"Stars light up Los Angeles, but there's not a sign of the Suns. Not in the big show. Not in the All-Star Game festivities. The zero representation is fitting and alarming. Our NBA team is good enough to be mediocre. Everything else is an illusion. "We have a 10-day road trip after the All-Star break," Suns coach Alvin Gentry said. "That's going to determine our season." So far, it has been mostly ugly, with occasional bursts of hope. Steve Nash has been visibly frustrated, always expected to do more with less. Vince Carter is trying hard but doesn't have that extra gear anymore, the one that Grant Hill thankfully possesses. The team has slogged to a perfectly average 27-27 record, the most-dangerous place to be in the NBA. With just the right mismanagement, you can spend a decade hanging around the periphery, good enough to make the playoffs, bad enough to never be taken seriously. In basketball, you can bleed to death from paper cuts. It's much better to bottom out, like the Cavaliers have in their first season without LeBron James, and regenerate through the draft. That's not the plan in Phoenix, where all our sports teams fear the fickle fan, the one who flees the building and hops on a different bandwagon." Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/sports/sun...x-suns-average-out-of-miracles-all-stars.html
