Republic: Suns' quest begins in Europe

[George O'Brien]

http://www.azcentral.com

Suns' quest begins in Europe

Bob Young
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 30, 2006 12:00 AM


The Suns departed for Europe on Friday to begin two weeks of training camp with stops in Treviso and Rome, Italy, and Cologne, Germany.

It's a long way to travel to lay down a foundation, but that's where the Suns hope to begin building a championship team that has come up a couple of bricks short the past two seasons.

Steve Nash, the two-time NBA MVP, is the cornerstone, but the Suns have kept the core around him largely intact, and believe this might be their time. advertisement




"We're deeper. We're better," said coach Mike D'Antoni, whose rapid-fire offense has turned Nash and his teammates loose.

He said the only question is whether the Suns can recreate the chemistry that brought them together last season with injuries to Amaré Stoudemire, Kurt Thomas and - in the playoffs - Raja Bell.

"Can the players do that this year? We think they can," D'Antoni said. "That's why it's exciting to get started, to see what we have.

"We know we have talent. Now we see if we have a great team."

That likely will be determined by:


• The Amaré factor.

Stoudemire has undergone surgical procedures on both knees and played in only three games last season. He said he expects to be 100 percent healthy for the team's season opener on Oct. 31.

"If he's healthy, the sky is the limit is what we're thinking," Bell said. "It's not what happens in October as far as he goes, but what happens when the money is on the table."

However, Stoudemire hasn't played with many of his teammates. It remains to be seen how he'll fit in.

"It's a little touchy," Nash admitted. "He's a dominant player and we've been a dominant team, so it would be great to make the two complement each other."


• Improved depth.

The Suns didn't keep Tim Thomas, a mercenary who helped fill in after injuries to Stoudemire and Kurt Thomas last season. But beyond that, their core is together and they added point guard Marcus Banks, forward Jumaine Jones, shooter Eric Piatkowski and big man Sean Marks.

"We lost some good players, but we got some good players," veteran forward Shawn Marion said. "I see it as kind of like an even swap."


• Experience under fire.

NBA history says teams usually have to pay painful dues before breaking through to a championship. The Suns have lost in the Western Conference finals to San Antonio and Dallas the past two years, but that experience might pay off.

"It's huge," Bell said. "Every time you play in a hostile atmosphere in a playoff game with your back against the wall, it gives you that much more confidence when you go into that the next year.

"Having guys who have done that; and knowing we were an injury here or there from winning a championship is going to make us a much more confident group."

Led by Nash with 86, the Suns have a combined 411 games of playoff experience on their roster.

Maybe nobody benefited more than Boris Diaw, whose playoff numbers were equal to or better than his regular-season statistics almost across the board.


• Defense.

D'Antoni is so serious about it, he swears he's not even going to make jokes about it.

"We're better defensively than you (media) guys think," he said. "Points per possession, we were fourth in the league. That's pretty good . . . I'm going to change my tune this year. I'm not going to joke about it. We're going to play defense and we're going to be good at it."

Marion added that Banks on defense is "a little bulldog. That's a little pit bull right there." And D'Antoni said the return of Kurt Thomas will shore up the interior.

Of course, D'Antoni hasn't forgotten his own foundation.

"And we're going to run more this year," he added.

 

[AZZenny]

Here's from today's Jerusalem Post. They take their basketball pretty seriously. Maccabi Tel Aviv was considered sort of a fast-break style team, although there's been some big staff and player changes in the past couple months.

Tony Parker missed his chance to play for his country this summer. Now the San Antonio guard is getting the next best thing: a chance to play in his homeland.
Parker and the rest of the Spurs are in France, one of four NBA teams spending a portion of its preseason overseas as part of the NBA Europe Live tour.

So while most teams opened training camps Tuesday, the Philadelphia 76ers, Los Angeles Clippers and Phoenix Suns joined the Spurs in getting an earlier start - even if they had to travel far from home to do it.

A broken finger forced Parker out of the FIBA World Championship in August, but he said he wouldn't miss the chance to play in front of the home fans in two cities.

"You don't have a lot of opportunity to play with your NBA team in your own country," Parker said last week. "It's great, I'm very happy to play over there."

The 76ers are in Barcelona, the Clippers in Moscow and the Suns in Treviso, Italy, and Rome.

Philadelphia and Phoenix will later head to Cologne, Germany, for the highlight of the trip: a two-day tournament that also includes CSKA Moscow and Maccabi Tel Aviv, the top two finishers in the Euroleague last year.

The NBA is heavily pushing the event, calling it its "most ambitious international initiative," with a number of marketing and promotional activities planned.

There also should be some good basketball. CSKA Moscow, one of the Clippers' opponents, includes Euroleague Final Four MVP Theodoros Papaloukas, who starred in Greece's victory over the United States in the semifinals of the world championship.

"It's a PR trip; it has become a really global game," Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy said. "It'll be something like 13 time zones, so it's going to be a challenge.
"We'll be jet-lagged and we're going to be playing two pretty tough teams. But we'll accomplish what we want to accomplish, and the guys will get a little culture as well."

The games begin Thursday, when Philadelphia plays FC Barcelona, and San Antonio faces Asvel Villeurbanne in Lyon. On Friday, the Clippers meet BC Khimki and the Suns play Roma.

The trip to Italy sends Phoenix coach Mike D'Antoni back to the country where he was twice coach of the year while leading Benetton Treviso.

"The exciting part is that the game in Rome will be sold out - 15,000 people, playing against Rome, there will be some passion there," D'Antoni said.

"I think instead of an intersquad game that we would have in Tucson, you're playing where our juices will get flowing. To me, this is even better."

D'Antoni said during the world championship that he was not concerned with the Suns' extended preseason, even though many of his players have already had long summers. Two-time MVP Steve Nash went to South Africa for one of the Basketball without Borders camps, and Shawn Marion, Amare Stoudemire, Boris Diaw and Leandro Barbosa all spent at least some time playing with their national teams.

Marion, like Stoudemire recovering from a knee injury, doesn't sound worried, either. "No, because it's preseason," he said. "When we come back, we've still got three weeks before the first game."

The Spurs play Maccabi Tel Aviv - who beat the Toronto Raptors in an exhibition game last year - on Sunday in Paris.

The trips conclude next week with the Suns facing the 76ers, and the two Euroleague powers (CSKA Moscow and Maccabi Tel Aviv) meeting. The winners and losers will play the next night.