Suns supporter, owing to the beatings the Suns have given his favorites over the last ten years or so, and I reminded him that the Blazers of the Drexler-Porter-Kersey vintage broke the Suns’ hearts a few times in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After we’d finished our little exchange, I asked him, “But do you really hate the Suns? Do you feel like the Suns and the Blazers are or were really rivals?”

He shrugged. “I guess not. Not really.”

“How about the Blazers and the Sonics,” I went on to ask. “At least they’re closer geographically than Portland and Phoenix.”

Again he shrugged. “Rivals? Nah. In fact, when Seattle wins, I kind of feel good for them. It’s a win for the Northwest, you know?”

Good grief, what’s happened to sports?

Ask any Suns fan who the Suns’ rival is, and they’re likely to tell you it’s the Lakers. Ask any Lakers fan if they feel the same way about the Suns, and they’re likely to give you a weird look, then run you over with their Ferrari.

That, folks, is not a rivalry.

A rivalry is a mutually-agreed-upon deep-seated dislike between two sports franchises. Ideally, it’s balanced, with neither side dominating the other for too terribly long. In my opinion, rivalries are best when there’s some geographic proximity between the rivals, but this isn’t a deal-breaker. And rivalries are long-lasting, existing regardless of who’s playing – it’s the name on the front of the jersey that fuels the rivalry, not the names on the back.

Over the years, throughout sports, there have some been some doozy rivalries. The Cowboys and Redskins inspired strong emotions in fans of the teams when they clashed on the football field (so, too, did Cowboy-Eagle games and Cowboy-Giants games). The Dodgers and the Giants had some incredible animosity over in baseball. And, of course, the Lakers had the Celtics for about 30 years.

Now, thanks to free agency, marketing of stars, and the pervasiveness of national media, rivalries are pretty much a thing of the past. Fans root for individual big-name players, rather than teams, and because of free agency, stars can change teams many times, making it hard for fans to build loyalties for their hometown squads. Further, players aren’t as invested in the teams they play for. There was a time when playing for Boston really meant something – there really was such a thing as “Celtic pride,” just ask John Havlicek or Bill Russell or Larry Bird. And with the Internet and cable television serving as global media resources, you’re less likely to find your news dominated by the local teams – You’re seeing the highlights of everyone equally.

If you want great rivalries these days, you look to college – where the players can’t jump teams quite as easily, and the big money isn’t as out in the open as it is in the pros, so local communities can relate better and invest more emotionally. There’s nothing like a Duke-North Carolina basketball game – Tyler Hansbrough has the broken schnoz to prove it. Or a Texas-Oklahoma football game. Or an ASU-U of A game, for that matter.

There have been brief rivalries in the NBA over the years since the Celtics-Lakers thing sort of fizzled. Remember when the Bulls and the Pistons would fill local emergency rooms after their games? Remember when you could tune into a Knicks-Heat game and wonder if you might see a coach biting another player’s ankle? Even those high points are starting to feel like a long time ago. The best the NBA has done recently is an extremely manufactured Christmas Day matchup over the last couple years between the Lakers and the Heat… And that’s more about morbid curiosity over the Shaq-Kobe feud than anything else.

I love any Suns game I get to attend, it doesn’t matter who they’re playing. But I think it’d be even more fun to look at a schedule when it comes out and circle the dates when “you know who” is coming to town, whoever “you know who” happens to be. There doesn’t have to be bad blood, just an extra level of intensity. But who could fill the bill as that nebulous “you know who?”

Considering the criteria listed above, the Lakers would be an obvious choice. There’s geographical proximity, and a reasonable expectation that both franchises are going to remain competitive for years to come. They played a riveting 7-game series in the playoffs last season, during which tempers flared, and a healthy dislike for each other appeared.

But the Lakers organization is a smug one. They barely acknowledge the existence of other teams, let alone that any might be their equal. If anything, they regard the Suns as a pesky little brother. Suggest the possibility that the Suns might be on par with the Lakers, and their fans will just sniff at you and point to the banners on the wall of Staples Center. And though it kills you, you don’t really have a comeback.

Then, to make matters worse, the Lakers’ fans will again run you over with their Ferraris.

The Suns and Utah had a good thing with the Suns going in the Malone-Stockton years, particularly when KJ and Tom Chambers were running their own version of the two-man game. But Phoenix and the Jazz are in different divisions and don’t meet frequently enough, or with enough at stake, for there to be any real rivalry.

I had high hopes that the Clippers and the Suns might start something good and long-lasting after last season. The Clips finally appeared to have a foundation in place that would keep them competitive and maybe even start some kind of tradition, and they extended the Suns to the limit in a well-played playoff series last year. But this year they’ve taken fifty steps back. Besides, the Clippers need to prove they’re the best team in their own building before they can be anyone else’s rival.

So here we are. The Internet isn’t going away, and neither is free agency. The Lakers are the Lakers, and the Clippers are the Clippers. And I doubt the NBA will be expanding into Chandler anytime soon. It’s a shame, because I really think it would make the whole experience more interesting, but it doesn’t appear the Suns are going to find a rival anytime soon.

Unfortunately, it seems about as likely as someone talking trout farming at a quilting bee.

Remebering DJ

Sat, 24 Feb 07 08:13:00 UT

DJ did a funny thing when he shot free throws. He bent all the way over at the waist and dribbled the ball a few times with both hands. That part wasn’t so unusual.

Former Suns guard Dennis Johnson had a unique approach at the free throw line.
(NBAE Photos)

Everyone has a different routine when they shoot free throws – Nowadays, players blow kisses to their kids or smooch their tattoos, or do whatever else. But back then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the difference in free throw style was generally limited to how many times you dribbled before you shot – and everyone shot the same way (Rick Barry, with his underhanded “granny style” charity shots, being the exception).

But after he finished his dribbling, that was when DJ did the strange thing. Staring at the basket, taking a deep breath, he’d sort of wrap his arms around the basketball, then unwrap them, almost uncoiling them, before raising his arms to shoot. And they almost always went in.

My friends and I were fascinated by this. We’d go out to the playgrounds, and because we were still at the age where we did such things, we’d imitate distinctive players. We launch cobra-like jumpers and call out, “Jamaal Wilkes!” We’d heave up junior-junior-junior-junior sky hooks and scream, “Kareem!” We’d take six or seven non-dribbling steps as though we were flying through the air, the ball cupped between our small hands and our wrists, and pantomime a physically impossible dunk. “Doctor J!”

Eventually we’d get to the free throw line, and we’d be DJ. We’d bend at the waist, dribble with both hands, coil around the ball and let fly. We never had to say the name. The action spoke for itself. And it was cool. DJ was cool.

(Side note: The only other Sun we’d imitate at the foul line was their burly, hirsute backup center of the day, Rich Kelley. Copying him consisted of standing at the line, rearing back, and throwing the ball off the backboard as hard as we could. Not because Kelley was a particularly bad foul shooter…It just looked like the way someone like him should shoot a free throw. And it never failed to crack us up.)

It took a little while for me to realize how cool Dennis Johnson was. I was heartbroken when he came to town, because Paul Westphal, for whom he was traded, had long been my favorite player. Westy was the face of the franchise in those days, he’d been there since I started really following the team in earnest, and it was impossible to imagine the Suns without him. In my young mind, DJ was the guy who’d driven Westy out, and he’d never, ever be able to replace my hero.

But after just a few games, I saw the truth. DJ was a different kind of player from Westphal, and in his own way, just as admirable. He wasn’t in Westphal’s class as a scorer (not many were), but DJ could score well enough (and particularly in important spots), he was a true point guard who could direct an offense, and there was no one like him when it came to defense. He was tenacious. He never quit. He never backed down. After a long period of time when the Suns were considered the bantamweights of the league, DJ gave them an image of toughness. And soon, as much as I aspired to the moves of Westphal, I found myself aspiring to the grit and determination and headiness of Dennis Johnson. I never got there as a basketball player, of course, but very few can say they did. But the things I aspired to then that were part of his character…Well, I still aspire to them. They’re good things to want in yourself.

As heartbroken as I was when DJ came to town, I was just as heartbroken when he left, gone in a trade to Boston for Rick Robey. I knew what the Suns wanted from Robey – he was the latest step in the team’s ongoing quest for a franchise center – but I couldn’t help but feel like the Suns were giving up more than they were getting. DJ was a rare player, a throwback who could fit in seamlessly in the modern game, and when you find someone like that to lead your team, it’s hard to let them go.

DJ went on to great glory with the Celtics, as we all know, and I was happy for him. I remained a fan. As much as I held a grudge against the Celtics for beating the Suns in the 1976 Finals, it was hard not to root for DJ, if not the Celtics, when he wore the green. And certainly, when the Celtics played the Lakers in the Finals during the 1980s, I not only wanted the Celtics to win, I wanted DJ to do especially well. But there was always that little tug when I watched him play for Boston on television, that sense that he could – should – still be a Sun, doing for us what he was doing for Red Auerbach, Larry Bird, and everyone else in Boston. For the remainder of his playing days, I missed Dennis Johnson.

I miss him a little bit more, now.

A Blessing in Bandages?

Fri, 16 Feb 07 20:23:00 UT

And so we reach the All-Star break, and I picture the Suns’ offices filled with recipes for chicken soup, prayer beads and magic crystals sent in by Suns fans all over the globe concerned about the health of Boris Diaw and Steve Nash.

These fans see the team’s first prolonged slump since the start of the season and are torturing themselves with visions of a promising year going down in flames over the Salt River.

A wave of injuries, in any sport, can spell doom for a team. In the NBA, frequently the team that has stayed healthiest over the course of its 82 games is the one that wins the championship. Boston and Milwaukee certainly weren’t going to challenge for the throne this season, but did anyone think they had a prayer after Paul Pierce and Michael Redd, respectively, went down for prolonged periods? How good do you feel about Utah now that Carlos Boozer is on the sidelines?

Suns fans have been down this road before. The team was just starting to get its act together in 1974 when Charlie Scott decided to try climbing Mount Smith – 6’ 11” Elmore Smith of the Lakers – only to crash back to Earth with one of the worst broken arms you’ll ever see (and I saw it a lot – for some reason that was always on the “highlight” films we were shown every summer at Suns Basketball Camp). The Suns sputtered after that.

Walt Davis fractured his elbow in a preseason game in 1981, and while they made the playoffs and even won a round, the slow start they experienced without their star likely cost them home court advantage, and they were swept by the Lakers in the second round.

We won’t even get into poor Danny Manning, brought in to the be the Suns’ bench leader on their powerful teams of the mid-1990s, only to blow out both of his knees something like a combined forty-eight times. Or Jason Kidd snapping an ankle during the stretch run a few years later, leading to a Suns second-round playoff exit, not to mention Kidd’s dubious decision to return with his hair dyed blond.

Now, Suns fans are bound to feel, here we go again. Steve Nash, the team’s unquestioned leader and quarterback, has missed games with a shoulder ailment. Boris Diaw, arguably the team’s second-best ball handler, has been out as well, and in their absence, the Suns have looked thoroughly lost. Without a doubt, the team still has enough talent on paper to deck the majority of the NBA’s squads on a given night, but it goes to show you how fragile a club’s makeup can be – take away the orchestrators of that talent, and suddenly everyone’s out of tune.

But I don’t think there’s a reason to panic. For I believe in the wise man (I think it was Joe Gilmartin) who said, “If you’re going to have injuries, have them right before the All-Star break, while you’ve got a big lead in your division, and while the team behind you looks worse than you do.”

Nash and Diaw will have what will amount to two weeks of uninterrupted rest, rehab and conditioning. The Suns go into the break leading the Pacific Division by ten and a half games over the hated Lakers (who have their own injury problems with Kwame Brown and Luke Walton out, and Lamar Odom playing much of the season at less than a hundred percent).

And the Lakers have been very accommodating to their desert neighbors in recent weeks: While the Suns may have lost three in a row (which only seems like fifty after the season’s two long winning streaks), the Lakers have kindly lost five straight. The bottom line is, the Suns can afford to coast a little (but only a little) if it means Nash and Diaw come back thoroughly rested and rejuvenated. These injuries coming when they do might just be a small blessing wrapped in bandages – two of the Suns’ key players will be fresh as daisies at a time of the season when other teams’ stars are running on fumes.

It would have been nice if the healthy Suns had learned how to win together in the absence of Nash and Diaw. But there might be another important benefit – the team has certainly learned it can’t take Nash and Diaw for granted, and when they return, my guess is they’ll play with renewed vigor and precision. They’ll probably tear off another huge winning streak.

Nash and Diaw will be back. Soon. Their injuries were relatively minor, requiring rest, more than anything else. They’re not going to get too out of shape, and the team’s not going to need to adjust to their presence when numbers 13 and 3 re-take the floor. This remains the most promising Suns team in many years, and while they don’t need our chicken soup and prayer beads, I’m sure they’re grateful for our concern, and for the knowledge that we’re with them every step – and sniffle or pulled muscle – of the way.

What the Well-Dressed European Man is Wearing This Year

Wed, 07 Feb 07 01:03:00 UT

A while back, I blogged about Suns gear and memorabilia, and invited all of you to share stories of your favorite Suns stuff.

Well, today I opened this e-mail from international Suns fan extraordinaire Pablo Cardona, whom I met when I attended the Suns’ training camp in Italy last fall.

Clearly, this is man with a wardrobe we should all aspire to.

The Great Dictators

Fri, 26 Jan 07 02:30:00 UT

For a mid-season, midweek game, the Suns’ recent battle with the Wizards in Washington earned a lot of hype. It was billed, in many quarters, as “the Suns vs. the Suns of the East,” which I thought was a pretty telling description.

There is only one Amaré Stoudemire.(NBAE Photos)

The Wizards, like several teams, have decided to use the Suns and their fast-paced, freewheeling offense as a template, trying to build their team to the Suns’ specifications. The game, it was said, was going to be a measure of just how legitimate the Wizards were as a contender, while it would also show what the Suns could do against a team with their full roster of top players, a team that was one of only two to beat the Suns in the prior month and a half.

The first half of the game left little doubt as to the answers to any of those questions and as I watched the Suns hang a staggering 71 points on a pretty fair Wizards club in the first 24 minutes, I realized why these Suns look so different to me from any other incarnation in the team’s history – even last year’s squad, which had basically the same key personnel. And four letters kept repeating in my head:

U.C.L.A.

Famously, John Wooden’s college basketball powerhouses of the 1960s and 1970s spent very little time preparing specifically for opponents, if they spent any time at all. Instead, they spent all their practice time on their own game plan, refining it, tweaking it, drilling it over and over and over until it was flawless. So secure were they in their own system, they didn’t bother scouting or game-planning to combat an opponent’s strengths or exploit their weaknesses.

“Here we are, here’s what we’re going to do,” they seemed to say. “If you can beat us at our game, more power to you.”

And as we all know, they lost very few games (Yes, it certainly helped that many of those Bruin teams were built around Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, but UCLA under Wooden won titles before, between and after those players). It wasn’t arrogance, per se, but a kind of supreme confidence that if they did their best at what they did the best, it would be enough to better anything that could be thrown at them.

Other basketball teams through history have exuded the same kind of confidence. I think of the Celtics of the 1960s, with their fast break and legion of versatile role players. I think of the Lakers of the 1980s, and their rivals, the Celtics of the same period, both of whom were committed to particular styles of brilliant play, and both of whom made no allowances for the style of any opponent – which made their matchups all the more fascinating.

The Bulls of the 90s had their relentless Triangle Offense (which, by the way, Cotton Fitzsimmons had the Suns running in the early 1970s). In college, Princeton stubbornly rode their deliberate offense of high-post passing and back-door cuts to repeated NCAA basketball tournament upsets in the 80s and 90s.

And there are examples outside of basketball, as well. Bill Walsh’s San Francisco 49er football teams of the 1980s notoriously scripted their offense’s first twenty-five plays.

All of these teams, it’s vital to note, were trend-setters. Teams that followed them looked to their styles and asked, “How can we make that our own?” These teams found successful formulas and then bred imitators, few of whom ever did it as well as the original.

Team sports contests are often decided by which team can impose its will on the other. Can I get you to stop what you’re trying to do and focus on trying to stop what I’m trying to do? Can I get you in a position where you’re not doing what you do best, but rather trying to outdo me at what I do best? Can I force you to try to run with me, or shoot with me? If I can get you out of your comfort zone by executing so well within mine, if I can dictate tempo and style, I like my chances of winning.

That’s what these Suns are doing, on a night-by-night basis – fifteen games in a row, now, thirty of their last thirty-two games. They’re dictating to their opponents, forcing them acknowledge, “Our style doesn’t work against a team like this. How can we become more like them?”

Only to run up against the considerable roadblock of the fact that there’s only one Steve Nash. Only one Shawn Marion. Only one Amare Stoudemire. One Boris Diaw, one Raja Bell, one Leandro Barbosa. And one Mike D’Antoni, one Marc Iavaroni, one Alvin Gentry one Dan D’Antoni and one Phil Weber. Only one team that can combine all of them. That’s a lot of parts you have to replicate if you want to be like the Suns. And, we may find out come June, too many, if you hope to be better.

Even in the “gloriest” of glory days of the franchise – the Westphal-Adams-Davis powerhouses, the KJ-Chambers-Majerle-Hornacek young guns, the Barkley-led juggernauts – I’ve never seen a Suns team like this, with this kind of look in their eye.

It’s a look that barely acknowledges the team right before them, but at the same time doesn’t ignore or take for granted the immediate challenge. It’s the look of a team continually striving to play the best possible game their system will allow – they’ve come scary close already. It’s the look of a team – dare I say it? – that has its eyes on the prize.

Here they are, NBA, here’s what they’re going to do. If you can beat the Suns at their own game, more power to you.

But, fair warning: It’s only happened twice in the last thirty-two games, so I don’t like your chances.

A Three-Second Memory Lane Violation

Mon, 22 Jan 07 06:41:00 UT

The advent of online auction houses was the best and worst thing to happen to me. For years before they came around, I’d been on the lookout for Suns memorabilia, most of it from the era I remembered most fondly, the era of my childhood, the “Original Logo” years.

After being acquired late in the 1971-72, Charlie Scott went on to play three full seasons with Phoenix. (NBAE Photos)

Trouble was, it was pretty hard to find – there weren’t exactly “Old Suns Souvenir” stores around the Valley, and collectibles shows were few and far between. But with the Internet, suddenly there were centralized locations where I could look for exactly what I wanted, and now I’m almost literally rolling in cool Suns artifacts.

Of course, as a result, now I’m seven months behind in my rent, my electricity was turned off in 2004, and most of my teeth have fallen out because all I can afford to eat are Saltines.

Amazingly, ladies, I’m still single!

The first piece of “Sunsiana” (and if that’s not a word, I’m claiming it – Of course, no one else may want it) I remember owning was an 8 X 10 mounted game action photo of Charlie Scott laying one in at the Coliseum as Neal Walk and the Lakers’ Gail Goodrich look on. I have no idea where it came from or when I acquired it – It’s just been a constant presence among my other belongings for as long as I can remember. I still have it. My suspicion is the Suns must have done a series of them one season, because when I was a teenager, I spied a similarly mounted photo of Dick Van Arsdale in my orthodontist’s office. For the torture I endured there, the doctor should have at least given me the photo in exchange. Many years later, I chanced along a signed photo of Connie Hawkins that looks like it might have been part of the same series, but I can’t know for sure.

I’ve got the requisite Suns basketball cards, the prize amongst them being a 1970-71 Connie Hawkins card, and I’ve also got the 25th Anniversary card set issued by the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette in 1992 – 25 cards, one for each year, each of a different player from that particular year. I framed a number of those cards, and in the center of the display are the two tickets I had to a game that season on my birthday, signed by Connie Hawkins himself. And if you think that’s not a treasured memory, you must be a Lakers fan.

Somewhere, I have a Weiss Guys Car Wash t-shirt I wore as a kid that was signed by Walter Davis. I’ve got the commemorative booklet the Suns produced on the occasion of Dick Van Arsdale’s retirement, and a mug celebrating the Suns’ 1975-76 run to the NBA Finals, with the scores of all the playoff games inscribed on it.

As near as I can figure, I have every book written about the Suns, and many of the team’s media guides from year to year. I’ve got a Barkley bobble head, and a basketball signed by the entire 1990 roster (where have you gone, Kenny Battle?).

I was stunned a few years ago to find a poster, it must have been produced by the team, from 1977 depicting action shots of the squad’s star players (many of them among my all-time favorites), all taken from a single game against the Denver Nuggets. Alvan Adams, Paul Westphal, Ron Lee, Walter Davis, Gar Heard and Don Buse are all there, going against the likes of Dan Issel and Bobby Jones. Actually, not all the photos are game shots. Sweet D is depicted shooting a jumper, but from where he’s stationed on the Coliseum court, he can’t possibly be shooting at a basket, leading me to believe the photo was staged in warm-ups. Anybody who ever saw the Greyhound play knows his aim was much better than that. Every time I look at the photo of Lee on the poster, I flash back to the playgrounds I shot hoops in as a kid, when I’d dive headlong for a “loose” ball like the Tasmanian Devil himself, shouting “Ronnie Lee!” in case anyone who might be watching was unsure who I was emulating. Then I’d go home with my knees scraped bloody, and my bewildered mother would wonder if I’d been beaten up by a vicious gang of midgets. Again.

But of all the Suns stuff I have, my favorite is probably the least objectively attractive, and it doesn’t even come in Suns colors. It’s canary yellow, with a red emblem on it. It’s a coach’s nylon windbreaker with a caricature over the left breast of a basketball player, high above the rim, stuffing through a basketball labeled “44.” In his other hand is a ball labeled “33.” Written in a circle around it: “Adams/Westphal Basketball Camp.” As mentioned in a previous column, in my school-age summers, I attended John MacLeod’s summer camp at the Phoenix Jewish Community Center. But I had friends who went to the Adams/Westphal camp, so the jacket is a tangible, happy reminder of those summers. And canary yellow though it may be, I do wear it…proudly.

I have neither the largest, nor the most valuable, collection of Suns memorabilia in the world. But every item in it conjures up a very specific memory – of the team or of a time in my life – and I can’t put a value on those memories. The Suns and I started play in the same year, and our histories run parallel. I like knowing that I can look around my own life and remember the great moments in the franchise’s history – and vice versa. And the way the Suns are playing right now (they won their thirteenth in a row tonight), I have a feeling we’re all going to want to rush out and get some souvenirs of this season…because this is a team none of us will want to forget. I know I’ll be scrambling to assemble my 2006-07 memorabilia…

…Just as soon as I can afford it.

Pass the Saltines!

What’s YOUR favorite Suns souvenir?

How I Cost the Suns a Victory

Wed, 10 Jan 07 02:33:00 UT

The following story is true. No names have been changed to protect anybody. Regular readers of this blog know there’s no questioning my love for or loyalty to the Phoenix Suns. And that’s what makes this tale all the more painful for me.

Because the last thing I’d ever want to do is make any season any more difficult for my team. For instance, I always look before crossing the street – not just because it’s the smart thing to do from a self-preservation standpoint, but because I want to make sure anyone who might run me over and damage their car isn’t a player for the Suns; I wouldn’t want to be responsible for his being upset about having to deal with his insurance company on a game day.

That’s the kind of fan I am.

Anyway, this story takes us back to the near-forgotten days of 1982. John Cougar sang a little ditty about Jack and Diane, E.T. tried to find a pay phone that took alien currency, and the Suns practiced at the old Phoenix Jewish Community Center on Maryland and 15th Avenue. Like the Romantics and leg warmers and (presumably) E.T. itself, it’s not around anymore (the PJCC moved to the northeast part of the Valley).

I spent a good portion of my childhood at the old PJCC. I went to summer camp there, participated in a touring theater group for kids that was based out of there, and played in the PJCC’s Sunday afternoon basketball leagues for many years (Suns legend Ronnie Lee gave me a trophy one year at the league’s awards banquet, and you literally can’t see me because I’m completely shaded by his Afro).

The Suns were always around. In addition to practicing there as a team during the season, individual players would stop by to work out in the health club or just shoot around. Suns Coach John MacLeod sponsored basketball camps there for kids in the summer. The team opened their rookie camp to the public -- somewhere I have a mimeographed roster (on purple paper) of rookie and free agent participants from one camp – and a few dozen die hard supporters (mostly retired gentlemen like the late, much-missed Willie Levinson who didn’t have other obligations on a summer weekday) would sit in the bleachers and watch John MacLeod and Al Bianchi and, later, John Wetzel, put the kids through their paces. It was fairly common to see a Sun, past or present, in the PJCC’s parking lot. Probably in the same folder where I have that rookie camp roster, I have autographs from Paul Westphal, Alvan Adams, Gar Heard, Curtis Perry, Don Buse, Dennis Awtrey and a host of other players. One more than one occasion, I happened to be in the gym when a Suns player would be there working out, and I’d wind up rebounding for them as they shot – no greater fun could be had for a young Suns fan.

Video games became a big deal in the early 80s, and arcades sprung up around Phoenix (The Red Baron at Chris-Town, anyone?) offering contests such as Space Invaders, Asteroids and Centipede, and the PJCC got on board soon after and invested in a couple of the bulky consoles – Donkey Kong and Galaga. Like most boys my age in 1982, I was fairly into video games – although most of my friends were flat obsessed with them to the point that few other things mattered (Girls would change that, soon enough). While I wasn’t obsessed with video games (I was more into the Suns – after all, none of my friends sat through rookie camp with me and Willie Levinson – and while girls soon became a big deal for me, too, clearly the Suns have remained a high priority), I did enjoy playing them now and then. So on days when I’d walk the half-mile or so from my house to the PJCC, I’d often have a couple quarters in my pocket so I could play a game or two after shooting baskets for a while.

On this one particular winter day in 1982, I happened to be at the PJCC shooting around, and I had the baskets all to myself. It was a game day for the Suns, and there were only two other people in the gym that I recall: Larry Nance and Joe Proski. The Prosk, of course, needs no introduction to Suns fans; He’d been the Suns’ trainer since the team’s very first day, proudly bore the nickname “Magic Fingers,” and had an Afro nearly as large as Ronnie Lee’s. Larry Nance was a high-flying 6’ 10” forward who played seven highly-productive seasons for the Suns before being sent to Cleveland in the deal that brought Kevin Johnson and Mark West to town. While in a Suns jersey, he won the very first NBA slam-dunk contest, and he’d go on to have his number retired by the Cavs. In 1982, however, he was a second-year player of great promise. The Suns had Alvan Adams and Walter Davis and Dennis Johnson at the time, but it was already abundantly clear that Nance was a star in the making, and that he was going to be a big part of the franchise’s future. Apparently, he and the Prosk were at the PJCC so the trainer could give the young star some last-minute treatment of some sort prior to the game that night.

As I mentioned, the Suns were always around, so while I thought it was definitely cool that Larry Nance was there (I probably secretly hoped he’d see my shooting prowess and tell MacLeod that the Suns had to sign me immediately if the Suns had any intention of winning a championship), I didn’t gawk much, and just went about my business, clumsily heaving up jumpshots.

When I was done, I stepped out into the hall, fished around for a quarter, and plunked it into the Galaga video game. I lost fairly quickly, my spaceship callously destroyed by evil aliens and, having let the galaxy down, I was ready to head home, when I heard a voice behind me say, “I’ll play you.” I turned around, and there was Larry Nance with two shiny quarters.

What, I was going to say no?

Graciously, the High-Yatollah of Slam-ola (seriously, that’s what someone suggested for Nance as a nickname after he won the slam dunk contest later) let me play first, and as I struggled to play with Larry Nance Watching Me, I again probably imagined Nance introducing me to MacLeod in the locker room that night, “If this kid can shoots eighteen footers the way he shoots aliens, we’re going all the way!” I “died” fairly quickly, and it was Larry’s turn.

Now, keep in mind that Larry Nance was 6’ 10”. The video game was not. Larry had to fold his upper body under the game’s canopy so he could see the game’s screen. He was stuffed in there so tightly, I had no idea if he was doing well, doing poorly…Heck, I had no idea if he could even breathe.

I guess, as it turns out, he wasn’t doing very well, because he “died” about as quickly as I did, but he reacted much more strongly. He stood straight up and shouted a word I’m still not allowed to say. But because he was wedged under the canopy when he tried to stand up – KRACK – he smacked his head right into it. Hard. There was blood. A considerable amount of it.

He stumbled back into the gym, muttering, and I followed. By the time I got in there, he was bending over so Prosk could examine his scalp, and I heard the words, “stitches,” “hope it’s not a concussion,” and, “better not, just in case.” And then I got a look from the trainer that would have melted steel. I stammered an apology, Nance mumbled something about it not being my fault, and I hurried out of the gym and back home.

Larry Nance didn’t play that night, and I distinctly remember the reason given over the radio being, “a head contusion suffered by an inadvertent elbow during the morning shootaround.” The Suns, without their young star, lost, and I felt terribly guilty. The Suns went on to finish 53-29, and lost to Denver in the first round of the playoffs. I remember wondering if perhaps, like how a butterfly’s flapping wings can somehow cause a series of events that could typhoon halfway across the globe, Nance hadn’t gotten hurt and sat out that game, the outcome of the season might have been entirely different. I sure hope not. I’d hate to think I cost the Suns a championship.

My friends, meanwhile, when I told them the story later, were more concerned with why I didn’t finish the video game. After all, it was paid for.

But like I said, it was 1982. Priorities were different for most boys my age then. For me, though, the Suns were always more important.

A New Year's Wish

Mon, 01 Jan 07 17:01:00 UT

I was in Chicago last week for the Christmas holiday, and when I returned to my hotel room that night, I flicked on the television to find out who’d won the game between the Lakers and the Heat earlier in the day.

I was thrilled to see the Lakers had been routed, with Dwyane Wade doing most of the damage with 40 points, and Kobe Bryant being held far below his average. I don’t celebrate Christmas, but if I did, it would have been a heck of a present.

As part of the cable sports station’s coverage of the game, they ran a graphic listing the NBA’s all-time top scorers on Christmas day, in terms of total points. To my surprise, among the leaders was Dick Van Arsdale.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess. I mean, the Suns used to play every year on Christmas back in their early seasons, so Van would have had plenty of opportunities to ring up the buckets…I suppose before he even came to the Suns, his previous team, the New York Knicks, might have played a few times on the holiday. I think I was mostly surprised because Van stopped playing almost thirty years ago, so his name rarely comes up in contemporary basketball discussions. And that got me thinking about the guy longtime Suns fans lovingly referred to as the “Flying Dutchman.”

For those of you who don’t know Dick Van Arsdale beyond the name on the US Airways Arena’s Ring of Honor, a quick history lesson in Sunsology: When the NBA held an expansion draft in 1968 to populate the rosters of its two newest franchises in Milwaukee and Phoenix, the Suns chose first, and took Van off the Knicks’ hands. He didn’t want to come to Arizona at first – the Knicks were on the verge of great things, and Phoenix was considered little more than a wild west outpost, but come he did, and he came to love the city almost as much as it came to love him. Van scored the team’s first-ever regular season basket, and went on to be the exceedingly reliable mainstay of the Suns’ often-turbulent first decade. A cross between the clutch, dependable John Havlicek and the selfless, relentless Jerry Sloan, Van earned his way onto three All-Star squads, and by the time he retired in 1977, his name was atop most of the Suns’ meaningful career statistical categories. He segued immediately into a front-office role with the team, as broadcaster, as Vice President of Basketball Operations, and even, briefly, as head coach. He remains with the organization today as a Senior Executive Vice President. Forever and always around Phoenix, he will be known as the Original Sun, and he is a pivotal figure in the history of professional sports in the Valley.

On a personal note, Dick Van Arsdale was a boyhood hero of mine, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with him a few times. He’s as approachable, as kind a guy, and as generous with his time as anyone you’d ever want to meet.

Van suffered a stroke a little more than a year ago. It was a big one -- It left his speech and some of his motor skills impaired. It got some press attention at the time, particularly in Phoenix, of course, and there were many letters and e-mails of support in the first days following the stroke, but you haven’t heard much about his recovery since. Anyone who’s ever spent any time with Van can be reasonably sure he’s attacked his rehabilitation with the same gusto he used to fight through Clifford Ray picks to stay with Rick Barry during his playing days. He’s made a remarkable comeback at high speed, by all accounts, and his contributions to the Suns family remain as vital as ever. The man is, by no means, an invalid of any kind.

But anyone who knows a stroke victim knows that recovery never really ends. It takes constant hard work not only to improve relearned skills, but also to simply maintain them. In short, while it may not get any headlines, Van continues to put in the effort on his recuperation.

So, as you’re making your list of wishes for the New Year, next to your wish that the Suns win their first of many NBA championships in 2007, why not send a wish to Van for continued success in his comeback, and remind him that we’re all still rooting for him (You could even drop a check, if you’re so inclined, to Phoenix Suns Charities, which support many worthy medical causes, such as stroke research)?

We’ve all seen what our cheers can do for our Suns when they’re working hard on the court.

Chances are, they’ll have the same effect on the Original Sun as he keeps on fighting off the court.

Suns fans, I wish you health, happiness, smiles and success in the New Year. And I wish for the Larry O’Brien Trophy for all of us…with a four-game playoff sweep of the Lakers along the way.

A Modest Proposal

Fri, 15 Dec 06 03:03:00 UT

The idea hit me like a (perfectly legal) Kurt Thomas pick during the Suns’ defeat of Orlando this week, their fourth on a five-game road swing through the East.

I had to wait, and sweat a little during the Miami game, to write this down for the website, but now that the Suns have come back from their trip 5-0 and, better yet, won their twelfth straight, it’s safe to bring this modest proposal to the world at large:

The NBA should move the Phoenix Suns to the Eastern Conference!

Hmm. Thanks for the standing ovation, most of you, but I hear a smattering of scoffs, groans and boos mixed in with the raucous applause. There’s a guy over there, yelling, “You just want the Phoenix in the East ‘cause it’s a weak conference and the Suns’d almost have playoff home court advantage locked up and a spot in the Finals guaranteed!” There’s another guy over there, screaming, “Your idea doesn’t make any geographical sense!” In the back, being thrown into a strait-jacket and wrestled away by security, there’s another guy, howling, “You just want to get away from the Lakers, you Laker-hater!” And there’s even a lady over there, barking, “What are you smoking, Beechen?!” (Hi, Mom!)

Well, all of those things may be true (except I’m not scared of no stinkin’ Lakers).

The Eastern Conference is weak. Maybe the weakest in the history of professional sports. Weaker than a baby kitten. Weaker than tissue paper. Weaker than the Sixers’ trade leverage. As I write this, there are only five teams (count ‘em) with a record of .500 or better in the entire conference, four of them are in one division, and none of them are in the Atlantic Division, where the best record is a sterling 9-12 (Go, Nets!). That’s compared to the Western Conference, where there are ten teams at .500 or better. A regular diet of those Eastern patsies would doubtless inflate the Suns’ record, maybe have them threatening 70 wins.

And sure, Phoenix can’t remotely be considered Eastern. Not a lot of saguaro happening in Connecticut, and no one’s saying Arizona water is why the bagels are so good.

But I swear, I’m not tossing the idea out there (just) because it would be a sweet set-up for the Suns. I’m suggesting this because (cue patriotic music) I care about the NBA and I think this would be great for the league (and my fingers are only crossed because I was born that way – Stop staring!).

As we’ve already established, the East is weak (weaker than me trying to go to my right off the dribble). The occasional Detroit Pistons or Miami Heat blip aside, it’s been weak for a while, and certainly not deep. There’s zero parity between the conferences. Moving a powerhouse team, like the Suns, to the Eastern Conference would bring instant credibility to that wing of the standings. It would make the NBA Finals more than a foregone conclusion (we all know the Western Conference Finals is where the NBA champ will be crowned). It would make things interesting.

As to the geographical questions, I’m not concerned. Yeah, it would look weird to have the Suns in the same division as, say, Boston, New York, and New Jersey, but we’d get used to it. Heck, for the first few years they were around, the Suns were stuck in the NBA’s Midwest Division, with such nearby neighbors as Milwaukee and Chicago. And the NFL has had people scratching their heads over division alignments for decades. Only relatively recently did the Atlanta Falcons and the New Orleans Saints move out of the NFC West division. Even today, the Dallas Cowboys are in the NFC East (strictly so they can maintain their rivalries with the Giants, Eagles and Redskins), and the Indianapolis Colts call the AFC South their home. And the world hasn’t ended.

Somebody out there, start a petition. The NBA needs the Suns in the Eastern Conference. It’ll bring the conferences closer to equal. It’ll make the Finals worth watching. It’ll be good for everybody – the league, the conferences, the fans, even television.

If it happens to work out a little better for the Suns than anyone else, well, that’s just something we’ll all have to deal with.

* * *

TEAM NICKNAME UPDATE: Great suggestions are rolling in, in response to last week’s post. Thanks to everyone for contributing! Now it’s time to put your money where your typing fingers are. The Suns are home from their road trip Friday night against Golden State. Crank up those signs with your suggestions, draw all over your plain t-shirts and show up in the stands. Get yourself seen. Let’s see if one of these nicknames takes off!

What's in a Nickname?

Fri, 08 Dec 06 17:29:00 UT

Once upon a time, Purple People Eaters, Steel Curtains, Fearsome Foursomes, Monsters of the Midway, the Silver Rush and the Orange Crush roamed the sporting landscape. And that was just in football.

Baseball brought us the Big Red Machine, the Gashouse Gang, Dem Bums, the Bronx Bombers and the Amazin’s.

In basketball, Suns fans could never forget (unfortunately) Showtime. Long before that, however, there was Blazermania, and more recently, the Bad Boys. In some cities, fans had their own nicknames – remember the Baseline Bums in San Antonio?

The Suns have even had a few nicknames in their time: The fabled 1975-76 team was dubbed the “Sunderella” Suns, and collectively, over the years, the squad has been known as the “Purple Gang,” which is technically true, but not exactly intimidating.

You don’t see nicknames for teams much anymore, and I think it’s a shame. It’s because units don’t stay together like they used to, for years at a time, to develop an identity that can take hold with a community or the larger sporting consciousness. Because of free agency, the single best and worst thing to ever happen to professional sports, players seldom remain in the same city for five years, let alone an entire career. That, coupled with the rise of fantasy sports, means fans root for individual players regardless of who they play for, a big change from the days when the team was everything.

Oh, sure, there are some great individual nicknames out there in basketball, and the Suns have a bunch of them: the Matrix, STAT, LB, Dirty, Junior, Ra-Ra and (not my favorite) Nashty.

But a team nickname…that fires up a community, gives a city something to rally around rather than a group of someones, and makes everyone feel like part of the action. When the NFL’s Broncos had their spectacular defenses of the late 1970s, the entire population of Denver was part of the Orange Crush. Los Angelenos came to think of the Showtime Lakers as embodying Los Angeles – “We are them, and they are us.”

I think we can all agree that the Suns of the last three years have been pretty special; the core of the team (Nash, Stoudemire and Marion) has been together through that time, and integral pieces (Bell, Thomas, Barbosa, Diaw) have either been acquired or grown into being parts of that core along the way. And anyone who has seen the Suns play in the last three years knows that, for all their individual talents, they are a true team. I knew it from the time I saw them play a preseason game against the Clippers in 2004, when a Suns player got knocked to the ground, and everyone else on the floor came to help him up. “Shazam,” I thought to myself. “These guys have chemistry!”

So I’m calling for the reinstitution of a sports tradition. I’m calling for us, the Suns fans, to bestow upon the 2006-2007 Phoenix Suns a Cool Nickname. I’m proposing it here, but this is not a contest, where the Suns will choose the winner and make this an “official” nickname. No, this is a call for a grass-roots movement to begin. I want to see the nickname start here, in a fan blog, then have it sweep the fan community to the point where signs appear in the arena at games, T-shirts start sprouting up, and people in other cities start taking note, realizing how much the people in Phoenix support their team – because it won’t be a marketing gimmick, it’ll be something that came from the fans.

Though I do have a suggestion for what that nickname might be, I’m in no way married to it. This is just to get the ball rolling. If we, the fans, come up with something better that takes hold around the Valley and becomes the new super-cool nickname of Your Phoenix Suns, then I’m all for it. I just want it to happen. That said, here’s what I’ve come up with as a possible nickname for the team:

The Fire Department.

Not only do “fire” and “Suns” naturally go together, but the Suns frequently “catch fire,” as in their blistering first quarter in their home game against the Nets a few weeks ago. They burn up and down the floor – and burn defenders as well. And their guns are always blazing. The metaphors are limitless. It’s a catchy moniker, as well as an appropriate one – can’t you just see the cool t-shirts and the clever signs that will follow? And okay, Nitpicker, I know real Fire Departments put out fires, but just go with the spirit of the thing, will you? It’s got a good ring to it, like the old football “New York Sack Exchange.”

And it’s just a suggestion.

If you’ve got something better, suggest it here. Or better yet, start that grass-roots movement yourself. Make up a few shirts, write up a sign, and go to a home game with your friends. Spread the word. The Suns have incredible fan support, but I really think a solid team nickname would mobilize the city even more, and make the Suns feel like even more of a force to be reckoned with around the league.

(But give some thought to The Fire Department. Heck, we could even call Steve Nash “Chief,” and isn’t that a lot better than “Nashty?”)

A Purple Pilgrim's Progress

Tue, 28 Nov 06 18:30:00 UT

As last week was Thanksgiving, to honor the holiday and our great country’s history, I made a pilgrimage of my own, back to the Valley, back to see the Suns.

Okay, maybe it’s not the traditional kind of pilgrimage, and maybe honoring our great country’s history wasn’t my first priority, but hey, we all do what we can.

As I cruised down the desert highway towards the Valley, Commodore Condello and the Salt River Navy Band blaring through my speakers (and one plus the bonus for you if you know who Commodore Condello is), I reflected on previous holiday check-ins with the Suns.

It’s been, more or less, a tradition for me for as long as I can remember, you see. My birthday is around this time of year, so soon after we moved to Phoenix, when I was but a wee Suns.com Special Correspondent, a trip to Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum to celebrate my becoming another year older became a regular gift for me (Ah, the Madhouse on McDowell…Remember seeing games there while the State Fair was going on outside? You’d watch the Suns clobber the Buffalo Braves or some other hapless foe, then go celebrate with a big piece of Indian Fry Bread smothered in honey. Good times.). If, for some reason, I wasn’t going to be around during the Christmas season, we made a point to see a game around Thanksgiving, just to feel some of that holiday spirit.

The tradition continued through my college years, when I’d come home from Chicago and see a game over winter break. I spent my twenty-first birthday in the stands, in fact, nursing my first (legal) beer (for the record, the Suns lost to the Spurs, with Tom Chambers scoring 32, but the Suns went on to win fifteen of their next seventeen, so I like to think I inspired them). No matter where I lived after moving away from Phoenix, whether it was Texas, or now in Los Angeles, I still tried to make it home at least once over the winter to see the team in person (I am, of course, a fixture in Staples Center when the Suns visit LA).

So, armed with a ticket to see the Suns welcome in old pal Jason Kidd (not to mention former U of A heroes Richard Jefferson and Hassan Adams) and the New Jersey Nets, I marched up to the Arena on the night after Thanksgiving.

As always, my first act upon reaching my seat was to “check in,” as it were, with the Ring of Honor. As fun as the current Suns are, I like to take a second to remember the team’s past heroes and tradition (I like to say that the Suns and I started play in the same year). In all honesty, this is something I do in every NBA arena I visit, even Staples Center – I look for the retired numbers and imagine the greats that played in that team’s uniform in different eras.

The game experience itself was as fun and exciting as it’s always been, going back to my childhood. There are some new wrinkles that weren’t around then, of course: the video presentation before the introduction of the starting lineup is spectacular, and the Suns Dancers, in their own way, are pretty spectacular, too. A far cry from the Desert City Six, and again, one plus the bonus if you remember them (“Spectacular” might not be right word to describe the DS6, but they were pretty fun).

As for the game? The Suns burst out of the gate with as good a quarter as I’ve seen any Suns team play, shooting 83% and nearly running the Nets right out of the gym before graciously allowing the visitors back in the game in the last quarter in order to provide the local fans with some suspense (That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it). The Suns hung on for the victory, and everyone went home to their leftovers giving thanks (except Kidd, Jefferson, Adams and company).

As I drove back to Los Angeles yesterday, I wondered what my “all-time record” was for seeing the Suns under “holiday conditions.” And I was a little sad that my annual winter pilgrimage was over – I won’t be back this year for the Christmas holiday.

But I decided that was all right, and I turned up Commodore Condello once more and kept my car pointed west. I already had my gift… I’d seen the Suns tuck another victory under their belts.

From Point to Point, A Line of Excellence

Sat, 18 Nov 06 16:02:00 UT

In their thirty-eight years of existence, the Phoenix Suns have taken more of their share of guff about the fact that they’ve never had a dominant, prototypical franchise center. And it’s valid guff. Some teams, it seems, have all the luck.

The Lakers go, more or less, from Wilt to Kareem to Shaq. The Rockets go from Hakeem to Yao. The Spurs go from the Admiral to Tim Duncan. The Suns, meanwhile, have been blessed (cursed?) with never having been bad enough in a season when a franchise big man loomed on the horizon to merit the first pick. In fact, the Suns have never had the first pick in the NBA draft (they’ve drafted second twice, taking Neal Walk in 1969, and Armon Gilliam in 1987). And they’ve never traded for a top center in his prime, either.

But what the Suns have had, to my mind, at least, is the greatest nearly-unbroken run of dominant point guards in NBA history.

Though some might argue the line starts in 1975 with the arrival of Paul Westphal, I always considered Westy more of a combo guard than a traditional point, so I date the beginning of the tradition to 1980, when Dennis Johnson arrived in the Valley in a trade with Seattle for Westphal. Already known as a premiere defensive stopper, and a former NBA Finals MVP, while with the Suns DJ went on to be named All-NBA once, All-Defensive three times, and an All-Star twice, all in three years.

But that was just a hint of things to come.

In 1988, the Suns Golden Age of Point Guards kicked into high gear when Kevin Johnson touched down in Phoenix. Teaming with Tom Chambers, he became the new face of a franchise that sorely needed one, lifting it from the dark days of the mid-1980s to a pinnacle of excellence it’s seldom left since. Probably the fastest player in the league during his prime, KJ was deadly from inside and out, and had a knack of finding teammates in just the right spots at just the right time. And outside of Malone and Stockton in Utah at the same time, no one ran the pick and roll better than KJ and Chambers. Honors? Most Improved Player in 1988-89. All-NBA second team three years running, and a fourth year on the third team. Three years as an All-Star. Three years averaging more than twenty points and ten assists. The team’s all-time leader in free throws made and attempted, as well as assists. Among the team’s all-time leaders in games played, minutes, field goals, steals and points scored. Arguably worthy of being a Hall of Famer, and I believe he’d be a lock if he hadn’t changed his game to accommodate the arrival of Charles Barkley in 1992.

As the KJ era wound down beginning in 1996, the Suns acquired Jason Kidd, then the league’s top young point guard. We know how he turned out: All-NBA three years running, All-Defensive team three years in a row (twice on the first team), and three years as an All-Star. Three years leading the entire league in assists.

Out went Kidd in 2001, in came Stephon Marbury. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying Starbury was a dominant player with the Suns. A deadly shooter from outside, he could also pound opponents in the post. And woe to the defender who got in his way on a drive to the basket – I’ve never seen a stronger point guard that size. For his Suns career, he averaged 21 points and 8 assists. And he made an All-NBA third team and represented the Suns in an All-Star game.

Once the Suns traded Steph in early 2004, they set their sights on Steve Nash, luring him back to town that summer. All he’s done is become the face of the franchise, win back-to-back league MVPs, lead the league is assists twice, play on two All-Star teams, be named first-team All-NBA twice, and make a hefty down-payment on a spot in the team’s Ring of Honor.

DJ to KJ to Kidd to Marbury to Nash.

Some teams may have had better point guards at any given point along that chronology (sit down, Laker Fan; hold your righteous indignation, Jazz Buff), but does any other team come close to duplicating that kind of string of quality at the position?

Who are the other elite point guards in the league today? Jason Kidd is still up there, to be sure. And okay, he was preceded there by Marbury. But who was there before that? Likewise, can you name the point guards who came before Iverson in Philadelphia, Billups in Detroit, Parker in San Antonio, or Chris Paul in New Orleans?

Or look at it historically: Who came before Stockton in Utah? Magic in Los Angeles? Who was there before Oscar Robertson in Cincinnati or after him in Milwaukee? The names don’t exactly leap to mind, do they?

What the Suns have accomplished with that one position is remarkable, coming up with more than a generation of brilliant floor leaders, one succeeding the other, giving the franchise an unmatched history of excellence at a crucial spot on the floor. It’s a testament to the team’s skill at evaluating and acquiring backcourt talent.

When you watch a Suns game, in person or on television, and you see Steve Nash deliver another perfect lob to STAT, or swing a cross-court pass to Raja Bell for an open three, or dart beneath the basket only to blindly dish the ball through traffic to the Matrix as he dives to the hoop on a perfectly-timed cut for a Wham Bam Slam (© Al McCoy, 2006), you can think about all the legends in purple and orange who have done the same for their teammates over the years in plays just as thrilling and awe-inspiring. You can take pride in the fact that, as far as NBA point guards are concerned, Phoenix was, and is, Where It’s At.

Now, if we could just get a dominant, prototypical, franchise center to go with one of these point guards…

Go On... Doubt Him

Sat, 11 Nov 06 14:55:00 UT

Ever heard millions of a city’s residents exhale in relief all at the same time? You did after the Suns played the Dallas Mavericks on November 9.

Sure, the Suns were defeated; another loss in a start to a season that’s seen a few of them, but that wasn’t the big story that came out of US Airways Center. No, the big story came wrapped in a white jersey, wearing the number one.

For the first time in more than a year, Amaré Stoudemire truly resembled his old self.

It wasn’t consistent, it wasn’t the full-on, lightning-quick, more-powerful-than-a-locomotive Amaré we all see in our personal highlight films of 2004-2005, but there were moments, on both ends of the floor, when he looked unstoppable. Rolling to the basket after a pick and taking a Nash feed for a devastating assault on the rim. Fighting his way through three Mavericks under the basket to find a sliver of daylight so he could lay the ball in.

There was a well-rounded stat line of sixteen points and eight rebounds in thirty-five minutes. And there was a look in his eye that let you know that he knew he was on the right track, that it was starting to return to him, and that the light at the end of the tunnel was a great big spotlight that LeBron, Melo and D-Wade were going to have to shove over and share (if not cede entirely) once Amaré got there.

Amaré’s not back yet, but oh, he’s coming. And he’s angry.

Can you blame him? For more than a year, he heard the whispers – how he was done at 22, how players who recovered from microfracture surgery were never the same, how he slacked off on his rehab, how he’d never make it back. Imagine what that’s like – walking around a town holding its breath, all eyes on you, hopes pinned for the city’s first NBA championship stitched into your delicate knee…and knowing that while they want you back the way you were more than anything in the world, they’re just not sure if you can get there.

You wondered. I wondered. We all wondered. But there are some things we all forgot:

We forgot that this young man is all about proving himself. We forgot he’s all about beating the odds. We forgot he grew up in less-than-ideal circumstances, a longest of long shots to make it out of where he began. We forgot he played himself into the NBA direct from high school – at a time when there was much criticism and controversy over whether players with no college experience could truly compete in the NBA (outside of a few notable exceptions). We forgot he responded to that controversy by becoming an instant star and the first high school-to-NBA player to win the Rookie of the Year award. We forgot he destroyed the curse of the sophomore slump by nearly averaging a double-double in his second season. We forgot that he reacted to concern over whether he could withstand playoff pressure by going absolutely berserk on Dallas two seasons ago… while playing out of position. We forgot that the other marquee players who’ve had microfracture surgery and returned somewhat less than their former selves, like Jason Kidd, Chris Webber or Allan Houston, were all considerably older than Amaré, with a lot more mileage on their joints. We forgot that recovery from a serious injury takes time, that it’s not an exact science that everyone responds differently to trauma and therapy.

Amaré Stoudemire has been shoving it back in doubters’ faces his entire life. This time, it’s taking him a little longer to do, but if you think he won’t ultimately do it, look at his track record.

Go on, doubt Amaré. It just makes him more focused, more determined, to prove you wrong.

But if you’re smart, you won’t bet against him.

Purple, Orange... and Red

Thu, 02 Nov 06 18:22:00 UT

I had to flee Los Angeles. If I had to listen one moment more to Lakers fans on LA talk radio rhapsodizing after their team’s opening night victory over the Suns...

... if I had to listen to one more giddy phone call hailing second-year center Andrew Bynum as a spectacular blend of George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, Thomas Edison and Albert Schweitzer – after ONE GAME – I was going to risk blindness from repeatedly punching myself in the eye.

Time to come home to Phoenix.

So I made the long trek across the desert on I-10, and came within shouting distance of the Valley just as Al McCoy took the air for the Suns’ second game, against the Clippers, last night. Incidentally, there is NOTHING better to hear after a long trip, NOTHING that says, “You’ve come home,” like the voice of Al McCoy crackling through the radio waves into your car.

By the time I made it to a television set, the ESPN broadcast of the game was into the third quarter, and Bill Walton was tittering about how the late Red Auerbach had fleeced the Suns in 1983 by trading center Rick Robey to Phoenix for guard Dennis Johnson. The trade helped bring the Celtics two championships, in 1984 and 1986.

Ordinarily, such talk makes me want to punch myself in my other eye, but instead, I had to smile. Because, love him (fans of the Celtics) or hate him (fans of pretty much every other team), you had to admire Red Auerbach. It’s inarguable that he was instrumental in the growth of professional basketball (in fact, you could make a case that, without whatever popularity the NBA gained as a result of the Auerbach-led Celtics dynasty in the 1960s, the league might never have expanded to Phoenix in 1968). Auerbach also helped integrate the sport, drafting the league’s first black player, fielding the league’s first all-black starting five, and hiring the league’s first black coach. And he drove the Lakers batty for decades (making him a hero, in my book).

His accomplishments over his incredible career have been listed many times elsewhere in the days since his passing. But what did Red Auerbach mean to the Phoenix Suns?

When I think of Red Auerbach, I’ll always think of not just the two championships the Suns helped him win for the city of Boston, but the four championships to which we contributed. These deals are largely lost in the mists of time, but in 1972, the Celtics traded the rights to Charlie Scott, a high-scoring, mega-talented guard then toiling in the American Basketball Association, for Suns’ premier power forward Paul Silas. And in 1975, the Celtics traded a young guard named Paul Westphal to Phoenix… so they could get Charlie Scott back. The results? Boston won their 12th championship in 1974, and their 13th in 1976 (beating the Little Team That Could from the desert).

Now, were all three of these trades (including the Robey/Johnson deal) matters of a wily old veteran ripping off a relatively new kid on the block? Maybe. But with the benefit of hindsight, you can see where the Suns were coming from. In 1972, the Suns were coming off two seasons where they’d won 48 and 49 games… and missed the playoffs both years (we shared the same division as the Milwaukee Abdul-Jabbars in those days, and fewer teams made the playoffs anyway). For whatever reason, the formula in place wasn’t working and something had to change -- and there was no denying Scott’s ability. In 1975, John MacLeod was here, and he and Jerry Colangelo knew that Scott, as talented as he was, didn’t fit in with the picture they had for the franchise (and besides, there was something promising about that Westphal kid). By 1983, the Suns had gone about as far as they could with Dennis Johnson, and it was apparent that the team’s real problem was the lack of a true center, which Rick Robey certainly was. And, as much as he’s ridiculed now, Rick Robey had the potential to be a very good center… when he was healthy. The problem was, he never was.

And besides, Red Auerbach had a way of making these deals sound so good… Like, “If we do this, we’ll both get well. Come on, whaddaya say?”

The man knew how to make a trade. The man knew how to run a business. The man knew basketball.

Look, without Red Auerbach, we might not have basketball in Phoenix. We wouldn’t have had the magical 1975-76 season, even if we did lose to his Celtics in the Finals that year. We wouldn’t have had Paul Westphal, and we know what impact he had on this franchise for three decades. And we certainly wouldn’t have the feisty, underdog mentality that has characterized the franchise for as long as I’ve been a fan.

So for those things, at the very least…thanks, Red.