Mark D’Antoni has left the building.
Ok, so Steve Nash hasn't. But for how long? Nash lives and plays what D’Antoni breathes—wild and fast and furious and totally insane basketball.
The end of the 2007-8 season never felt quite right. In spite of a spectacular first half of the season and massive hype, the energy…well…nothing seemed quite the same as the previous three seasons. With the loss of chemistry between general manager Stephen Kerr and D'Antoni, came a subtle loss of chemistry within the team. And in the rough and tumble NBA, the smallest shift in chemistry can alter the trajectory of even the finest of teams.
Particularly the Suns with their style of play, reliant on both Steve Nash's brilliance and fantastic team chemistry. At the start of the last game of this year's season, Steve Nash declared the night “Fans Night,” thanked all the fans for giving the team the motivation to play, and then said of the playoffs, “Let’s go win this thing,” with all the enthusiasm of a dead fish.
The fans felt it, too. The Suns win against the Trailblazers was a blowout and the fans left the building—right around the third quarter. I’ve not seen that happen since the end of the 2003-4 season. Starting with the 2004-5 season, even when the final game was a complete blow-out, even knowing they would face a one-hour traffic jam in disorienting downtown Phoenix, the Suns fans stayed until the end of the game and beyond—like small children entranced by a magical fairy tale they never wanted to see end.
And a fairy tale apparently it was. We never did get that coveted national championship, our fast and furious style of basketball stymied by a Texas team four hard-fought years in a row.
Could this image be one of the defining moments in recent Suns history?
Did we ever get our steam back after Nash was sent sailing across the court in a blatant foul by the Spurs during the 2007 conference semifinals—and the Suns, NOT the Spurs, were penalized for the favor?New York City is the only other place on the planet I’ve ever called a hometown. I grew up in Connecticut dreaming of going to college in the City, and eventually did. When I’m not too busy thinking of myself as an Arizona cowgirl, I think of myself as a New Yorker. In fact, I still have my Yankees baseball cap, in spite of nearly getting lynched the last time I wore it in Phoenix.
But the Knicks never gripped my heart the way the Suns have. And the D’Antoni/Nash fairy tale team brought to bear all the hopes and dreams that the City of Phoenix has held for an NBA championship since the team’s first year of play in 1968. Never mind that D'Antoni changed the history of basketball by bringing his European-style of play to the United States.
Just as New York City is a baseball town, Phoenix is a basketball town. Specifically, a Phoenix Suns town.
During the 1976 NBA Finals run against the fabled Celtics, Phoenix was painted purple and orange. And then there was THE game—arguably the most exciting game in basketball history. Game 5 of the ’76 Finals, the game that went into triple overtime with Garfield Heard's buzzer beating jumper from 18 feet.
Yeah, that game. The game that launched the Suns into the national spotlight and sealed my future as a rabid basketball fan.Then there were the low years—the late ‘80s. The post-drug-bust years. Those are the kind of years that separate the boys and girls from the fans.
The company I worked for at the time was based in Canada and had bought season tickets. They had no idea how poorly regarded the Suns were at the time; poor saps—they couldn’t give those tickets away.
My friends and I, all poor artist/writer-types, sopped up all the leftovers and got to watch Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan in their heyday—not to mention the youthful K.J. and Dan Marjerle who eventually became the heart of the Suns of the early ‘90s.
During the 1993 Finals run against the Bulls—which included yet another triple overtime game—Phoenix was even nuttier than it had been in 1976. The city was hungry now. There wasn’t a restaurant, taxi cab, office building, bus, truck or bar not painted purple and orange and draped with Suns logos.
Game 7 overshot rock concert decibel levels. From the first quarter on, my friend and I couldn't hear a thing the other said, the fan noise was that loud and it never once let up.
Sadly, we didn’t win that series either, the elusive NBA championship slipping through our fingers yet again. In spite of the loss, 5,000 fans braved 105 degree temperatures a week later to celebrate the Suns amazing run.
And while these two seasons were enthusiastic and insane and wild, nothing before or since held the sheer poetry of the 2005-6 season. Or the fantastic power of the 2006-7 season. These two seasons gave us much more than hope and enthusiasm—they gave us wonder and awe.
Thank you Mark D’Antoni, for changing the history of basketball in the most unlikely of places—this sleepy little town called Phoenix, Arizona.
We’re better, much better, for your presence, and we wish you the best.
Photos courtesy of the Phoenix Suns photo gallery, AP and NBAE.
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