SUNSET, SUNRISE

By MARK HEISLER

April 29, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

PHOENIX —

Didn’t you used to be KJ?

Kevin Johnson, who was a Sun, or the Sun, for all those years, is a Sun again, which just shows you things never work out the way you think they will.

He retired before last season at 32, never to return, he thought. He didn’t play at the Y or go see his former teammates’ games, or even watch on TV, so resolved was he to cut it cleanly.

Now he’s out there again in a whirlwind retro tour as the Phoenix Suns, minus starters Jason Kidd and Tom Gugliotta, try to upset the San Antonio Spurs, with the series 1-1 heading into today’s Game 3.

Ask Johnson, everybody’s retirement should have one of these.

“My last NBA game was here,” he said last week in San Antonio, looking around the Alamodome. “We get put out of the playoffs in the first round against the San Antonio Spurs. I leave the arena in the bus, feeling like it’s the end of my career, the Alamo--they got me!

“It’s just ironic that two years later, I’m coming back to the same place to continue my career basically in the playoffs, right where I left off, against the same ballclub.”

Funny how things go or don’t go. Johnson retired before last season, but not before considering a Laker offer to sign with them and back up Derek Fisher.

Shaquille O’Neal recruited him. Jerry West called him. Johnson wanted a shot at a last title run. They needed experience and firepower off the bench, even if it was strange to imagine Johnson, who had led the Suns against the Lakers all those years, wearing purple and gold.

That was the problem. In the end, Johnson couldn’t imagine it.

“They needed to know in a short period of time and if you can’t give the person the answer they need right away, then the answer’s automatically no,” Johnson says.

“From my standpoint, it was just a major decision--L.A., playing with the Lakers. Certainly, I wanted to play with Shaq. I mean, that would have been exciting. But when it came down to it, in the final analysis, I just couldn’t put on another uniform. I always felt like the Lakers were our enemies over all those years. I brainwashed myself.”

The way it turned out, with Dennis Rodman and all the other turmoil, it was a great season not to be a Laker, so that was a decision Johnson wouldn’t have much cause to second-guess. He took off the Suns’ orange and blue and, as far as basketball went, dropped out of sight.

“I got calls from most all the teams in the NBA, but if you say no to L.A., nobody has a better offer than L.A.,” he says.

“I felt my time had come to move on, meaning Jason was there. I played with him a year or two. I thought it was important to give him the mantle and let him do what he needed to do and then for me to explore other pastures, whatever they may be.

“I felt hovering around would do two things. It would make it difficult for me to walk away and then I’d second-guess walking away from basketball. And then the other thing, I didn’t think it was fair to Jason and the organization if I was there all the time and people were always speculating, what if he’s coming back? Living here in the Valley, I thought out of sight, out of mind was better for Jason really.”

By the waning days of this season, if Johnson had thought about it at all, he’d have thought the window was closed and the shutters nailed. Then Kidd got hurt in the second quarter of a game at Sacramento on March 22.

By the fourth quarter, Cotton Fitzsimmons, Johnson’s old coach, now a Sun broadcaster, was on the phone, asking how he felt about playing again.

Johnson asked for a night to think it over, but he knew he’d do it.

“It was very similar to our country calling you to serve,” he says. “That’s how I felt. My duty. I was being called to duty and because I was in good shape, I knew I had to say yes and try, if that’s what they wanted. I didn’t call. I didn’t ask. They called me. How do you say no when the commander-in-chief of your country calls you into duty?”

As armies go, the Suns’ was in trouble. Gugliotta and Rex Chapman were already gone for the duration, and now they were losing their indispensable do-everything leader, Kidd.

Yet, a month later, here they are, in this curious series against the Spurs, who are still hoping Tim Duncan can rejoin them.

The Suns’ hope is to pull off the upset, or if Duncan returns, the miracle upset, and then, perhaps, get Kidd back in the second round.

It’s a longshot for them but a tour down memory lane for KJ.

He no longer takes over games the way he used to. It took a month to get in shape and then he popped a muscle in his groin, slowing him anew. Before the opener, he considered scratching and Coach Scott Skiles, asked if Johnson would go, answered, “Has anybody ever known when he’ll be able to go?”

That night, however, when his teammates were running all over the place, Johnson came in for the overmatched Randy Livingston, settled everyone down and they won, 72-70.

“To get another dance is something that you never expect,” Johnson says. “And I don’t think you take it for granted while you’re going through it, but you certainly learn to appreciate it that much more when you’re away and think you’ll never have that opportunity.

“There’s no adrenaline rush in the world that you can get like playing playoff basketball, and now that I’m back here, I want to try and make every moment count. . . .

” It’s fun, it’s exciting and there’s a lot of guys out here that appreciate it, but I let them know how much you need to really appreciate it while you’re going through it.”

He says he doesn’t even mind the media now.

Someone wins and goes on, someone loses and goes home, that’s how it is for everyone, except this spring, when no matter what happens, Kevin Johnson wins.

76ERS 81

HORNETS 76

Philadelphia does it with defense and takes 2-1 lead in the series. Page 7

SMITS PUNISHED

Indiana center is suspended for one game for throwing an elbow. Page 7

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

No Kidding

The Suns were one of the hottest teams in the league before the injury to Jason Kidd (*includes playoffs):

Phoenix in 1999-2000

44-23

Record with Kidd

.657