Colangelo Still Making a Mark: This Time, Bryan

[devilalum]

by Dan Bickley
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 10, 2005 Bryan Colangelo can start clearing out some cabinet space.

Barring a disaster, the Executive of the Year trophy for 2004-05 will end up in his living room.

It couldn't come at a better time.

"He deserves credit," Suns' coach Mike D'Antoni said. "Obviously, we all love Jerry (Colangelo). But if you look at the way it was set up (in the past), if we did well, then Jerry did a great job. If we did badly, it was Bryan that messed it up. I know. I lived through it."

Yet here on his own, where his father's presence no longer guarantees a lifetime contract, Colangelo is in the midst of his greatest triumph.

On paper, the Suns are a legitimate threat to the NBA-record of 72 victories set by the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. If they win 66 or more games, it will represent the greatest single-season turnaround in the history of the sport. They are a growing national story, and just the other day, while visiting a Radio Shack in Houston, D'Antoni overheard a pair of customers talking about his basketball team.

"I think there are a lot of people (across the country) rooting for us," D'Antoni said.

The mass appeal comes from how the Suns play, fast and loose and without a whiff of fear. Before Sunday's game, Bo Outlaw literally danced from the locker room to the player's tunnel. Shawn Marion stopped in front of a percussion unit and began banging on a stranger's drum.

The joy is contagious, and recently, when the Suns were flagged for a rare 24-second violation, the entire unit started to laugh on the spot. Clearly, they are the antithesis of the plodding, clanking teams that have sabotaged league appeal in the 21st century.

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For more Phoenix Suns coverage, check out www.azcentral.com, Arizona's homepage.By no means is this simply a Colangelo triumph. Olympic coach Larry Brown gets a nod for benching Amaré Stoudemire in Athens and elevating Marion to a marquee level, thus changing the future for both players. The Clippers deserve some praise for not matching an offer to the wonderfully exuberant Quentin Richardson.

Meanwhile, the Suns' organization is brimming with people who have helped on the recruiting front, whether it's former player Rex Chapman or the nearly anonymous David Griffin, director of player personnel.

"It's been an interesting mix of old and new, and I certainly think it's made me better," Colangelo said of the organization in flux. "Before, it was a matter of expressing my thoughts to Jerry. Now it's Jerry and a large group that's put a lot of their money on the line. But as I've said before, it's not about me. It's about the players. And everything we do, we do as an organization."

Still, it was the younger Colangelo who started it all, taking a severe public relations flogging with the salary dump of Stephon Marbury and other expensive players last season. He was not distracted by the off-season allure of Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady, rather focusing singularly on the acquisition of Nash.

His basketball team has surpassed its win total from a year ago, and that will do wonders for a man's reputation.

"Bryan gets the credit for the team's on-court performance," Suns owner Robert Sarver said. "It was his plan to get Nash, Richardson and Hunter. Had he not made the trades last year with Marbury and (Penny) Hardaway, I would not have bought the team. They were so (financially) upside down. For on the court, he has been the guy."

Such ringing endorsements are nice, although they don't mean things can't change for the worse, and the front-office maneuvering may yet get sticky for Colangelo in the coming years.

Yet this could be the breakout year for a basketball team and the son of a famous Sun. After all, for the first time in history, the basketball team is doing great, and it's more about Bryan than it is Jerry.



In a lot of ways Bryan has the potential to be a better NBA exec than Jerry if he can ever shed the stigma of being the bosses kid.


He's much more charasmatic and seems just as intelligent. He also has the experience of grwing up in the business. Jerry for all his successes always seems to come off like a grouchy old man.

 

[Errntknght]

BC really hasn't done that well this year contrary to the current appearances. Don't forget his first choice last summer was Kobe not Nash so we have Kobe's quick refusal to thank for Nash as much as BC. Quentin was probably insurance against JJ leaving but he allowed BC to take the chance of not signing JJ to an extension, which may cost us JJ in the long run. If Q clunks 3's under the pressure of the playoffs he won't even be of great value. Of course, if JJ is the one that wilts in the playoffs then Bryan will look better. Hunter is proving to be a gem of a pickup but since he was only signed to a one year contract, we have to retain him to gain much. Signing Hunter for 3 years would have been a smart move in retrospect - but we are looking in retrospect - signing him to 1 looks more like dumb luck. Even Vroman+Chi pick instead of the likely Iggy or Deng isn't looking all that good. I'm sure it's heresy at this stage but I wouldn't at all mind one of those two, no Q and JJ under contract. I still don't share D'Antoni's enthusiasm for Casey but if one does then winding up with CJ not under contract is not a brilliant move.

I liked the Marbury trade - getting out from under that ridiculous extension that BC had committed the team to while having no idea of what kind of team he needed to put together to succeed with Marbs as the PG. And shedding Penny's contract and whining in the same stroke. That was great, making up for two prior blunders at once. Well, almost - if you ignore the agony of watching him fumble around with what to do with Marbury and with Kidd before that.

I'm not denying some good moves have been made on his watch - drafting Marion and Amare plus trading for JJ lead the way.

I do think that having a wider group of people to confer with is helping BC and hopefully they'll help him through the thorny patch that next summer is shaping up to be. I'd rather be rid of him but any dilution of the Colangelo influence is good.

The playoffs are going to tell us a lot more about the team that's been assembled - they are always the true measure of a team. The regular season gives one clues and they are looking quite good at present.

 

[JCSunsfan]

BC really hasn't done that well this year contrary to the current appearances. Don't forget his first choice last summer was Kobe not Nash so we have Kobe's quick refusal to thank for Nash as much as BC. .

Kobe was never in the plans.

We pursued Nash from the beginning. We never even visited Kobe, any offer to Kobe was a feint to throw Cuban off. I would love to hear someone ask Bryan about this.

 

[Joe Mama]

We never even visited Kobe, any offer to Kobe was a feint to throw Cuban off.

The revisionist history on this board, and the contorted machinations to justify it, really crack me up.

If I'm not mistaken, the Suns were the first team to offer Bryant a maximum deal once the free-agency period started this summer.

I definitely remember that was reported on ESPN.com by David Aldridge or one of those guys. I'm not sure it was ever officially confirmed, but I believe it has been denied several times by guys like Bryan Colangelo. According to them Steve Nash was their #1 guy.

There are definitely two groups of people on this message board. I'm not sure that either one is right or wrong about anything most of the time. The truth probably falls somewhere in the middle. For every post that could be considered revised history defending the Phoenix Suns management and the moves they've made there are as many on the other side of the fence believing management has made almost no good moves and fallen ass backwards into everything positive that's happened with the team.

I'm probably also among the minority who believes that this would still be a very, very good team with Kobe Bryant instead of Q and Steve Nash. I don't think for a second they would be experiencing as much success as this team is, but I do believe they could be very good. If you buy into the argument that the current Phoenix Suns team is going to struggle in the playoffs a Kobe Bryant/Amare Stoudemire might be better.

Joe Mama

 

[elindholm]

I didn't mean to imply that the Suns make a lucky blunder into getting Nash. I'm sure he was very high on their list. Whether he was "Plan A" or not we'll likely never know, but it shouldn't matter that much. They got themselves a bunch of cap room knowing that there were several productive ways that they might be able to spend it, and one of them panned out.

 

[Gaddabout]

There are definitely two groups of people on this message board. I'm not sure that either one is right or wrong about anything most of the time. The truth probably falls somewhere in the middle. For every post that could be considered revised history defending the Phoenix Suns management and the moves they've made there are as many on the other side of the fence believing management has made almost no good moves and fallen ass backwards into everything positive that's happened with the team.

I don't see myself in either of the above groups. I'd like to believe I'm in a smaller third group that sits more in the center of things. I like BC, I think he's a capable GM if only because he's not an ego maniac and surrounds himself with good people. Basketball people think the world of him -- especially college coaches. Having been able to peer inside the organization with a little bit more access than the average fan, I can affirm BC stands on his own two feet and has earned his industry credibility.

At the same time, I think the Suns have been inconsistent with their vision under BC and sometimes resort to overly conventional thinking when best laid plans fall apart. I also think they are hesitant to spend a lot of money on a true center because they've been burned there too many times. I think that's something of a weakness. Maybe this current team is a sign they've truly given up unless the center is too good to pass on. That's not a horrible plan, given 85 percent of prospects over 6-10 are a total waste of time. It's that 15 percent that slip through the Suns' fingers that doesn't sit well with this fan of 30 years.

 

[SweetD]

I didn't mean to imply that the Suns make a lucky blunder into getting Nash. I'm sure he was very high on their list. Whether he was "Plan A" or not we'll likely never know, but it shouldn't matter that much. They got themselves a bunch of cap room knowing that there were several productive ways that they might be able to spend it, and one of them panned out.

Dude they visited Nash at 12 on the first day of free-agentcy, with a bus full of people: Amare, BC, JC, Sarver, ect you can't sit there and say he was not the first option the Suns wanted. The Tmac trade didn't happen even if it did they still could have gone after Nash. You can't not make an offer to Kobe, he is a great player and if you have the option to make an offer you do it even if your not going to get the player. The Suns made the offer but never had a meeting with Kobe to try to get him into a Suns uni.

 

[JPlay]

I like Bryan. He made a real ballzey move trading away our best player, Marbury at the time. Amare still hadn't come into his own and Marion had a rep for not being a clutch performer. I couldn't see his vision of how he was planning on rebuilding the Suns. I like the trio of Marion, Stoudemire and Marbury but in the end it wasn't enough. Especially with us paying Hardaway and Gugliotta to sit the bench.

The moves that I didn't like the most were the Penny Hardaway and Gugliotta signings. Penny was coming off an injury and had been moved to shooting guard. Penny should always have remained a point, with his passing skills and height he was the next Magic. Gugliotta was a panic signing when we lost out on McDyess. I knew it was never going to work out with him. He didn't fit into the running offense with Kidd at point. Those two moves hampered the suns for around 5 years.

 

[F-Dog]

I'm a big BC fan. He's got two things going for him that I love to see in my team's GM:

1. He scouts talent better than at least 95% of the GMs in the league, and
2. His balls are the size of grapefruits.

IMO what annoys some people about BC is that he doesn't seem to believe in 'vision'--his style is experimental: throw a bunch of good players and good coaches into a room together and see what happens, then make changes based on the results. To BC, the 'championship puzzle' is a Rubik's Cube, something to be constantly futzed with, where the only way to get three steps ahead is to go two steps back first.


That's why Mike D'Antoni such a lucky hire for the Suns. Not only has he been able to get along with all of the mismatched players and coaches that BC has given him, he's been able to infuse them with a sense of purpose and direction. "They have to match up with us, too" doesn't sound anything like the Suns I'm familiar with; those Suns always apologized for their small-ball ways. They played in a kind of holding pattern, like they were just marking time until the next great center dropped into their laps. Mike D'Antoni was the one who said, 'we've already got the second-best center in the NBA on our roster; all we have to do is convince him to stop playing PF', and then went out and made it happen.

To me, that's the story of this season: BC's talent in D'Antoni's system. Suddenly, we've got great basketball players playing to their strengths, knowing what each other is going to do, and executing a game plan that's designed to relentlessly attack the other team's fitness and conditioning. It's working pretty well so far.


My concern at the moment isn't that the Suns will implode in the playoffs; I have the sense that D'Antoni will learn what he's doing pretty quickly, once he's able to experience the 'second season' for himself. Right now, what I'm wondering is whether D'Antoni is capable of helping to pick his own players and coaches when the time comes. Former Treviso players have bombed in the NBA in a way that calls Steve Spurrier's Florida Gators to my mind...