“No, it is just a sound I make,” he says, “and see? Everybody want to follow me.”
Chapter Fifteen
[The Second Season]
Los Angeles, May 14…………….
SUNS LEAD SERIES 2–1
“Tim’s been hollered at so much during his career that it just rolls right off his back.”
“VIKING LOVE!” Steve Nash shouts at the top of his lungs.
Raja Bell looks at him quizzically. “Viking love?” asks Bell.
Nash smiles and gives an I-don’t-know-myself shrug. Every once in a while he just yells something, trying to pump up himself, his team, or both. Earlier in the year on a couple of occasions, Nash had picked up a Styrofoam roller and, in mock football fury, threw it across the room, shouting, “I’m fired up!”
But no one seems overly fired up this evening. It’s twenty minutes before tip-off in what could be a series-deciding game, and the atmosphere in the locker room is strangely casual. The coaches are worried that the team believes the Game 3 victory has all but sewn up the series. “As up and down as we’ve been, it’s unbelievable we would think that way,” says Gentry. “But I’ve stopped trying to get into this team’s head.”
Bell seems particularly loose. As he dresses near Diaw’s locker, he reaches up and grabs a loafer.
“You believe this?” Bell says, laughing hysterically. “Gum all over the bottom of it. Now, how can Boris not be feeling that shit?” Bell takes the shoe all over the locker room for examination.
“LET’S GO!” says Nash. Bell is still smiling about the shoe.
“Are they ready?” I ask D’Antoni.
“You tell me,” he says.
A few minutes later Iavaroni comes out of the shower and takes a seat in front of Diaw’s locker, the only available space in the dismal dressing quarters. He towels off and gets dressed, reaching for his loafers, one of which has gum on the bottom. It did defy logic that the meticulous Diaw, who dresses like a boulevardier, would allow a wad of gum to despoil his shoes.
Part of the up-and-down rhythm of a playoff series, particularly one like this in which the teams are evenly matched, can be explained by intensity and adjustments. One team loses and retreats, frantic, to the drawing board, looking for answers. Let’s tweak this and come out fighting! But the most recent winner hesitates to make changes, even if they might be necessary. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing! And so the Suns made precious few alterations between Games 3 and 4. Why should they? “Our defensive philosophy is,” Iavaroni had summarized before the game, “let’s get better with our schemes.” As for offense, the plan was fairly simple, too. D’Antoni had written the words “Do less on offense.” He felt the Suns were running around frenetically instead of executing simple pick-and-rolls or what he calls “dribbleats,” in which the ball handler dribbles toward his teammate and either uses him as a screener or, more typically, hands off to him to keep the offense moving. In the D’Antoni system, it is imperative that the bigger players are adept at making the dribble-handoff. One of the reasons Diaw emerged as a valuable player was his ability to dribble at Nash, or, conversely, get dribbled at, and give the defense fits with a two-man game.
The Clippers, however, make two changes to their starting lineup, a fairly radical move this deep into the postseason. Dunleavy replaces center Chris Kaman and guard Quinton Ross with Radmanovic and Maggette, both of them forward-guard ’tweeners. Kaman is listed as having a sore shoulder, but it’s likely he would’ve been replaced anyway. The new players are hardly strangers to the Suns—not after Radmanovic schooled Marion in Game 3—but they present troublesome matchups. The Suns are now reacting to the Clippers, not vice versa. Nash has to defend against Radmo, who is six inches taller, and Diaw has to check Maggette, who, while less skilled than the Frenchman, is stronger, faster, and more generally athletic.
There are bad signs early. The crowd is dead—do they see a certain inevitability creeping in after the Game 3 loss?—but only Bell seems energized. Diaw misses a wide-open layup. Nash shoots an air ball from fifteen feet. You could put Nash on the Suns’ practice court and tell him to shoot one million shots from that distance and every one would at least draw iron. Indeed, he seems to be tiring as the series goes on; though Nash made the decisive basket in Game 3, he scored only twelve points.
An early lead is erased by a 12–0 Clippers run, and L.A. takes a 61–51 lead at halftime.
The locker room is subdued, as D’Antoni, quietly fuming, waits for Nash. The point guard always heads straight to the urinal, puts his arm across his forehead, leans against the wall, and waits for something to happen. On this night nothing happens for so long that Phil Weber checks on him to make sure he’s all right. Finally, Nash emerges and takes a seat. His stomach muscles get constricted, which stops him from urinating easily—that’s his theory anyway.
D’Antoni reminds them that “our M.O., not having that killer instinct, has come back to haunt us.” But by and large he holds his temper, it being counterproductive to go off with half the game remaining. There is the danger, too, that the players feel all the heat is coming down on them when it should be spread around the coaching staff for errant strategies and schemes. Iavaroni tends always to look for strategic reasons that things didn’t go well, that there must have been something overlooked in the game plan. D’Antoni, by contrast, generally feels that the Suns prepare extremely well; if the team screws up, it was most likely a screwup in execution. Still, he is sensitive enough not to always bring the hammer down on the players.
But the Suns aren’t much better in the second half. Marion collects his third and fourth fouls within ten seconds early in the third quarter. Nash blows a layup. With about one minute left in the third quarter, Barbosa, whose biggest problem is trying to do too much, ignores a wide-open Bell in the corner and takes it hard to the basket, trying to get off a shot among three defenders. It misses. The Clippers lead 90–82 after three.
D’Antoni, or any of the coaches for that matter, can never decide how to approach Barbosa when he does something wrong because he is so sincere and tries so hard. After Iavaroni praised Barbosa for a good defensive play he had made in Game 3, the Brazilian grabbed Iavaroni around the temples with both hands and gently head-butted him. How can you get mad at a guy like that? So, since D’Antoni hesitates to get in Barbosa’s face, he gets in the face of his brother, Barbosa’s personal coach, a man who looks at each game, as Weber puts it, through “L.B.-colored glasses.”
Their sparring is for the most part gentle and good-natured but sometimes has an edge to it, as brotherly battles do. Mike believes that the mistakes Barbosa makes are ones “you simply cannot make,” fundamental miscues such as missing the open man. He’s right about that. Dan believes that his brother overlooks Nash’s mistakes and holds him accountable for almost nothing. He’s right about that. Both brothers love the other guy’s player, but they do feel territorial; Dan to the underdog Brazilian Blur who’s trying to find his place in the league; Mike to the MVP and his personal sounding board, the quarterback he is most dependent upon to shepherd his seven-second revolution.
During a film session yesterday, Barbosa made a bad defensive play, and Mike cleared his throat and smiled at his brother.
“I’ll tell you what,” says Dan, “I’ll get you a tape together of Steve on defense and we’ll compare. And…look at that. See what my boy L.B. did on that play?”
“Well, hell, it’s about time,” says Mike.
“Look, if Steve runs off his man one more damn time,” says Dan, “I’m giving him a blindfold and a cigarette and handing you the gun.”
As inconsistently as they’re playing, the Suns never quite let the game get out of hand, mostly because of Bell who, left alone in L.A.’s eagerness to double Nash, is hot from outside. But when Phoenix draws to within 100–93 midway through the fourth period, Nash throws a horrible pass to the corner that leads to a turnover. Radmanovic promptly hits a three-pointer and Cassell hits a jumper
and the Clips go back up by twelve.
During a time-out late in the game, D’Antoni tells Tim Thomas: “I’m going to get you out and put Boris back in.” The Suns had made a comeback without Diaw, and it’s always a tough decision for a coach as to whether he should put a regular back in during a rally that has taken place without him. But Thomas decides for him: “Leave me in, Mike,” Thomas says. “I’m going to hit a big shot.” D’Antoni accedes to the request.
Thomas has his chance with forty-five seconds left and the Suns trailing 108–105. Thomas ignores a wide-open Bell in the corner and launches a three that goes in…and out. At the other end, Cassell hits a game-clinching three-point jumper, punctuating his joy by running back upcourt and swinging cupped hands around his groin area, the Sammy sign that indicates, “I have big balls.” He’s done it before, and it’s hard to believe that the NBA hasn’t fined him for it. Still, it’s pretty funny, unless you are the ones getting big-balled. The Clippers win 114–107 to tie the series.
D’Antoni makes the expected point—we came to L.A. to get at least one and we got one—but it sounds hollow, as does the “1-2-3 SUNS!” cheer. There are major concerns. The hesitant play of Diaw against the bigger team. The disappearance of James Jones, who has missed eleven of twelve shots in the last three games. With Thomas now starting, Junior represents the only other bench player besides Barbosa who is being counted on. The tepid play of Marion, who had been so strong in Game 3.
But the biggest would seem to be Nash, who had only eight points and seemed almost powerless to break down the Clippers’ double-teams. Over the last three games, he has missed all eight of his three-point attempts, and, further, seemed to be laboring when he released them. D’Antoni, predictably, defended his point guard—“We’re getting shots, and that’s Steve’s job, to get us shots”—but Nash’s postgame response to a question about his physical well-being hardly engenders confidence in the Suns’ camp. “Yeah, more or less, I’m doing fine,” says Nash. “I’m just not playing real well at the moment.”
The moment is getting more dire.
As the Suns leave the locker room, Donald Sterling, he of the fascinating deposition, and disposition, approaches D’Antoni and pinches his cheek. “We’ve got to get you out to Hollywood,” he says. D’Antoni will be back at least once—and soon—for Game 6.
The flight back to Phoenix is quiet, the Saturday morning coaches’ meeting somber. There is concern about balancing minutes among Diaw, Thomas, and Barbosa. Which two to have on the floor at the same time? “We need L.B. on the floor for offense,” says Dan D’Antoni, “but we don’t match up well defensively when he’s in there.”
There is concern about Nash, too. “He might be tired,” says D’Antoni. “We may have worn him out this year.” But why even talk about Nash? What are they going to do about it? D’Antoni’s not going to play him fewer minutes—as it is, Marion and Bell are both on the floor more than Nash.
But what bothers the coaches, D’Antoni in particular, is that, while Nash’s errors come from fatigue or even over-effort, Marion seems to be coasting from time to time. Nash makes mistakes of commission, but Marion makes mistakes of omission. The films show him failing to hustle back to cover Cassell, a player he could probably beat downcourt running backward, or he doesn’t stay attached to his man, as was the case with the near-disastrous Radmanovic sequence in Game 3. But D’Antoni is fair-minded enough to wonder if he isn’t too hard on Marion, if he deconstructs Shawn’s mistakes under a harsher microscope than he deconstructs the mistakes of others. When, say, Tim Thomas doesn’t hustle back, it’s because that’s who Tim Thomas is, a guy who doesn’t hustle all the time. But when Marion doesn’t hustle back, it’s a violation of who he should be—a talent capable of dominating every game he’s in.
There is always a conversation about which clips to show to the players and which should remain among the coaches. They are all sensitive about embarrassing a player in front of his peers. The only one D’Antoni doesn’t worry about in that respect is Thomas. “Tim’s been hollered at so much during his career,” says the coach, “that it just rolls right off his back.” They decide that they will indict everyone at practice that day, Marion included.
Marion comes into the practice gym looking absolutely miserable. He had gotten clocked in the left eye late in Game 4 and got four stitches—he holds an icebag over the swollen spot. The video session lasts longer than usual, twenty minutes, which by the standards of D’Antoni is the equivalent of showing The Sorrow and the Pity. Which is a good way to describe the Suns’ play in Game 4.
Practice begins and Marion, with some reluctance, tosses his icebag to the side. He looks as if he’s ready to take a standing eight-count. And, quite possibly, his team with him.
Then again, it has looked that way before.
Full Time-Out
March 27
Say Adios to Amare’
At long last, Amare’ Stoudemire returned to active duty on March 23 against the Portland Trail Blazers. He scored twenty points and collected nine rebounds in a 125–108 Phoenix victory. To Suns fans and the basketball world in general, it was an indication that Phoenix, now at full strength, could play with anyone. Stoudemire’s teammates and coaches, however, saw a limping and limited Stoudemire who did what he did only because of his superior natural athleticism and the Trail Blazers’ pathetic disinclination to defend him.
Two nights later, after Stoudemire scored six points and got five rebounds in a 107–96 victory over the Nuggets, the Suns’ brass was really worried. Stoudemire hadn’t been bad enough medically to sit him down, but he looked much worse than he had in his debut. He played only sixteen minutes, and, though D’Antoni presented it as the logical result of working Stoudemire back in slowly, allowing him to get his wind so he can be at full strength for the playoffs, in point of fact he didn’t play Stoudemire because it could’ve cost him the game.
Still, on this night in lovely East Rutherford, New Jersey, hard by the Jersey Turnpike, the Stoudemire experiment will continue. No one on the inside is convinced it will work. Team doctors had long ago declared his surgically repaired left knee to be in game condition, but over the past few weeks, since about the beginning of March, Stoudemire had started to develop fluid backup in his right knee, or, in medical terms, a “Baker’s cyst.” He attributed it to “over-compensating,” a predictable layman’s theory, but doctors said the swelling in his right knee had nothing to do with his repaired left.
Since Stoudemire had started traveling with the team, he had been mostly a benign diversion. He wore mismatched outfits that defied classification, one night showing up in a green-checked shirt with matching pocket square, a tie that barely reached his navel, blue jeans, and boots. He looked as if he had dropped in from the set of Green Acres 2006. “The fashion police should absolutely arrest him,” said Phil Weber.
In various cities, he did interviews in which he talked about how much he wanted to come back. Reporters like him—he is warm and friendly. Stoudemire would do some light workouts before the game, then return to the locker room, partake in some pregame banter, and take his shower with the assistant coaches, after the players had left for the floor. “Man, I look good when I shower up with you guys,” he said one night, eyeing up a naked Gentry and Iavaroni, his own body a hard-chiseled six-feet-ten-inches, 245 pounds.
But there was almost always something going on behind the scenes with Stoudemire. He missed eight mandatory rehab sessions with Aaron Nelson, and sometimes he loafed through the workouts when he did come. He missed practices and sometimes never called in. Dave Griffin considered it a positive sign when he text-messaged an excuse. “It’s hard to call it progress that he’s trying to con me,” says Griffin, “but at least he’s putting forth effort on something.” On March 15 Stoudemire didn’t show up for a home game against the Clippers and never offered an excuse until his representative, Rodney Rice, chalked it up to “family issues.”
A couple days after that g
ame, the Suns decided that they had had enough. Jerry Colangelo summoned Stoudemire for a meeting attended by D’Antoni, Dave Griffin, Nelson, and Rice. When it was over, Stoudemire seemed refocused on getting back in the lineup, probably because it was made clear to him that fines would be rapidly forthcoming if he did not start taking his rehabilitation more seriously. “It was a good conversation,” said Colangelo.
Clearly, the Godfather had spoken. Time to suck it up, Amare’. The left knee had been ruled normal, and, as for the swelling in the right, well, Marion plays with pain, Nash plays with pain, a lot of guys play with pain, and, clearly, it’s time for you to play with pain.
So there was still hope on this Monday evening that Stoudemire could get back and start contributing on this tough road trip—tonight’s game against the Nets would be followed by games in Milwaukee, Indiana, Toronto, and Detroit. There is a lot of doubt about whether Stoudemire can do it, but, then, the memories of what he did last year—the 29.9 points-per-game average in the playoffs, the way he almost disdainfully dispatched Dallas’s and San Antonio’s big men, the rim-ripping dunks—come back. As Stoudemire sat in street clothes watching the Suns play the Timberwolves in Minnesota the day after Christmas, he turned to Gentry on the bench and said, “You know, K.G. can’t carry a team like I can.” Gentry shook his head at Stoudemire’s presumptuousness—declaring himself superior to Kevin Garnett, a former MVP and a perennial All-Star. “But then I started thinking, ‘You know, he could be right,’ ” says Gentry. “That’s how good this kid was last year.”
At this moment, though, Stoudemire seems remarkably uninterested in the pregame bigs meeting taking place in the visitors’ locker room at Continental Airlines Arena.
“Amare’, you’re starting on [Jason] Collins,” says Iavaroni. “What’s he known for?” Iavaroni likes to use the Socratic Method from time to time. It is not always successful.
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