Every year the NCAA Tournament rolls around and everyone begins to fill out brackets for office pools, family pools, or a friend’s pool, and winning choices become based off extensive research, the records of the squads, allegiances as an alum, the colors of the uniforms or whose mascot could beat up the other team’s. If the last one happens to be true, Ohio State might never win a game. (more…)

John MacLeod taught me how to play basketball. Literally.

When I first really became a fan of the Phoenix Suns, in 1975-76 as the Sunderellas were making their unlikely first run at the NBA Finals, I looked at Coach MacLeod as though he was General Patton or Winston Churchill, a tactical genius and inspirational leader of my heroes. I could root for Paul Westphal, Dick Van Arsdale or Alvan Adams to make the shots, but Coach MacLeod was the chess master moving the pieces, and the players were executing his vision. As this was my first real exposure to pro basketball, and Coach MacLeod was the first coach I’d ever paid any attention to, he seemed like he must be a more-than-human figure, the way he directed his scrappy underdog players past the best teams of the time. (more…)

Like the song says, “You gotta accentuate the positive.” So, as this cockamamie mini-season nears its All-Star break, let’s consider some of the things that have gone very, very right for our beloved Purple Gang in this 2011-12 campaign: (more…)

Happy New Year, Suns fans.

Now if only that year was 2004.

Because, with the signing this week of swingman Michael Redd, that gives the Suns a trio that, in that faraway year, would have been nearly the equal of the super-threesomes in Miami and Boston today. (more…)

No one expected much from the Purple Gang at the start of the 1983-84 season.

Some Suns fans had their reservations about the direction of the team going back to the start of the previous campaign, when General Manager Jerry Colangelo swapped power forward, and onetime franchise savior, Truck Robinson to the Knickerbockers for power forward Maurice Lucas.  What’s this? Phoenix fans asked each other.  We’ve won fifty games three times in the last three years, and Truck’s been a part of that!  Why are we trading him for an older power forward, who doesn’t have Truck’s scoring or rebounding ability anymore, and has balky knees to boot?

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