Suns Still Seeking a Bright Spot

If the Phoenix Suns entered the NBA thinking there must be some justice, they soon learned otherwise. In 1970-71, their third season, they won 48 games, had the league’s fourth-best record, and missed the playoffs. A year later, they won 49 and sat out the playoffs again.

In those days, the top two in each of the four divisions made it and the Suns were stuck in the Midwest, under Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Milwaukee Bucks and a strong Chicago team with Jerry Sloan and Bob Love.

So the young Sun general manager, Jerry Colangelo, began lobbying to get into the Pacific Division in the coming realignment, a wish he was granted.

Of course, how was he to know that three seasons later, Abdul-Jabbar would force the Bucks to trade him . . . to the Lakers? That’s how it has gone for these two teams ever since.

“We’ve been centerless, and they’ve had a domination on the centers,” Colangelo says. “That’s the only difference. . . .

“Their evolution was 1/8Wilt 3/8 Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar and Shaq 1/8O’Neal 3/8 and ours was Neal Walk, Alvan Adams, et al. It proves a point. Pretty difficult to reach the pinnacle without a dominant center.”

Colangelo is also the man who landed Phoenix a baseball team, which zoomed past the Dodgers in its second season and won a division title.

That proves another point. Without a salary cap, and with enough money and brains, anything is possible.

“Our philosophy was, we were going to be on a honeymoon for four or five years,” Colangelo says. “I looked at Colorado, at what was transpiring. The novelty with major league baseball would create interest and one thing we’ve always been able to do is market fairly well. And then we would build over the next four or five years and we’d better be competitive by the fifth year.

“And so we get into it that first season and we get our brains beat out. . . . We led the league with 36,000 season tickets and we drew 3.5 million people. So we sent our renewals out and there was a lot of attrition. A red flag went up. I’m counting these things up and I see the possibility of 8,000-10,000 season tickets being lost. That was $15 million-plus. . . .

“That was an easy one for me. I said, ‘Look, we’re not going to be on a honeymoon, we’ve got to become competitive today. How can we do that?’ Well, if we go out and get pitching, pitching might shortcut this learning curve and we might get competitive sooner rather than later.”

In baseball, Colangelo is known as that free-spending basketball guy, a characterization he doesn’t consider flattering. He notes that many of his key players--Matt Williams, Luis Gonzalez, Matt Mantei, Tony Womack--came in trades.

And when Colangelo did spend tens of millions, as he did for Randy Johnson, he finessed it, getting Johnson to go for a four-year contract, paid out over eight, to allow the team to shop for more help.

The rest was baseball history.

“That was the way to protect the investment, that was the way to attempt to be competitive,” Colangelo says. “And the good news is this: We did. Not everyone who spends money gets a return. So we made good decisions. . . .

“Here in our second year, we had the greatest turnaround season in history. Not just in the National League, not just in our division, but the history of major league baseball and that goes back a long way. And we win the division, we win 100 games, and basically, we get chastised the whole way.”

The Suns, meanwhile, became a successful, widely admired, player-friendly organization with a family feel, even if their high-water mark was two finals appearances.

Colangelo’s son, Bryan, is now the general manager. Several former players, such as Tom Van Arsdale and Connie Hawkins, work for the team. Players like the warm weather and their agents trust the Colangelos, who pay market prices.

Unfortunately, their archrivals, the Lakers, also pay top dollar and are known as player friendly. And then there’s the beach, the entertainment industry. . . .

“Wilt wound up in Los Angeles, he didn’t start there,” Jerry Colangelo says. “Abdul-Jabbar started in Milwaukee and went to Los Angeles. Shaquille started in Orlando and went to Los Angeles.

“That’s a feather in their cap and a tribute to the draw that Los Angeles has had. I think in basketball, Los Angeles has had a great appeal. . . . Think about it, three of the great centers of all time, they’ve had ‘em.”

The Suns have been rebuilt since the Charles Barkley days and are, once more, a deep, talented team, if a relatively small one, competing in a conference with a lot of big ones.

They’ve already been through a lot this season, with Colangelo blasting everyone when they were 4-4, specifically not exempting Coach Danny Ainge (“Danny’s not a novice, this is his fourth year already.”).

Then, after the Suns had won nine of 12, Ainge surprised everyone by walking away from the remaining $5 million on his contract and retiring.

In Phoenix, there are suspicions that, although Ainge really did want to be with his family, his distress was heightened by his frustrations with his team and its inability to shoot. In a TNT interview, he later suggested politely that the Suns could finish as high as “a No. 4 or 5 seed.”

Nor, the suspicions go, was Jerry Colangelo devastated to see Ainge leave.

The Suns have long had a country-club atmosphere that this season seemed to concern the owner. Or as Colangelo said in his early-season outburst, “There’s no two-hour limit on practice.”

There’s a new tone these days. When Ainge was coach, as in the Paul Westphal and Cotton Fitzsimmons days, the coach’s office was open before games, with players, team officials and press people lounging around. Ainge would often be in gym clothes, his feet up on the desk, laughing and joking.

These days under hard-edged Scott Skiles, the office door is closed. Skiles meets with the press outside.

They still don’t have one of the great centers of all time. Nevertheless, they’re soldiering on, even if it’s an uphill fight. It’s the Suns’ way.

* DENVER 128

CLIPPERS 105

The Nuggets’ highest-scoring game of the season ended the Clippers’ win streak at three.

Page 3

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TONIGHT

Phoenix vs. Lakers

Staples Center

7:30

Fox Sports Net