Fun Ball

They may be too small and too young, but the Suns are having a blast proving to everyone that they may be too good to lose

ON the morning in January that the Phoenix Suns announced they'd traded for Jim Jackson, head coach Mike D'Antoni stood in the hallway outside his office before a group of reporters. "How long do you think it will take before Jackson is comfortable with the system?" someone asked.

"It'll be a little while, I'm sure," D'Antoni said in his affable West Virginia drawl. "We have to go over the playbook with him." Then he casually reached into his back pocket and pulled out a single sheet of paper. "Might be three, maybe four minutes," he said, before bursting into laughter.

These days, D'Antoni sure seems to be having a good old time. And who can blame him? His Suns are running and stunning the rest of the NBA on a nightly basis. Although seven teams are scoring better than 100 points a night-the largest contingent since 1999-none fires away with as much flair as the team in the desert. The Suns pump in a league-high 110.6 a game, nearly eight more than their opponents and eight more than the next most prolific teams, the Mavs and Kings.

According to stat-geek site 82games.com, the Suns' starting five's plus/minus ratio of +344 is 124 points better than No. 2 San Antonio's. Each of the group-Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire, Shawn Marion, Quentin Richardson and Joe Johnson-averages more than 15 ppg. "Improvisation is what makes us so difficult to defend," Nash says. "We try to find our opportunities in the moment and just let the ball move."

And it goes like this: in a midwinter home game against the Spurs, Nash takes an outlet from Stoudemire on the left wing. He pushes through midcourt, speeding past three Spurs who don't slow him down or keep him from getting in the lane. Six feet from the hoop, Nash stops short as two defenders collapse on him. He quickly finds Johnson on his left, about 18 feet out. Johnson quickly zips a pass to his right where Richardson waits, just beyond the arc. Before a lunging Tim Duncan can square up on him, Richardson releases. In less time than it takes to tie a shoelace, the Suns have gone coast to coast and buried a trey. The league's top defensive team looks lost.

"We do have things we run, but most of them are quick hitters," D'Antoni says. "Ours is more of a freelancing, fill-the-gaps thing. Everyone moves the basketball, kind of figuring it out as we go."

Clearly, his team can think fast on its feet. The Suns chuck up 48% of their shots within the first 10 seconds of a possession. This is no mindless gunning. Phoenix makes more shots a night (41.1) than anyone else. Nor are these all alley-oops and lay-ins. Through February, the Suns took (1,376) and made (530) the most three-pointers in the game, shooting at a league-high clip (38.5%).

"We're going to push you," says Suns assistant Marc Iavaroni. "More times than not, we're going to get a man or two advantage and force a very quick decision on you."

Maybe they can't yet lay claim to being the best team in the NBA. But no one can argue that the Suns aren't the most fun to watch.

"WHEN I WAS young, it seemed most teams played the way we do now," says Nash. "The ball went up and down the floor, and you saw the beauty of the game." But with too few exceptions, the game has become all isos and walk-ups and back-downs. One of those exceptions was piloted by Nash: the highscoring, playoff-regular Dallas Mavericks. The player and scheme were made for each other. So when Nash signed a five-year, $65 million deal with the Suns last summer, it looked like a decision directed by dollars. The Suns were inexperienced (average starter's age: 25.2), undersize (the 6'10" Stoudemire plays center; the 6'7" Marion plays power forward) and overmatched (they'd just finished their worst season in nearly 20 years). What could Nash get out of this new arrangement except a bigger paycheck?

Only GM Bryan Colangelo saw the obvious fit. "We knew we had guys who could run, who could fill lanes," he says. "We targeted Steve all along. A lot of people thought we overpaid, but I think he's proved his worth." If by proving his worth, Colangelo meant playing like an MVP while leading a team that has all but wrapped up the Pacific Division, then, yeah, the investment has paid off.

D'Antoni is also a different breed of leader. He rode buses as a player and coach for 20-plus years in Europe. He still thinks back fondly on those old days. When you're so far away from home, team means family. And for the unassuming coach, it still does. "Mike's tuned to our needs, pressures and sacrifices," Nash says. "He helps create an environment where we feel we're all in this together, where what's happening on the court is an extension of our relationships off it."

During games, D'Antoni leans against the corner of the scorer's table, arms folded across his chest, as his guys run up and down the court. They go on a run, he chills. They suffer a stone-cold swoon, he chills. There is no jumping or shouting, no compulsion to manage every inch of the floor or tick of the clock. "You have to let go to have a running team," says Nuggets assistant Doug Moe. "That makes most guys nervous."

D'Antoni is happy to see that everyone gets looks and buckets, happier still not to be saddled with any ego clashes or doggers. His unit is tight. Most guys come to practice 10 to 20 minutes early every day. They laugh and work together, committing both to the team as a whole and to each other.

At the shootaround before a recent game, the Suns go through a handful of defensive alignments and half-court sets. Coaches and players alike speak in shorthand: "that's the weakside thing" and "from there we're in the other thing." Sentences routinely trail off with "… and you know what you're doing from there." It's less a professional basketball practice than a jazz combo rehearsal. The harmony that is produced is of a kind that creates off-the-backboard-offyour-head alley-oop dunks like the one Nash and Stoudemire choreographed for the All-Star Slam Dunk contest.

"It's like my old AAU days around here," says Richardson. "I don't ever want it to stop." Watching the Suns play these days, it's easy to think it never will.

THE LEAGUE-WIDE average of 96.8 ppg is the highest it's been since the 1999-2000 season; last year it was just 93.4. Part of the reason for the healthy bump is an improved communal touchboth field goal (44.7%) and free throw (75.6%) percentages are up from a year ago. But the primary accelerant is the change in perimeter officiating. Hand-checks are being called a lot tighter than before, and that has led to a jump in free throw attempts per game (25.9 vs. 24.2) and a shift from dump-it-down-low power schemes to swing-the-rock-to-the-shooters schemes. Speedy teams like the Suns, Sonics and Wizards benefit the most; all three are in the top 10 in scoring and in the midst of out-of-nowhere playoff pushes despite lacking a traditional low-post threat.

Of course, March wins don't count as much nor are they as hard to get as those in April and May. Everyone knows that in the playoffs, the game slows and it's the physical defenses that win championships. Or do they?

Dean Oliver, a statistical analyst for the Sonics, agrees that the pace does slow in the postseason, but not for the reasons we all think. "It's mostly because teams rely more on their stars to take shots and make decisions," he says. "There's actually no indication that running teams can't compete. I seem to remember the Showtime Lakers did all right." Of course, they did feature a guy named Abdul-Jabbar in the post.

The challenge for the Suns, Wizards and Sonics-not to mention Fun Ballers like the Kings, Mavs, Celtics and Magic-is to continue doing what they do come spring. These teams are built on, and thrive on, sharing the love, not riding a single star. They have to set the pace.

Marion sits in front of his locker at America West Arena. "We run off turnovers, missed shots and even inbounds plays," he says. He pulls his right sock on, folds it down-halfway between ankle and calf-and starts to shake his head before you can get the question out of your mouth. He lets out a slow breath. "That's who we are. We're not going to give it up just because it's the playoffs. So how are you going to stop us?"

It's a fair question. The Suns are perhaps the best scoring team ever. Their offensive efficiency rating (points per 100 possessions) is 114.7. The league average is 105.4. By this measure, Nash's 2002 Mavs and the 69-win 1997 Bulls are the top two offenses in NBA history, but they differed from the rest of the league by only 7.7 points.

"If you play their style, they're going to beat you," says Larry Brown. "You have to go late in the clock, control the tempo with your offense and pound it inside and dominate the backboards."

Oh yeah, those backboards. The Suns are poor rebounders (28th in differential) and weaker on D (NBA-worst 103 ppg). But for a team that runs like the Suns, neither of those flaws is necessarily fatal. It's a lack of depth that may ultimately do them in. Johnson and Marion average about 39 minutes a game. Richardson clocks in at 37 and Stoudemire at 36. Nash is the loafer, logging only 34. Jackson and Leandro Barbosa are the only reserves who make an opposing team pay attention. So the Suns pretty much live and die with the core five. And like Ethan Hawke in Gattaca, they are saving nothing for the swim back.

"If we play some other way, we're just not that good," D'Antoni says. "We're not going to change the roles and responsibilities of our guys. This style suits the talent we have."

D'Antoni figures his club is already playing with house money. "We've been doing this for only a few months," he says. "I thought it would take two or three years to really get rolling." Win or lose, the Suns aren't likely to rethink their plan of attack. "We're not changing our style; this is by far the best way we can play," he says. "If we're not quite good enough at it this year, maybe it'll work next year, or the year after that."

Tonight, it's Utah. Off a made bucket, Marion inbounds the ball to Nash, in-stride, at the top of the circle. Two quick dribbles get it to halfcourt and a running alley-oop gets it to the rim, and to Stoudemire. Bada-boom. Carlos Boozer looks around, like, "Yo, anyone get the license number?" Think they won't be able to run this way in the playoffs? They think you're wrong. But even if you're not, so what?

The Suns are having too much fun to care.

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