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| Friday, February 1 Hardaway: 'Right now it isn't working' By David Aldridge Special to ESPN.com |
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Regardless of whether or not the Suns ultimately get Marc Jackson, they have issues.
They have built a team that looks eerily like the Knicks: scads of 6-6 and 6-7 guys, many of whom can shoot, few of whom can bang and rebound. They're starting the Two Jakes, Voskuhl and Tsakalidis, in the pivot. Rodney Rogers is well removed from his Sixth Man Award days. Bo Outlaw still has energy, but still doesn't score. Tom Gugliotta is hurt again, and, like Penny Hardaway, has been shopped for the last month. They are a .500 team: not good, not bad. Just average. Which is not what they were supposed to be after they sent Jason Kidd to New Jersey for Stephon Marbury. They are feast or famine: they've beaten the Lakers and Bucks and Kings and Wolves, and lost to the Nuggets (twice) and Rockets and Grizzlies. A former Sun looked at the mess from afar last week and shook his head. "That team won 51 games last year," he said. "I don't know why they messed with it." Phoenix management spun faster than Michelle Kwan this summer. The team wasn't contending with Kidd running things, and needed to make a change. Clifford Robinson was sent packing after his arrest for marijuana possession. Fans weren't buying last season's squad and wanted fresh blood. Marbury is four years younger than Kidd and is as good, if not better. In short, they said, a shakeup was in order. But it's close to the all-star break, and right now, the Suns are a .500 team that's lost its intimidating swagger and would barely miss the playoffs. "We've got to, as a team, we've got to say to ourselves that every night, we're going to play the same way," Marbury says. "We're just on a rollercoaster right now. It's been tough. It's been really tough ... we lost 23 years of experience, with Mario Elie and Cliff Robinson. Then Jason. It's a difference." More critically, though, while players like and respect Scott Skiles, they wonder about the system. In the Suns' offense, everyone gets touches and shots. The other night, in a no-effort loss in Washington, Tsakalidis had as many first-half shots (seven) as Marbury, while Shawn Marion barely touched the rock. Now, the Suns are still scoring 98 a night, seventh-best in the league. But they're giving up 97 a night, seventh-worst. So players wonder why, if the Suns can't stop people, they don't go all-out in trying to outscore other teams the way the Kings and Mavericks do. "Scott is scratching his head," Hardaway said last week. "To me, it's simple basketball. You've got Stephon, you've got Shawn, and you've got myself. I think that, in my mind, me, (Marbury) and Shawn should be getting 20 shots a night, and then attacking people and putting the pressure on everybody else. That's what other teams do to us. But it's not up to me. I'm going with the system we have... "My thing is, without any disrespect to anything we're running, is that for us to start winning, it's going to have to be put on me, Steph and Shawn to get out there and do like the Bucks and Mavericks, and play. This is a business now. It's not like where everybody has an equal opportunity. Scott's a fair coach. He's going to let everybody go out there and shoot the basketball, and that's the way we've been playing since I've been here. But when you add Steph, you add another scorer. Jason wasn't a scorer. There's a difference now."
Marbury thinks like a shooting guard, acts like a shooting guard. I don't believe he's a selfish player. But when he has the ball, the offense stops. Even though he's a very good passer, his instinct is to score. More than one player wonders why Marbury and Hardaway don't switch positions. Marbury wouldn't even mind. "Doesn't make a difference to me, as long as I'm on the floor," he said. Hardaway says he asked a month ago and asked about switching. "Early in the season, I suggested it, and it wasn't happening then," he said. "I respect Scott so much, we have to go with what he says. And he said until he feels like it's time to switch, we'll stay this way. But the way we're doing it right now isn't working."
Mighty Mouse and the Blazers
"You see many teammates come and go, and you just wonder, 'man, had we kept that team together a couple of years ago that lost to San Antonio maybe we'd have been all right,'" he says. "If we'd kept that team together in Game 7 we lost to the Lakers (in the 2000 Western Conference finals) we'd have been all right. But, you know, you just got to kind of compensate ... you bring guys in and I think it takes guys a little bit of time to really realize that when you come play for Portland, number one, if you were scoring 20 points on another team, that's probably dead. If you were getting at least 40 minutes on another team, that's probably dead. "So I think it takes guys, realistically, half of a year to a year to realize, that hey, it's not about the numbers here. Take the money as security and just play hard."
It certainly played out that way the first two months in Portland. The Blazers didn't look very different at all from the brooding, toxic group that imploded last season, got spanked by the Lakers in the first round and cost Mike Dunleavy his job. The newcomers, Derek Anderson and Ruben Patterson, didn't understand their roles. Scottie Pippen was injured. With Arvydas Sabonis gone, the Blazers became a perimeter-oriented squad. Sports Illustrated came to town in December and wrote that, basically, the fans hated the players and the players, notably Bonzi Wells, couldn't care less. Meanwhile, Stoudamire seemed to be feuding with new coach Maurice Cheeks. Cheeks told friends that Rick Brunson was the best point guard on his team. Through the first month of the season, Stoudamire was shooting 32.7 percent from the floor and playing a paltry 29 minutes a game. That led to the inevitable trade rumors, which conveniently ignored Stoudamire's $89 million contract. But Cheeks and Stoudamire worked it out. Gradually, Stoudamire accepted the fact that he might not be the primary guy every night, and tried to get other guys the ball. Cheeks figured out more ways to get Stoudamire the ball earlier and in rhythm, and allowed him to freelance a little offensively if he was hot. And Stoudamire's shooting, scoring and minutes have all rapidly improved the last month. "Maybe it was a process that I had to go through," Stoudamire said. "It was never a rift between me and Maurice, you know. And I think during that whole time, if you look back at the situation, I never publicly criticized him and he never really publicly criticized me ... there was never any finger-pointing." Cheeks says part of the rough start was his fault, for perhaps contributing to what he now calls a "misperception" that he wanted Stoudamire to play the point the way he, Cheeks, played it through a stellar career with the Sixers, Spurs and Knicks. "The misconception was that when I said I wanted Damon to be a point guard, I wanted him to learn how to run his team," Cheeks says. "It probably trickled down and started that way ... I had to learn more about his abilities. I had to realize that he's a major player on our team in terms of offensive abilities. I taught him how to run a basketball team. I taught him the ability to be a point guard and to run a basketball team, but I didn't want to take away from him being able to score the ball. And I had to say to him, 'take your offensive opportunities.'" Pippen's return from a right knee contusion at the start of January was a big help as well. It allowed Cheeks to more or less move Stoudamire to shooting guard, as Pippen brings the ball up most of the time and guards the league's bigger point guards, like Jeff McInnis and Andre Miller, that had posted up Stoudamire with impunity at the start of the season. "Maurice has allowed me to kind of get back to play like I did when I was in Toronto in my earlier years," Stoudamire says. "It allows me to get, you know, extended time off the ball. But at the same time, I still handle the ball, and if I gotta go in towards the end of the game and stuff I still handle the ball and make plays and make things happen."
And the Blazers, slowly, are working their way back into the Western Conference picture. Since a six-game losing streak over the Christmas holidays left them five games under .500, they've won 11 of 13 and five straight including Thursday's win against Phoenix. They've beaten up on a lot of bad teams to be sure, but they also beat Philly and ended Sacramento's 12-game win streak. Wells has been terrific as he decides whether he'll stay or go at season's end. Anderson and Patterson have accepted coming off the bench, at least for now. And Rasheed Wallace has picked up his play and his demeanor. "Rasheed has changed completely," a teammate says. "He's first on the practice floor. He's lifting weights with the rest of us. And when he makes a mistake now, it's like, 'my bad, coach.'" There is no question that Wallace is closer to Cheeks than he ever was to Dunleavy. But Cheeks has had to minister the rest of his team, too. "I had a meeting with everyone," he said, "and we talked about (the fact that) I can't coach guys if I have to look down a bench and think a guy's upset not getting 25 or 30 minutes. I can't coach that way and we won't win any games that way, if I'm always worrying about a guy who wants to play ... we won't be a successful team if I have to worry about guys complaining about minutes every two seconds or every game." Mighty Mouse is done complaining. "The irony of it is, I make so much money, I'm not going nowhere," Stoudamire says. "I really don't see a trade happening. It's just up to this team. We just got to make it happen here."
Rumors, rumors, rumors
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