Bell and Bryant walk onto the court without so much as a glance at each other. All around them is hand-slapping and good-lucking (though it does seem more subdued than usual), but their subplot of hand-to-hand combat was long ago established. I hate you, you hate me, let’s not pretend we don’t hate each other. It’s actually refreshing.
The Suns jump out to a 7–0 lead. When they get up 15–5, D’Antoni feels comfortable enough to give Diaw a rest, but the Lakers get back in the game. The coach learns quickly that on this night he has to keep Diaw on the court. Diaw seems to be playing at warp speed, while Kwame Brown, perhaps distracted by the assault investigation, appears slow. The Suns outscore the Lakers 40–20 with Diaw on the court in the first half but get outscored 27–16 when he’s not. Diaw converts the Suns’ final eleven points of the second quarter to give them a 56–47 lead at halftime.
One of his baskets in that stretch is a resounding dunk from the wing on a fast break. Whenever Diaw finishes with a flush, it’s worth at least a basket-and-a-half to the Suns. Stoudemire’s injury eliminated not only twenty-six points a game but also most of the shock-and-awe component of the Phoenix attack. For an offensive-minded team, the Stoudemire-less Suns get precious few SportsCenter moments. Marion’s Matrix moves are electrifying but there haven’t been enough of them. Watching Nash weave his way through a minefield of defenders and deliver an eyes-in-the-back-of-his-head pass to a cutter is stuff for the basketball purist; crowds prefer the Stoudemire Cirque du Soleil aerials, and they can be more of a mood lifter and game changer for the team.
Diaw is a reluctant dunker, and, further, often passes out to a jump shooter when he’s in position to dunk, perhaps the first center in the history of the game to even think about doing that. That pass-first mentality is a big part of what makes him unique, but there are times that the Suns wish he would just rip down the rim.
The lead reaches 73–56 midway through the third period, as a couple of Lakers glance over at Jackson to see if he wants a time-out. The be-throned coach gazes stoically into space. Work it out yourselves, fellas. The lead reaches 84–60 late in the third. The Suns can’t let this one get away, can they? Of course they can. The Suns have shown the capacity to blow leads all season, which frustrates their fans but is understandable at some level. Since they shoot the ball quickly, there are more possessions per game for both teams. During the season Phoenix gave up a league-leading 87.09 field goal attempts per game, almost five more than second-place Denver, which also plays up-tempo. One of the keys to the Suns’ success was that their defensive field goal percentage, 45.4, wasn’t bad (and would’ve been much better had Kurt Thomas not gotten injured). Giving up a lot of shots and allowing the other team to make them is a prescription for disaster.
Even so, the greater the number of possessions, the more chances for the opponent to start making baskets and rallying, and, conversely, for the Suns to start missing and leaking oil. Which is exactly what happens. L.A. converts back-to-back three-point shots to close the third, then scores on five consecutive possessions to open the fourth. The crowd is getting nervous. From his courtside seat, Robert Sarver motions for the scoreboard operator to replay on the big screen any close calls that go against the Suns.
The game is getting chippy. Bell and Bryant had already drawn double technicals in the first half for jostling each other off the ball, and now they are fighting for every inch on every possession, an individual ground skirmish framed within the larger battle. The Suns have contended all series long that Bryant is a master cheap-shot artist, albeit a slick one. When he pump-fakes or shoots, he frequently manages to land an elbow on or about Bell’s face. The contact takes place lower, too. Bryant comes down and rams his hip against Bell’s hips. Bell pushes back, sticks his foot inside Bryant’s base, tripping him up. I hate you, you hate me, let’s not pretend we don’t hate each other. Focusing on the two of them would’ve been a great opportunity for an isolated camera—the game within the game. When Bell complains to a referee near the Laker bench that Bryant was not whistled for an elbow, he hears a comment from Phil Jackson that includes the words “deserve it.” Bell has to restrain himself from going at Jackson.
With 7:33 left in the game, the Suns fighting to sustain a double-digit advantage, and Bryant holding the ball near the free-throw line, Bell suddenly puts his left arm around Bryant’s neck and horse-collars him toward the floor. As Bryant begins his descent, Bell gives a kind of what-the-fuck push with his right arm, too, as if gravity weren’t sufficient to have done the job. The play is nothing short of stunning. It would’ve been comprehensible had they been locked up in some way, or if Bell had done it in retaliation for something overt that had happened on a previous possession. But it comes out of nowhere.
Nash, angry that his backcourt buddy has snapped, angry that the Lakers are rallying, angry about the whole combative atmosphere of this whole confounding series—this is not his kind of ball—walks over to referee Leon Wood, a former NBA player, and says, “It’s you guys who caused this.”
Wood is taken aback. “Not me,” he says.
“You let things get out of hand,” says Nash. “And this is what happens.” He didn’t mean Wood individually; he meant the referees collectively, including those in Games 3 and 4 in L.A.
Bell is, of course, ejected. And Bryant, as is his wont, hits a three-pointer on the next possession and the Suns lead only 93–83 with 7:17 to go. The season is in the balance, Raja Bell is in the locker room, and Kobe Bryant is on a roll.
But, then, suddenly, the Suns find the touch again. It comes, it goes; it comes, it goes. It comes. Leandro Barbosa hits a monstrous three-pointer, then Shawn Marion comes down and launches another three. Marion’s unusual-looking long-distance shot, released one-handed—the Matrix goes retro—seems to reach the ceiling before it begins its slow descent. It should be accompanied by one of those air-raid whistles and a shout of “INCOMING!” from the scoreboard. Marion gets furious when he is asked about his unorthodox shot. He feels, in that defensive way of his, that his form is being used to disrespect his game, which is not the case. It’s just a source of fascination for the onlooker. There is no predicting whether a Marion three-pointer will (a) sail over the basket, as it sometimes does when he shoots it from the corner, (b) fail to reach its target, as it sometimes does from anywhere, or (c) settle blessedly into the basket, not unusual since he is a career thirty-five percent three-point shooter, a good number for someone whose marksmanship is so suspect.
This one goes in. The Suns go on to score six more points before the Lakers get a basket, and it’s over.
With 3:11 left and the issue decided, Bryant complains to Wood about a call and draws a second technical and automatic ejection. Wood gets no love from either side for the call. The Lakers figure that he did it in response to Nash’s complaining, and the Suns figure that he took a stand too late. Bryant smirks as he leaves the court, shaking his head, and the enmity toward the NBA’s most talented player pours down upon him. KO-BE SUCKS! KO-BE SUCKS!
As time winds down on the 114–97 win, Alvin Gentry finally gives voice to something he had been holding in the entire game. “Danny,” he says to Dan D’Antoni. “you got on two different shoes.” Gentry had noticed it early in the game but didn’t want to mention it as long as the outcome was in doubt. “I just kept praying, ‘Please let us win so I can bust him, please let us win so I can bust him,’ ” says Gentry. He alerts the bench and Stoudemire shakes his head. “Damn, Coach Dan,” he says, “you can’t be wearing a lizard on one foot and a gator on the other.”
The Suns are ecstatic with the win, of course, but a sense of uncertainty immediately sets in. They try to sell the idea that the pressure is back on the Lakers, but Game 6 is in Los Angeles, and Bell, already on double secret probation and maybe even on double-double secret probation, will almost certainly be suspended.
Julie Fie convinces Bell that he should go to the interview room and fall on the sword. She has a vague worry that Raja w
ill soliloquize about Bryant’s defects as a human being, but, she figures, he’s a smart guy who can be a diplomat when so required.
As Bell gets dressed, Tim Thomas says, with a big smile, “Don’t be a bitch to the media now.”
“They tell me that’s my only chance,” says Raja.
“I understand,” says Thomas. “Go be a bitch then. I’ll forgive you in the morning.”
Almost lost in the hubbub about Bell is the play of Diaw, who finishes just one assist shy of a triple-double—twenty-five points (including 11-of-11 from the free-throw line) and ten rebounds. “Boris Jordan” they call him in the locker room.
“I don’t know where we’d be without that kid,” says Gentry. “From where he started to where he is now? It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen, I can tell you that.”
Full Time-Out
October 9, 2005
TRAINING CAMP, TUCSON
Getting to Know the Frenchman
As befitting someone with a curious mind and disposable income, Boris Diaw got the news that he had been traded to the Phoenix Suns while on safari in Africa. To put it generously, Diaw was an afterthought in the acrimonious deal that sent Joe Johnson, a mainstay starter during the 2004–05 renaissance season, to Atlanta. General manager Bryan Colangelo thought Diaw was good and assistant GM Dave Griffin thought he was real good, but almost no one else in the Suns’ organization even knew him. “Who’s the Russian?” asked Alvan Adams, a Suns’ legend as a player and now the arena manager, when he heard about the trade last August.
Diaw had averaged 4.8 points, 2.6 rebounds, and 2.3 assists in Atlanta, a team that finished with a 13-69 record, worst in the league. Colangelo and Griffin insist that Diaw never got the opportunity to demonstrate his versatility in Atlanta. The coaches don’t know enough about Diaw to confirm that, reserve players on cellar-dwelling teams commanding little time in scouting reports. At the very least, he has innate athletic ability. His Senegalese father, Issa Diaw, was once an outstanding high jumper. His mother, Elisabeth Riffiod, is considered one of France’s all-time great women basketball players. Diaw the Younger can do a lot of things, but, sometimes in the NBA, that is a negative. A player needs a position. The Suns coaches are less wedded to that concept than most teams, but even they can’t quite decide what Diaw is. Backup point guard, which is what he played (more or less) with Atlanta? Small forward? Power forward? He’s six-feet-eight—can he guard some of the smaller centers?
Whatever, the coaches are sure of one thing: They desperately miss Johnson, who had been a free agent at the end of last season. Owner Robert Sarver did not see Johnson in quite the same light as the coaches. Sarver saw a fourth wheel who was not nearly as important to the Suns’ future as Steve Nash, Amare’ Stoudemire, or Shawn Marion, certainly not with a big-dollar deal with Stoudemire in the works. Sarver was willing to offer Johnson a six-year deal worth $75 million. That sounds generous, but in the NBA, as in the Fortune 500 world, worth is skewed and relative. The Hawks, looking to rebuild behind Johnson, offered $70 million, front-loading $19 million of it. Sarver wasn’t ready to make that kind of commitment and said, “Work out a trade.”
Even the coaches weren’t absolutely sure Johnson was worth that money. But they knew they had lost a six-foot-seven-inch warrior who guards multiple positions, runs tirelessly (Johnson is among the perennial leaders in minutes played), and creates his own shot in the half-court. “One thing we can’t replace,” says Phil Weber, “is Joe’s ability to get into the lane and take over parts of the game.”
Nash, Marion, and Stoudemire had been penciled in as starters from the beginning of camp, of course, with Kurt Thomas (center) and Raja Bell (shooting guard) probably joining them. Behind them were a lot of question marks, of which Diaw was one. Personnel matters had gotten even more complicated, however, when it became known that Stoudemire would probably require knee surgery.
Now the rotation gets murky, the inevitable ripple effect caused by an injury to a prime player. Someone has to replace Stoudemire in the starting lineup, and that someone would’ve been a sixth or seventh man, so now that someone has to take the new starter’s minutes, and someone has to take the other someone’s minutes, and next thing you know a couple of guys are playing more minutes than they should. Extended minutes reveal deficiencies.
“If we can get twenty-four minutes with Shawn at four, and twenty-four with Kurt Thomas or Brian Grant, we’ll be fine,” says D’Antoni. “That gives me time to play James Jones, Eddie House, Boris Diaw, or whoever. But can we play eleven guys? Ten guys? Hell, nine guys?” There are many responsibilities that separate a head coach from his assistants, but none starker than the burden of playing time. Assistants suggest substitution patterns and offer opinions on which players have earned extra minutes. But the head coach pulls the trigger, and D’Antoni has begun worrying about playing time from the first moment of camp.
“A lot of it is on Brian Grant, and whether he can keep up,” says Dan D’Antoni. Grant is a cagey thirty-three-year-old veteran who signed a free agent contract with the Suns in the off-season. Even with bad knees, Grant is a bargain for the Suns, who are paying him $1.7 million, although he’s into the Lakers for $14.5 million (and $15.6 million the following year), the result of a huge deal he originally signed with the Portland Trail Blazers.
“Pat Burke is going to be the eleventh man,” says D’Antoni. “Nothing against him, but somebody’s gotta be. Now, between Boris Diaw, Eddie House, L.B., and Brian Grant, one of those four have to be number ten.”
“In my mind it’s going to be B.G.,” says Dan. “I watched that clear-out and they were blowing by him. He had no chance. And it wasn’t because he was tired. He’s in good shape.”
“Brian Grant is competing against Eddie and L.B. for minutes,” says D’Antoni, “even though he’s not their position.”
“He’s competing against style,” says Dan.
“Well, what everyone is playing against is how good Boris Diaw plays in our system,” says D’Antoni. “Can he be a legit backup power forward?”
“What I worry about, with Boris, is his attitude,” says Alvin Gentry. “He just doesn’t seem to want to learn.”
“Boris is in your head, Coach,” says Iavaroni, smiling.
“Damn right he is,” answers Gentry.
“Look, it’s tough in two-a-days,” says Iavaroni. “Let’s get back to Phoenix and work with him.”
“You try to get Boris to do anything in practice he doesn’t want to do, and it’s tough,” says Dan.
“Put it this way,” says Weber, “you have to have discussions with Boris.” Weber has already started working with Diaw on his jump shot. Though Diaw is never likely to become a three-point shooter, the Suns would like to see him become a perimeter threat. Diaw seems to have his own ideas on shooting drills, and most everything else. Which is perhaps to be expected from someone whose full name is Boris Babacar Diaw-Riffiod. It sounds like he should have “Marquis” in front of his name. But if anyone can break him down, it’s Weber, a tireless clinician.
“I know I shouldn’t say anything to Boris,” says Gentry. “I mean, he won a whole thirteen games last year in Atlanta. What did we win, sixty-two?”
For all of that, there is something likable about Diaw. There is the suggestion of arrogance about him—“I do not date American women,” he says, “I have them”—but also the suggestion of class and refinement. And he is unfailingly upbeat with a word of greeting for everyone. “How are you doo-EENG?” Diaw says to whomever he sees, a refreshing change from the American howyadoin. And Diaw’s sing-songy “thank you”—which sounds like “sank youuuu!”—is already being replicated around the locker room. Eddie House has been caught practicing it.
But, all in all, Diaw looks like a problem for D’Antoni on whom the distribution of minutes, as well as the burden of owner and fan expectation after sixty-two wins in the previous season, falls. And he will be trying to accomplish all that without Stoudemire (fo
r at least four months), three-point threat Quentin Richardson (who went to the Knicks so the Suns could add Kurt Thomas for interior strength), and Joe Johnson. And with a joyfully cantankerous, or cantankerously joyful question mark from France named Boris Diaw. “Boris is probably just good enough to get us all fired,” concludes D’Antoni.
At this early checkpoint, then, Boris Diaw is one step above a “whoever,” a certified attitude problem, a possible backup power forward, a possible tenth man, and a possible coach killer. Good thing the front office likes him.
Chapter Nine
[The Second Season]
May 3……………………….
LAKERS LEAD SERIES 3–2
“Do I know this guy? I don’t know this guy. I might’ve said one word to this guy. I don’t know this kid.”
Jerry Colangelo brought the Suns into the NBA in 1968. He coached them, general-managed them, scouted for them, and owned them, and, two years after selling the team to Robert Sarver, is still chairman and CEO. Beyond that, Colangelo is rather the Godfather of the NBA, and not just because he is a tough Italian. Over the years, he is the one who makes the secret deals and knows where all the bodies are buried, strictly in the figurative sense. Over the last two decades, as David Stern has expanded his power to become the commissioner of commissioners, Colangelo is the only team executive who has consistently had Stern’s ear.
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