Another Piece in Place

The Suns have settled on a coaching staff. According to Paul Coro at the Republic, an official announcement will be made soon. His sources tell us the staff will be filled out as such:

-Alvin Gentry: my guess is Alvin has been around long enough and is smart enough to realize he has a pretty good thing going here in Phoenix. It was either stay here or follow D'Antoni and company to New York to be swallowed whole by the hell that is New York Knicks basketball.

He probably wouldn't run into many situations such as an infamous episode detailed in :07 or Less if he were in New York ("Alvin, what's going on?" "Nothing, just being black") but he made the right choice.




-Bill Cartwright: known for being the first in a long line of Chicago centers who did their job just well enough to help Jordan win six rings, he'll step into the role of Amare Stoudemire Mentor. He has what Kerr was looking for: experience and "the physical presence of looking someone in the eyes."







-Igor Kokoskov: I'll be honest, I know nothing about Igor except for what Coro just told us. However, his name is Igor and if there's one thing the Suns need, it's more Igors. He's also a native of Yugoslavia, where my sister in law's parents are from. So he's got that going for him. Which is nice.




-Thunder Dan Majerle: Thunder Dan doesn't have any of the experience Kerr was looking for (unless you count experience off the basketball court...hiyo!) but he was a hard-nosed player who gave maximum effort on both ends of the court. His playing experience won't hurt his coaching ability, that's for sure.

I'm going to miss the interesting he and Gary Bender have when doing games though. I'm referring to Thunder Dan being funny and Bender having no idea what he's talking about and being left with no choice but to laugh awkwardly.

Side note regarding Thunder Dan: my childhood best friend's sister had a life-size poster of a shirtless Thunder Dan in her room. Rawr.

With the coaching staff now in place (notice there aren't any siblings on the staff,) the Draft is the next stop for the Suns. As I said yesterday, that situation is only beginning to get interesting.