ESPN NBA

Frank Johnson has been fired, Amare Stoudemire has been hurt, Jake Tsakalidis has been traded, and now they have to worry about Andie McDowell hanging around.

Every. Single. Day.

Ordinarily, this is not such a bad thing. Ordinarily, this is four-on-one-fastbreak good. Except she's got that rodent with her and keeps opening the sports section to the same page, the one with the NBA standings, and parades that in front of the Phoenix Suns.

The last-place Phoenix Suns.

"I don't believe it," center Scott Williams said. "It's like 'Groundhog Day.' I keep waking up some days and saying, 'I can't believe it.' "

It gets worse.

Not only is it real. It's their fault. Stoudemire, the stud rookie a season ago, has been sidelined with a sprained ankle and Zarko Cabarkapa, after early signs of showing himself to be a steal at No. 17 in this year's draft, has a fractured wrist, but the Suns are not victims. They are culprits.

It was one thing for everyone to rank Phoenix as playoff automatics at the start of the season, what with the formidable Stephon Marbury-Shawn Marion-Stoudemire trio and the scare of eventual champion San Antonio in the first round a few months before, but it's another thing for someone else to hand over the same assumption. Phoenix. Then came the tough part: living up to it.

Oh, yeah. That.

It started encouraging enough, with a one-point road loss to the same Spurs, followed by a nine-point win over Cleveland, followed by a four-point loss to the Lakers. Even at 1-2, everything was on schedule. It was going to be a good season. No question.

"I think we kind of got caught up, as far as how good we were last season," Marbury said. "And we weren't that good. We were the eighth seed."

"I think that we thought it would be easier coming out than it has been," Penny Hardaway said.

The Suns lost to Utah -- no major blow given the perspective of Jazz success -- but then they also got beaten by Atlanta two games after that. They were 3-5 and would have to climb back just to reach .500 from there, but they never had a winning record after many had predicted they would finish at least sixth in the Western Conference. The official implosion came in early December with a six-game losing streak that included back-to-back losses at Orlando and Miami (by 20 points) and cost Johnson his job.

2002-03 Suns vs. 2003-04 Suns
Statistic	'02-03	'03-04
Win-loss record	44-38	9-16
Pts scored/game	95.5	92.4
Field-goal pct.	.443	.435
3-point pct.	.343	.319
Free-throw pct.	.742	.762
Pts allowed/game	94.4	95.8
Opponent FG pct.	.438	.438
Rebounds per game	42.5	40.4
Assists per game	21.0	20.0
Turnovers per game	14.2	14.1

It continued to be their fault. With only forever to rescue the season, even with the West more competitive than ever, the Suns were too shell-shocked to respond. "Yeah," Marbury said. "Kinda. Kinda sorta."

They became hesitant in fourth quarters, unreliable most other times, and lost along the way. "I don't know about a lack of effort," new coach Mike D'Antoni said. "Just the mental toughness is a problem."

They became a team needing to prove itself all over again.

"No doubt about it," Williams said. "We didn't expect this at all. We thought we'd take off right where we finished last year."

They're not the only ones.

"It's a shock to all of us in this locker room as well," he said.

They can still do something about it. Marbury, Marion and Stoudemire are lethal. The defense will get better when Stoudemire's ankle does, too, except the Suns need to get a lot better in that department. About four months remain, and that's long enough for everyone to heal.

"It's just tough right now," Marbury said. "It's a difficult situation. A lot of young guys -- they've never been in this situation before. We're asking a lot of our young guys."

Not to mention the old guys. The Suns need leaders now more than anything. Not you, Bill Murray.

Scott Howard-Cooper, who covers the NBA for the Sacramento Bee, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.