Black Jesus

I was celebrating last Thursday after Amaré’s incredible return. Naturally, I was having some wine, so I saved a draft of my blog post instead of publishing it. Here is a snippet of what would have been my commentary:

I was being pushy at the recent celebrity basketball game because I wanted to get good footage for ASU NewsWatch. Feel free to bump our viewership up to 31 by watching the broadcast. As I was invading Amaré Stoudemire’s personal space, which I certainly didn't mind doing, I noticed that he has tattoos on both sides of his neck. The left side says, “Lord Knows.”

The Lord may very well know, but we humans often struggle to understand how an oversized black man can get $70 million for sitting on a bench during 66 games (in actuality, you would pay close to that for having courtside seats). Then, on Thursday night, Amaré was resurrected. He racked up 20 points and nine rebounds in 19 minutes. Nine of his points were scored within the first five minutes! Portland trailed a ways behind as Phoenix won 125-108.

I continued the religious parody by elaborating on the parallel I drew between Jesus and Amaré. The difference? Amaré didn't rise for long… well that, and Jesus probably didn’t wear a du-rag. Did I mention that his other tattoo reads, “Black Jesus”?

After three games, his knee wasn't the only thing that was entombed. The Suns beat the Pacers tonight, but I expected that, given that Indiana is fourth in their division at 35-35, and Phoenix still reigns as FIRST in the Pacific Division. This has been a tough road trip, but this little team has the heart and resilience to prey on their next victims. That, and the Raptors are 26-45. Poor Bryan.

Sarver's Snafu

The temperature is not the only thing heating up this week in the valley of the sun. Marion is on fire with career highs in both points and rebounds. He was rightly named as the NBA's player of the month on Wednesday, which may have provided further justification for D'Antoni's chronic smiling habit. His fixed smile is understandable, given that he was recently named Western Conference Coach of the Month after leading the Suns to their eighth consecutive win.

This phenomenal winning streak is a direct result of Robert Sarver's managing skills, right? Wrong. However, he says he wants to create an "organization of sustained success." How? Perhaps by single-handedly removing all of the key players (starting at the top), he thinks he can crawl out from under the namesake. The Colangelo's are largely responsible for molding this team. It's as if Sarver extracted a vital part of the foundation....the heart of the team. Where are the journalists with hard-hitting questions? Why are they all saying Bryan Colangelo "severed ties" when Sarver did not lift a finger, or a dollar of Bryan's salary for that matter, to stop him from leaving. I'm just happy he didn't decide on February's player and coach of the month awards.

So that's my ridiculously slanted viewpoint but feel free to decide for yourself. You can see him discuss the matter during the halftime report at http://aol.nba.com/suns/.