- Jerry Colangelo sells team to Sarver who then lowballs Bryan Colangelo and Joe Johnson and sells multiple first round draft picks. Also attempts to second guess and circumvent authority of head coach Mike D'Antoni ("You're doing great Mike, but why don't you bring in a defensive coach, because you need to change what you do...." was the tip of the iceberg) Mike leaves for New York where he can have authority over the team.

- The suspension of Stoudemire and his sometimes talented backup Diaw in 2007 playoffs as a result of a cheap shot by Robert Horry. Are you f^ASkxing kidding me? Robert Horry pulls a punk move and his team benefits??!@$ David Sten was way off on that one. The game in which this happened, the Suns seemed to finally have figured out what it takes to beat the Spurs (after losing to them so many times) and were calm cool and taking care of business until that cheap shot. They never recovered from the supsensions.

So that being said, Kerr was brought in. I'm not a huge Kerr fan by any stretch but I think he had to do something as the Suns window was already darn near closed after the San Antonio debacle mentioned above and the aging and decline of Suns core players (see Nash, Bell). By aging and decline, it may not show up so much statistically, but they had definitely lost a bit of fire in their eyes and passion for the game required during playoff times.

1. Defend the easiest shot your opponent takes- free throws. Average rank for FT/FGA the first 4 years of this study with D'Antoni- a bit less than 2nd best in the league with 2 firzt place finishes.

2. Defend another efficient shot - the 3 pointer. Went from 16th to 11th to 9th to 3rd lowest opponent 3pt attempt / FGA

That is enough to make you average on defensive efficiency, which is decent when pair with great offense. Not enough to beat all the other elite teams though, most with better defense, better balance.

Weak defensive rebounding and forced turnovers and probably weak inside shot defense means you aren't going to be better than average on D. Kerr / Porter did not fix any of these and lost the good factors with the trades and the coaching / system change.

You could almost hear Kobe Bryant's sigh of relief from Los Angeles when he heard Raja Bell and Shawn Marion weren't with the Suns any longer. Nice move, Steve.

Perhaps the reason Steve Kerr thought people could learn to play defense is because he learned to. In his playing career, Kerr was a shooter and never known to be a great defender, but he had to pick it up to some degree to get off the benches of the Bulls and Spurs.

Defense can be taught; the problem was finding a good teacher and probably willing students.

At any rate, my stomach flips when I read about Shaq flirting with Mark Cuban. What does that do to the team chemistry of the team he is actually on? If Shaq leaves Phoenix, you can bet he'll leave behind plenty of scorched earth, just has he did in Orlando, Los Angeles and Miami.

Don't call Shaquille O'Neal the "Big Aristotle," with the earth he scorches only the "Big Arsonist" really suits him. :-(