http://www.nba.com/suns/news/ktar_colangelo_031204.html
-----------------------------
Talk to the Suns
Posted: Dec. 4, 2003
Suns Chairman Jerry Colangelo joined KTAR’s Dave Burns on the 620 Sportsline for their weekly “Talk to the Suns” program and discussed the rumors surrounding the fate of Head Coach Frank Johnson and his progress with the league concerning punishment in the aftermath of Zarko Cabarkapa’s injury.
Dave Burns: A stretch of eight (games) out of nine at home, in fact 12 of your first 17 at home, no back-to-back road games yet. Now that changes starting (Friday). As you emerge from this stretch of all these home games, what have you seen, what’s not working with this basketball team right now.
Jerry Colangelo: Obviously, I’ve been pretty outspoken about the fact that I’m disappointed. If anyone were to say that they’re not, then they’re not watching the same stuff I’m watching. The record, how we’ve played… we’ve had a couple of games where we’ve been outstanding, and yeah, we’ve been like a yo-yo in terms of performance and effort. That in itself is disappointing. I don’t point fingers at anybody. Everybody’s speculating on Frank Johnson and who’s to blame. Everybody’s in it together. It’s not “he” or “they” or anything like that. The fact is we haven’t performed up to expectations.
Burns: Can you understand why it is, though, that people are starting to wonder about Frank? You’ve heard the talk. You’ve been asked the questions. I read your comments in the paper (Thursday). Can you see why people are starting to talk about it or is that foreign to you?
Tune in to 620 KTAR to catch each and
every Phoenix Suns game.
Colangelo: First of all, I’m appreciative of the fact that people care enough about it and get emotional about it because they want to see their team do better. And we all do. And we will. The old cliché that it’s really early and you can’t push the panic button, I think all of that is true. I think you keep monitoring. What you need to see is improvement. You need to see players playing well together and the effort being consistent. I’m looking for positive things, I really am. That’s exactly what I want, because I’m not looking to make changes. We’re not. We have a good, young nucleus of a basketball team. I said this before and I’ll say it again: In (Amaré) Stoudemire, (Shawn) Marion and (Stephon) Marbury, you’ve got three outstanding young players on one roster. And I want to tell you; losing Zarko (Cabarkapa) as we did was a big blow, because he’s a good one and would have been a big factor here if he had stayed healthy.
Burns: You mentioned young players on the team and there’s no doubt that’s true, but with Frank, (he’s) kind of a young a coach in terms of experience and in terms of what he has accomplished in this league as a head coach. Might some inexperience in that role becoming into factor here, or should he have enough experience with the amount of games he’s coached up until this point?
Colangelo: I think Frank has been around the game a long time. I think a young head coach, no matter how long he’s been an assistant, is challenged when things aren’t going right and it’s hard to figure out. Sometimes you press and sometimes you do things a little bit differently, so I think at this point everybody has to be a little patient here. Let’s give everyone time to work things out and hopefully it will.
Burns: Have you had any talks with him in light of all this public speculation about his job security?
Colangelo: I have conversations with Frank and we talk about what we can do to try to get things better. I don’t like to waste my time referring to speculation and innuendo. That’s just a wasted effort on my part. When I spend time with him, I’ll call it quality time. “What can we do to improve our basketball team? What needs to be done with individual players?” You talk about playing time, you talk about combinations. He does seek my opinion and I give him my opinion. I, too, have been around a long time, and feel I have a fairly good knowledge of the game.
Burns: Let’s talk about the basketball team itself. I know one of the things the last time we had you on we were talking about, was more playing time for Zarko. Now, obviously for a combination of things that has failed to materialize, for the big reason being the injury, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. Would you like to see more of somebody? Is there a particular combination that’s working, something that’s not working that is jumping out in your mind so far?
Colangelo: I think what he needs to do is get set on a lineup. Use people accordingly, so they know exactly what their role is and how they’re going to be used. When you have a key injury like Zarko, who was just starting to show what he’s capable of doing, that throws that out of whack. No question, we’re going to be undermanned now without him. I want to refer to this whole point about Bo Outlaw. I’ve seen some people write things that are just ludicrous about, “It’s about money, it’s about the salary cap.” Well, the fact is, we’re a taxpayer. We’re going to pay $10 million because we’re over the cap. That’s where we really are. We got a couple of bad cards dealt to us. Two players with long term contracts in (Tom) Gugliotta and Penny Hardaway had very serious injuries. They’re not the same players they were before their injuries. That’s the way it is, and we’ve got to ride that out. The trade with Memphis was done regarding Bo Outlaw to give us some flexibility going forward. That is important. One of the considerations was, yeah there was energy that Bo Outlaw brought on the court, (but) there were also deficiencies in his game that the coaches complained about, and Zarko was going to give us energy minutes also, because of his versatility, but we’re not going to see it for the next six weeks, or so. Again, that’s a bad card, but that’s the way it is.
Burns: I’m trying not to refer to just the most recent game that I saw you play, (Wednesday) night against the Minnesota Timberwolves, but Shawn Marion so far this year, he’s had some moments, but it seems as if the consistency we’re talking about, it hasn’t quite clicked with Shawn. What are seeing out of his game so far?
Colangelo: I think that’s accurate. Shawn has been very tentative. He came off this ankle injury and he doesn’t even look close to being the same player that he was previously. But he needs to be much more aggressive in his game overall. Amaré is letting too many things bother him, it appears to me, on the court, be it the officials, the conversation from the bench, whatever. But he’s not on a synch that he should be. Marbury (Wednesday) night took the bull by the horns offensively, to pick up slack, and I think he’s been so conscious of distributing the ball; he lost part of his effectiveness in a number of games. When you hear things like, “Well, you’re out of synch,” I think that’s a pretty good representation, individual players and the team collectively.
Caller (Brian, Phoenix): Noticing the games, I’m seeing a lot of the offense being run from the top of the key. You’ve been around a long time and you know that throughout history a lot of the great teams have run their offense from the low post out. When you’ve got a presence like Amaré, it seems like we can pound it down in there and when they start sagging in on him, then things can open up out top more.
Colangelo: In a general sense, that’s correct. So your question is, what can we do to better utilize the talent that we have?
Burns: I think what he was getting at was maybe more of a change in the focus of the offense, to run it around Amaré in the low post rather than Stephon at the top of the key.
Colangelo: Here’s one of the issues. Number one, there’s an awful lot of match up zone being played in the NBA today and there’s not a lot of one-on-one guarding of offensive players, but then again, teams are mixing it up, and again the coaches are looking at the rules, (and) they figure out ways to circumvent. That’s exactly the way it is in the NBA today. So, it’s difficult to get the ball where you want to get it, and one thing I don’t like is we do a lot of side to side, up front, rather than penetration and getting the ball into the low post, but part of that is dictated by the defense.
Burns: That’s one of the things I see in Shawn sometimes too. Too much outside shooting, not enough cutting to the hoop. Do you see that?
Colangelo: Shawn’s effectiveness, for sure, is as a slasher, and he needs to be cutting to the hoop. He’s not a 25-foot player away from the hoop and that’s one thing that’s been frustrating as we watch our games. We’re not a really good spot up shooting team and certainly we need to somehow get our players in position where they have a better chance to be more effective. Now that’s not any one’s fault, necessarily. Again, defense dictates quite a bit of that.
Burns: The game against the Dallas Mavericks, Danny Fortson suspended only three games. You are obviously one of the most influential men in the NBA. What have you discovered so far in your process to try to make the punishment for the actions of those like Danny Fortson a little tougher than they are so far?
Colangelo: Anything I would be seeking in the way of a change that would have a positive effect going forward, is not going to help us with our loss of Zarko, that’s just a fact. I’ve certainly voiced my strong opinion that whenever there’s inequity in a circumstance like this, it’s not just the incident; it’s the circumstances around it. In our case, a 30-point blowout game, an open lane to the hoop, somebody shoves a guy down when there was pretty strong intent to do just that, that’s my point. Those are the circumstances that should affect how someone is penalized. I’ve had a lot of conversations with the people in the league, the commissioner, the assistant commissioner, the guy in charge of officials, Stu Jackson, and I know the players association has indicated they’re upset that I called one of the players a thug. They’re concerned about that player and I’m concerned about the guy who was injured and broke his wrist. He’s also a member of the player’s association. So I’m going to be meeting with them in New York next week and it will be an interesting dialogue.
Burns: Would it be safe to say that what you’d be searching for is a suspension that is as lengthy as the time that the player who is injured is going to miss?
Colangelo: I think that’s the inequity that should be addressed. If anything at all, Burnsie, would have to happen, is that the penalty has to be much more severe than a slap on the wrist.
Burns: Three games is a joke. Your players would have been suspended more if they had come off the bench and took a swing at Danny Fortson, which I find obscene.
Colangelo: I think in this particular case, when you’re trying to right an inequity in terms of what a penalty is for something as traumatic as what took place, and a player goes down under those circumstances and he’s out for eight weeks, the player is damaged, the team is damaged. Think about how far back that sets us in our plans for this season. We’re paying a big price and I don’t want to see that happen to anyone else. That’s why I have this strong interest in trying to get this fixed and we’ll see where we go.
Caller (Don, Phoenix): First I’d like to say that I’ve been a longtime fan, over 25 years, and I’ve been a supporter of the Suns and I think you’ve done a good job. This is the first year that I actually spent the money to be a Platinum Club season ticket holder. I feel like I spent this money on this product and it’s like I don’t feel like I’ve got a good return on my investment and it really comes down to two things. I think it’s tempo and just aggressiveness. I watch the Suns play without a heart out there. (Wednesday) night, the whole fourth quarter I felt like we just sat there with our hands on our chins watching this pathetic play. There’s no heart, there’s no aggression, there’s no scrapping for the ball, and I just want to know your thoughts on why the Suns are letting the other team regulate the tempo when they’re a fast paced team. I see them walk the ball up the court and then let them let the opponent get into their zone defense when they’re not playing well against it when they should be racing to the spot before the zone defense.
Colangelo: You’re right about that and really I’m as frustrated as you are relative to why we’re playing as lethargically as we are. No one seems to have an answer and it’s very frustrating. I need answers and I want to see some things change quickly, whatever it takes. In my meeting with Frank a couple of nights ago, you want to get guys moving a little bit, press defensively all over the court. Make it a wide open game. Don’t walk the ball up the court. Don’t talk about running and then walk, because that’s basically what we’re doing, and if somebody’s not willing to do it on the court, then take him out and put somebody in who will. This is not rocket science. This is pretty easy, I think.
-----------------------------
Talk to the Suns
Posted: Dec. 4, 2003
Suns Chairman Jerry Colangelo joined KTAR’s Dave Burns on the 620 Sportsline for their weekly “Talk to the Suns” program and discussed the rumors surrounding the fate of Head Coach Frank Johnson and his progress with the league concerning punishment in the aftermath of Zarko Cabarkapa’s injury.
Dave Burns: A stretch of eight (games) out of nine at home, in fact 12 of your first 17 at home, no back-to-back road games yet. Now that changes starting (Friday). As you emerge from this stretch of all these home games, what have you seen, what’s not working with this basketball team right now.
Jerry Colangelo: Obviously, I’ve been pretty outspoken about the fact that I’m disappointed. If anyone were to say that they’re not, then they’re not watching the same stuff I’m watching. The record, how we’ve played… we’ve had a couple of games where we’ve been outstanding, and yeah, we’ve been like a yo-yo in terms of performance and effort. That in itself is disappointing. I don’t point fingers at anybody. Everybody’s speculating on Frank Johnson and who’s to blame. Everybody’s in it together. It’s not “he” or “they” or anything like that. The fact is we haven’t performed up to expectations.
Burns: Can you understand why it is, though, that people are starting to wonder about Frank? You’ve heard the talk. You’ve been asked the questions. I read your comments in the paper (Thursday). Can you see why people are starting to talk about it or is that foreign to you?
Tune in to 620 KTAR to catch each and
every Phoenix Suns game.
Colangelo: First of all, I’m appreciative of the fact that people care enough about it and get emotional about it because they want to see their team do better. And we all do. And we will. The old cliché that it’s really early and you can’t push the panic button, I think all of that is true. I think you keep monitoring. What you need to see is improvement. You need to see players playing well together and the effort being consistent. I’m looking for positive things, I really am. That’s exactly what I want, because I’m not looking to make changes. We’re not. We have a good, young nucleus of a basketball team. I said this before and I’ll say it again: In (Amaré) Stoudemire, (Shawn) Marion and (Stephon) Marbury, you’ve got three outstanding young players on one roster. And I want to tell you; losing Zarko (Cabarkapa) as we did was a big blow, because he’s a good one and would have been a big factor here if he had stayed healthy.
Burns: You mentioned young players on the team and there’s no doubt that’s true, but with Frank, (he’s) kind of a young a coach in terms of experience and in terms of what he has accomplished in this league as a head coach. Might some inexperience in that role becoming into factor here, or should he have enough experience with the amount of games he’s coached up until this point?
Colangelo: I think Frank has been around the game a long time. I think a young head coach, no matter how long he’s been an assistant, is challenged when things aren’t going right and it’s hard to figure out. Sometimes you press and sometimes you do things a little bit differently, so I think at this point everybody has to be a little patient here. Let’s give everyone time to work things out and hopefully it will.
Burns: Have you had any talks with him in light of all this public speculation about his job security?
Colangelo: I have conversations with Frank and we talk about what we can do to try to get things better. I don’t like to waste my time referring to speculation and innuendo. That’s just a wasted effort on my part. When I spend time with him, I’ll call it quality time. “What can we do to improve our basketball team? What needs to be done with individual players?” You talk about playing time, you talk about combinations. He does seek my opinion and I give him my opinion. I, too, have been around a long time, and feel I have a fairly good knowledge of the game.
Burns: Let’s talk about the basketball team itself. I know one of the things the last time we had you on we were talking about, was more playing time for Zarko. Now, obviously for a combination of things that has failed to materialize, for the big reason being the injury, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. Would you like to see more of somebody? Is there a particular combination that’s working, something that’s not working that is jumping out in your mind so far?
Colangelo: I think what he needs to do is get set on a lineup. Use people accordingly, so they know exactly what their role is and how they’re going to be used. When you have a key injury like Zarko, who was just starting to show what he’s capable of doing, that throws that out of whack. No question, we’re going to be undermanned now without him. I want to refer to this whole point about Bo Outlaw. I’ve seen some people write things that are just ludicrous about, “It’s about money, it’s about the salary cap.” Well, the fact is, we’re a taxpayer. We’re going to pay $10 million because we’re over the cap. That’s where we really are. We got a couple of bad cards dealt to us. Two players with long term contracts in (Tom) Gugliotta and Penny Hardaway had very serious injuries. They’re not the same players they were before their injuries. That’s the way it is, and we’ve got to ride that out. The trade with Memphis was done regarding Bo Outlaw to give us some flexibility going forward. That is important. One of the considerations was, yeah there was energy that Bo Outlaw brought on the court, (but) there were also deficiencies in his game that the coaches complained about, and Zarko was going to give us energy minutes also, because of his versatility, but we’re not going to see it for the next six weeks, or so. Again, that’s a bad card, but that’s the way it is.
Burns: I’m trying not to refer to just the most recent game that I saw you play, (Wednesday) night against the Minnesota Timberwolves, but Shawn Marion so far this year, he’s had some moments, but it seems as if the consistency we’re talking about, it hasn’t quite clicked with Shawn. What are seeing out of his game so far?
Colangelo: I think that’s accurate. Shawn has been very tentative. He came off this ankle injury and he doesn’t even look close to being the same player that he was previously. But he needs to be much more aggressive in his game overall. Amaré is letting too many things bother him, it appears to me, on the court, be it the officials, the conversation from the bench, whatever. But he’s not on a synch that he should be. Marbury (Wednesday) night took the bull by the horns offensively, to pick up slack, and I think he’s been so conscious of distributing the ball; he lost part of his effectiveness in a number of games. When you hear things like, “Well, you’re out of synch,” I think that’s a pretty good representation, individual players and the team collectively.
Caller (Brian, Phoenix): Noticing the games, I’m seeing a lot of the offense being run from the top of the key. You’ve been around a long time and you know that throughout history a lot of the great teams have run their offense from the low post out. When you’ve got a presence like Amaré, it seems like we can pound it down in there and when they start sagging in on him, then things can open up out top more.
Colangelo: In a general sense, that’s correct. So your question is, what can we do to better utilize the talent that we have?
Burns: I think what he was getting at was maybe more of a change in the focus of the offense, to run it around Amaré in the low post rather than Stephon at the top of the key.
Colangelo: Here’s one of the issues. Number one, there’s an awful lot of match up zone being played in the NBA today and there’s not a lot of one-on-one guarding of offensive players, but then again, teams are mixing it up, and again the coaches are looking at the rules, (and) they figure out ways to circumvent. That’s exactly the way it is in the NBA today. So, it’s difficult to get the ball where you want to get it, and one thing I don’t like is we do a lot of side to side, up front, rather than penetration and getting the ball into the low post, but part of that is dictated by the defense.
Burns: That’s one of the things I see in Shawn sometimes too. Too much outside shooting, not enough cutting to the hoop. Do you see that?
Colangelo: Shawn’s effectiveness, for sure, is as a slasher, and he needs to be cutting to the hoop. He’s not a 25-foot player away from the hoop and that’s one thing that’s been frustrating as we watch our games. We’re not a really good spot up shooting team and certainly we need to somehow get our players in position where they have a better chance to be more effective. Now that’s not any one’s fault, necessarily. Again, defense dictates quite a bit of that.
Burns: The game against the Dallas Mavericks, Danny Fortson suspended only three games. You are obviously one of the most influential men in the NBA. What have you discovered so far in your process to try to make the punishment for the actions of those like Danny Fortson a little tougher than they are so far?
Colangelo: Anything I would be seeking in the way of a change that would have a positive effect going forward, is not going to help us with our loss of Zarko, that’s just a fact. I’ve certainly voiced my strong opinion that whenever there’s inequity in a circumstance like this, it’s not just the incident; it’s the circumstances around it. In our case, a 30-point blowout game, an open lane to the hoop, somebody shoves a guy down when there was pretty strong intent to do just that, that’s my point. Those are the circumstances that should affect how someone is penalized. I’ve had a lot of conversations with the people in the league, the commissioner, the assistant commissioner, the guy in charge of officials, Stu Jackson, and I know the players association has indicated they’re upset that I called one of the players a thug. They’re concerned about that player and I’m concerned about the guy who was injured and broke his wrist. He’s also a member of the player’s association. So I’m going to be meeting with them in New York next week and it will be an interesting dialogue.
Burns: Would it be safe to say that what you’d be searching for is a suspension that is as lengthy as the time that the player who is injured is going to miss?
Colangelo: I think that’s the inequity that should be addressed. If anything at all, Burnsie, would have to happen, is that the penalty has to be much more severe than a slap on the wrist.
Burns: Three games is a joke. Your players would have been suspended more if they had come off the bench and took a swing at Danny Fortson, which I find obscene.
Colangelo: I think in this particular case, when you’re trying to right an inequity in terms of what a penalty is for something as traumatic as what took place, and a player goes down under those circumstances and he’s out for eight weeks, the player is damaged, the team is damaged. Think about how far back that sets us in our plans for this season. We’re paying a big price and I don’t want to see that happen to anyone else. That’s why I have this strong interest in trying to get this fixed and we’ll see where we go.
Caller (Don, Phoenix): First I’d like to say that I’ve been a longtime fan, over 25 years, and I’ve been a supporter of the Suns and I think you’ve done a good job. This is the first year that I actually spent the money to be a Platinum Club season ticket holder. I feel like I spent this money on this product and it’s like I don’t feel like I’ve got a good return on my investment and it really comes down to two things. I think it’s tempo and just aggressiveness. I watch the Suns play without a heart out there. (Wednesday) night, the whole fourth quarter I felt like we just sat there with our hands on our chins watching this pathetic play. There’s no heart, there’s no aggression, there’s no scrapping for the ball, and I just want to know your thoughts on why the Suns are letting the other team regulate the tempo when they’re a fast paced team. I see them walk the ball up the court and then let them let the opponent get into their zone defense when they’re not playing well against it when they should be racing to the spot before the zone defense.
Colangelo: You’re right about that and really I’m as frustrated as you are relative to why we’re playing as lethargically as we are. No one seems to have an answer and it’s very frustrating. I need answers and I want to see some things change quickly, whatever it takes. In my meeting with Frank a couple of nights ago, you want to get guys moving a little bit, press defensively all over the court. Make it a wide open game. Don’t walk the ball up the court. Don’t talk about running and then walk, because that’s basically what we’re doing, and if somebody’s not willing to do it on the court, then take him out and put somebody in who will. This is not rocket science. This is pretty easy, I think.
