It’s Hardly Been Fun for Suns

The Phoenix Suns held a morning workout at their America West Arena practice court while down the hall World Wrestling Federation wrestlers prepared for a Monday night show, then held their evening workout amid the cheering and pyrotechnics of the matches in the main arena.

This would have to qualify as the most normal day the Suns have had so far.

The Suns had only two players under contract when the NBA lockout officially ended Thursday afternoon. They watched their prized free agent, Antonio McDyess, leave for Denver before having second thoughts that kept franchises in limbo and sent players on a wild goose chase of a recruiting trip. When McDyess did sign with the Nuggets, the Suns’ Plan B consisted of hoping Tom Gugliotta would accept an offer worth $30 million less than what the Minnesota Timberwolves had on the table.

“It’s been a rough two weeks, I’ll tell you that,” Sun Coach Danny Ainge said. “The whole thing has been bizarre.

“We were wondering what kind of team we were going to have, the quality of team.”

For the first couple of days of NBA business, Ainge had little to do.

“We didn’t even practice Friday,” Ainge said. “Saturday, we had a practice at 10 o’clock for the roster players and 11 o’clock for the non-signed players that were in town.”

The 10 o’clock practice consisted of two guys: Danny Manning and Jason Kidd.

“We did some shooting and we talked about our offense and all that,” Ainge said. “We just did mostly individual stuff. It was kind of a joke, to be honest with you. It wasn’t training camp, that’s for sure.”

No team was whipped around by the whirlwind of the NBA’s condensed off-season as much as the Suns. They had maneuvered themselves into perfect position last season and looked ready to be major players in the free-agent market, with some $16 million of salary-cap space.

But the cap amount came in lower than expected ($30 million), and the new collective bargaining agreement limited the amount of money teams could throw at players who weren’t their own free agents. Then they operated with a new rule book that was under constant revision.

“It wasn’t only learning on the fly, but negotiations were happening in a vacuum,” Sun General Manager Bryan Colangelo said. “Nobody knew what the rules were and exactly what they would be. The memos that were sent out were in some cases contradictory.”

After harboring dreams of signing both McDyess and Scottie Pippen, they had to scale back their plans. Pippen went to Houston in a sign-and-trade deal, then McDyess developed a mysterious affinity for Denver, which had amassed a collection of players represented by McDyess’ agent, Tony Dutt.

McDyess was set to sign with Denver, then wavered on Thursday. Three of his old Phoenix teammates--George McCloud, Rex Chapman and Kidd--flew to Denver to try to talk him into staying with the Suns.

They never got the chance.

They were told to meet McDyess at a hotel, waited there for an hour, then heard from McDyess’ agent that he had a migraine headache and wouldn’t come.

“At that time, we knew it was a hoax,” McCloud said. “[The agents] didn’t allow us to speak to him.”

Media reports had McDyess in a suite at the arena during the Colorado Avalanche game that night. He signed with the Nuggets without hearing his teammates’ pleas.

“The thing that I thought was messed up on Antonio’s part was, he could have had something to do with that,” McCloud said. “He could have stepped in and said, ‘I’ll speak to the guys.’ I guess he’d been told something else.”

So the Suns hunkered down with Gugliotta, their last hope in a quickly dwindling free-agent market. He accepted a six-year, $58.5-million contract, well short of the $86.7-million contract the Timberwolves offered. “This is something of a personal feeling,” Gugliotta said. “We did have a lot of success in Minnesota in the past couple of years and turned the franchise around and had some good young talent. I just felt, after I met [Sun owner Jerry] Colangelo, that this would be a good situation for me as well.

“It was kind of a gut feeling. I felt it would be very positive.”

He said he thought the Lakers were an appealing situation as well, but the only way that could have happened was if the Timberwolves signed him and traded him. He could go to Phoenix on his own.

The Suns have developed quite a reputation over the years, one reason players such as Manning and Chapman have accepted contracts well below market value to play there in the past.

Once Gugliotta was officially secured Sunday, the Suns could go about signing their other free agents and holding real practices. When Clifford Robinson signed his contract during the Monday morning session, the Suns had 15 players.

More than half of them are new. Gugliotta needed directions to the locker room. It’s still a challenge for players to name all of their teammates. Can you do it, Danny Manning?

“OK, Jason, Rex, George, Cliff, Googs, Horacio [Llamas], Joe [Kleine], me, Jamie Feick, Pat Garrity, Toby Bailey, Gerald Brown . . . am I missing somebody? . . . Marko Milic, Jose Ortiz,” Manning said, hardly pausing at all.

Not bad, but Ortiz isn’t officially on the roster and Manning forgot about starting center Luc Longley and James Collins.

The Suns have 10 days to not only learn each others’ names but how to play with each other and under Ainge’s system.

“This is not brain surgery; it’s basketball,” Chapman said. “Once you’ve played with a guy for a few days, a few weeks, you know what his tendencies are, he knows what yours are. It’s pretty easy to come together.”

After what the Suns have been through, playing ball has to be considered easy.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com