You may already be familiar with the work of Kevin Zimmerman, Andrew Lynch and Ryan Weisert, who give us our deepest staff yet and just as importantly provide us with a full five in case anybody ever wants to challenge us to a game of blogger basketball.

Like myself, Zimmerman comes from the Arizona Daily Wildcat where he covered the men’s basketball team and served as sports editor for two semesters and editor-in-chief during the much ballyhooed summer of 2010. Zimmerman has also written for Dime Magazine and managed the UA blog Arizona Desert Swarm. For his work he earned the UA journalism department’s famed Abe Chanin Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism.

“I’m excited to join an already-talented and diverse staff at ValleyoftheSuns,” Zimmerman said. “I think our array of styles and voices will leave no rock unturned when it comes to discussing Phoenix Suns basketball.”

Zimmerman will cover practices this season and the occassional game.

Both Weisert and Lynch bring a style that differs from that of Schmitz and myself, so we feel they will be great complements by covering the team with a bit of humor.

Lynch is the Twitter czar of ESPN’s DDL chats and a frequent participator in them, which led him to write for our fellow TrueHoop Network blog Hardwood Paroxysm. Lynch also started his own Suns blog last year, Sun-N-Gun, where he has developed his entertaining style mixing advanced stats with sarcasm.

“You know, it’s one of those things you can only dream about — writing for the team you grew up cheering for,” Lynch said. “I just hope I can fill the role that ValleyoftheSuns signed me to fill: being sarcastic when warranted, making jokes and allusions to really nerdy things and using advanced statistics in the clutch.

“At the end of the day, everyone’s gotta take things one post at a time and make sure we don’t get ahead of ourselves. If we stay focused and keep sight of the big goals, I’ll take our starting five against any other squad out there.”

Weisert contacted me during the depths of the lockout and proceeded to write a fascinating post comparing the lockout to a spat between a husband and a wife that really got my attention. Weisert draws his style from the humor blog Spectavius.com that he founded, but he also possesses a basketball background to back up his takes having worked as a men’s basketball manager at UC Santa Barbara. He was known to dispense towels and water with stunning speed and accuracy.

“I am excited to join the ValleyoftheSuns staff because now I have something more interesting than ‘Registered Voter’ and ‘Morning Person’ to put in my Twitter bio,” Weisert said.

With the additions of Zimmerman, Lynch and Weisert to our starting five at ValleyoftheSuns, I feel we have a diverse staff that will cover Phoenix Suns basketball from every angle this season.

My how time has flown and this blog has evolved from a one-man show to a real team.

I’m proud of where we are. We had a productive summer building out the web site from the static one-page blog it was through the end of last season to a multi-page web site it is today complete with player profiles, a salary page and a schedule. We have even been nominated in the “Best of our Valley” Favorite Local Blog category. (Gratuitous plug warning: Vote for us, we could really use it).

I feel like Year 1 for this blog was about getting comfortable in this space and Year 2 was about expanding our content selection. Year 3 is about becoming even more legitimate as a full-service Phoenix Suns web site breaking down the team in every fashion possible, from Schmitz’s superb video breakdowns to advanced statistical analysis.

We will strive to continue to diversify our coverage and look at the Suns from every angle to make ValleyoftheSuns a must-read source of Phoenix Suns coverage on a daily basis.

As ValleyoftheSuns.com gets set for its third year of Suns coverage, I wanted to provide you the fans with a more robust place for smart dialogue on the team. This forum will feature everything from game threads to advanced statistical analysis to discussion on trades and lineups as well as anything else that becomes relevant on Planet Orange.

It will be moderated by Suns Debate blogger Kyle Fleeger, but all of the ValleyoftheSuns staffers will likely peak their heads in to get in on the talk at one more point or another. Here’s Fleeger’s statement on the forum:

The VotS forum is dedicated to keeping Suns fans entertained and debates about the Suns raging. It’s my goal to have up to date information regarding statistics, rumors, practices and game day. By making sure we have the most up to date information, we can ensure that this web site has the best debates happening on any NBA website.

With an opportunity to weigh in on practice, the games, lineups, trade rumors and statistical breakdowns, the VotS fan is able to keep up with current Suns/NBA news and participate in the best sports forum around! It’s my goal to have updates to any thread created within 15 minutes of any post.

As a high school debate coach for the best seven-time state champions in Arizona, I have developed my skills to not only spark interesting debates, but also find an answer to any Suns question that you can create. Thanks for the opportunity to see what the fans think about the Phoenix Suns!

It’s been questioned whether a forum is a place where “smart basketball talk” really can take place. We’re about to find out, and it’s up to you — the reader of ValleyoftheSuns — to make that happen.

Today I’m proud to announce the final additions of the offseason as I officially bring on State Press (ASU) football writer Tyler Emerick as a staff writer, Suns blogger Kyle Fleeger to run a soon-to-launch Suns forum (more on that in a bit) and former collegiate advertising manager Jessica Porter to help sell some ads.

While only a sophomore, Emerick brings the experience of a reporter currently covering the visiting football beat for ASU’s school paper. He comes highly recommended after making the ASU gymnastics team interesting to read about last year, and as a former college sports editor, trust me, that’s not easy to do. I’m excited to see what Emerick can add to ValleyoftheSuns, and yes, this means your name must be either “Michael” or “Tyler” to write for this site.

“I have decided to take my talents to South Mountain and write for ValleyoftheSuns,” Emerick said in a press release. “I am excited about the opportunity and to team up with such great talent around me.”

Fleeger, who runs SunsDebate.com, has been begging me for a writing gig with ValleyoftheSuns ever since I brought Lockman aboard a year ago. I feel like his limitless passion for the Suns and many years of experience as a speech and debate coach will make him a natural fit leading the ValleyoftheSuns forum, which will launch on Oct. 18 at http://valleyofthesuns.com/forum.

The forum will host game threads, statistical analysis, lineup debates and of course discussion on all the latest Suns news and rumors. I have always aimed to make ValleyoftheSuns a community, and I think the forum can go a long way toward continuing that goal. I hope many of you frequent commenters really make yourself at home on the forum and become leaders on the board.

We’ve internally debated the idea of a forum all summer, and ultimately I think it’s worth it. I hope this forum is a place where Suns and general NBA fans can come together to discuss smart basketball topics and take the stories written on ValleyoftheSuns to another level through this debate.

“My main goal for the forum is for Suns fans to have a place to voice themselves day or night,” Fleeger said. “I want to help create a space where opinions about the Suns and statistics can evolve into facts, and good argumentation.”

Porter will help me sell ads, as ValleyoftheSuns enters Year 3 seeking advertising partnerships with local businesses with a basketball angle.

This year we also plan to delve deeper into the video world, with Mike Schmitz serving as our video breakdown guy as you started to see over the summer, and I plan on continuing to expand my knowledge of advanced stats to reach conclusions on what these numbers are telling us about the Suns.

Like the Suns we are still working out how all our pieces will fit together here at ValleyoftheSuns, but with Schmitz, Lockman and web guy James Constable being joined by Emerick, Fleeger and Porter, it’s safe to say quality depth won’t be an issue at ValleyoftheSuns any more than it will be with the real Phoenix Suns.

The Pacific Division chat as a whole will go from 11-4. We will be taking all your questions on the Suns in typical DDL format during our hour.

With 2009-10 now safely in the books and the Suns set to embark on what promises to be a wild offseason beginning with Thursday’s draft and next week’s start of free agency, now is the right time to unveil our redesigned web site.

A Robin Lopez-sized thanks is in order to James Constable for implementing the theme and Matt Manske for designing it. Your efforts are very much appreciated.

A few bells and whistles will be added throughout the summer, such as a schedule, roster and salary feature. I hope you all enjoy the face lift!

Let us know what you think about the re-design and if there are any upgrades you think we should implement in the comments.

For a sneak peak at what we’ve got in store for you, here’s my entry previewing the 2009-10 Suns:

Crystal Ball

The consensus prediction of the TrueHoop Network bloggers … and the best hopes of ValleyoftheSuns.

Last Year’s Record: 46-36

Crowd Says: 46-36

ValleyoftheSuns Says: 48-34

Yes We Can!

The sun is out. The seas have parted. The basketball gods are shining upon us!

Two years ago the Suns were chic championship picks.

Last year, the Suns were (accurately) thought to be a fringe playoff team.

This year there are almost no expectations outside of their locker room, with many national pundits expecting the Suns to hover around .500.

And that is just where any talented team hoping to play the Rodney Dangerfield card wants to be.

Sure, the Suns’ defense won’t exactly resemble that of the Celtics or Spurs, but that doesn’t mean a team featuring Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire, Jason Richardson and Grant Hill won’t score a ton of points, win a bunch of games and scare the bejeezus out of somebody in the playoffs (and maybe even win a series).

2008-09 was a mess on a number of counts, chief among them being that the Suns never figured out what they were. They never developed an identity because that identity changed every few months, starting with Terry Porter’s failed stab at making the Suns play defense and finishing with Alvin Gentry’s “just go out and run and worry about defense later” philosophy.

Even at the end of the season when they were definitively a fast, offensive team, they had to deal with the complication of Shaquille O’Neal in such a system.

The end result after the All-Star break under Gentry was a team that beat nearly all the bad teams but lost to just about all the good ones.

Absent Amare Stoudemire for all but two games in the second half, the Suns still averaged better than 120 points per 100 possessions, making them one of the best offensive teams in NBA history when extrapolated out to a whole year.

Although they lost Shaq in a salary dump, the Suns replaced him with a center in Channing Frye who is a better stylistic fit offensively – although not on the boards and in terms of post defense. They also added a rookie in Earl Clark who brings versatility at both ends of the floor, which should make him successful right away in Gentry’s system.

Clark joins a bench featuring Leandro Barbosa, Goran Dragic, Robin Lopez, Jared Dudley and Lou Amundson that should be deeper than Phoenix’s second units under Mike D’Antoni.

In all there will be no mistaking what the Suns are this season: a lightning-speed team that will score points in bunches and likely give them up almost as quickly while struggling badly on the boards.

But they will once again be the most exciting team in basketball, and if the starters stay healthy, the Suns will make the playoffs and maybe even be the team nobody wants to face.

No You Won’t

A rousing dissent from a rival blogger.

“For Steve Kerr’s next trick, he’s going to somehow undo the Louisiana Purchase.” – Matt Moore/Hardwood Paroxysm

All-A-Twitter

A 140-character insight into the soul of the team.

Courtesy of Suns head coach @AlvinGentry – “any one would enjoy coaching this group of guys. it what a team should be. young players learning for the veterans. vets that work hard” – March 24, 2009, the day after a big win over Denver that momentarily kept the Suns in the playoff hunt.

On the Record

Single best quote concerning the team during the last 12 months.

“I think right now I’d be happy just to be part of a really positive and optimistic atmosphere, be a part of a team that really is on the same page, plays together, plays hard every night and makes the season exciting for one another and for the fans. I think that undoubtedly we’d be successful with that type of atmosphere regardless of how much talent we’d have” – Steve Nash after the season finale of a disappointing 2008-09 Suns season, possibly foreshadowing what’s to come in 2009-10.

The 2009-09 Almanac

Some key stats from last season.

Offense: 2nd

Defense: 26th

Pace: 4th

Team Factor Strengths: Shooting (1st), Free Throws (8th)

Team Factor Weaknesses: Turnovers (26th), Shooting Allowed (23rd), Defensive Rebounding (22nd)

The Play

Down a single point with 9.2 seconds to play in a must-win game. What’s the play?

The easy answer would be a Nash-Amare pick-and-roll, but let’s get creative here with a play the Suns successfully ran a few times last year in endgame situations. After Hill inbounds it to Amare at the top of the key, Nash sets a pick on Hill’s guy. Hill darts to the cup with Nash’s guy hesitant to switch, and Amare hits him with a perfect pass for an easy layup with the opposing big guy defending Amare on the perimeter.  Just hope you don’t leave enough time for Roger Mason Jr. to beat you at the buzzer.

The People’s Choice

The fan favorite the crowd will be chanting for to see some action.

On Draft Day Suns GM Steve Kerr said he doesn’t see how Earl Clark will beat out Jared Dudley or Lou Amundson for time. Yeah, right. I see that quote as a motivational ploy directed at Clark, but if that comes to fruition then Suns fans will be chanting for the versatile, skilled rookie out of Louisville.

If You’re Watching the Bottom Line, You’re Watching This

The single biggest spreadsheet issue hanging over the team.

Just like in Cleveland, Miami and Toronto, a potential key member of the much-ballyhooed Class of 2010 free agency class resides in Phoenix. The end result of the Amare Stoudemire Situation will go a long way toward determining the future direction of this franchise. Phoenix does not want to negotiate with Amare before seeing how he returns from a very serious eye injury, and even completely healthy the Suns may be hesitant to give max money to a player who is inconsistent defensively and on the boards at times. After asking for that max extension, Amare sees only a 50-50 chance of returning to Phoenix. The answer to this conundrum will determine whether the Suns build around their 26-year-old, potentially franchise big man or if they will have a few dollars to throw around next offseason to chart a new path.

Social Suns

A tidbit on the Phoenix Suns’ social media presence.

@The_Real_Shaq has been shipped off to Cleveland, but the Suns’ social media presence will still be stronger than ever in 2009-10.

About half the players tweet (Nash, Amare, J-Rich, Dudley, Lopez, and Taylor Griffin) as well as head coach Alvin Gentry and about 15-20 Suns employees.

As an organization, the Suns do a great job reaching out to their fan base through social media by holding events such as tweetups.

This year the team plans to become even more interactive by streaming live tweets a couple times a game at the bottom of the TV screen and on the big screen and 360-degree LED rings at US Airways Center.

“It would be really cool if we can have fans at home tweeting about the game and fans in the building itself tweeting about the game and those tweets kind of merging together to be on display,” said Suns executive Jeramie McPeek.

Lockman, a native of a Chicago suburb, has spent more than a year interning at the Arizona Republic and is looking forward to this new challenge.

“I am so excited to join the ValleyoftheSuns team,” Lockman said in a press release. “Sports writing is my passion, so joining ValleyoftheSuns.com was an easy decision. I’m happy to be on board with an outstanding outlet dedicated to providing the best coverage possible.”

Lockman has covered a variety of sports in his young career, including high school football, basketball, soccer and softball. He has also covered pro golf and ASU athletics and written a few NBA and NFL items.

He was born and raised on the Bulls dynasty, choosing Scottie Pippen as his favorite player, but he was briefly obsessed with the Suns Gorilla during his childhood as a result of a T-shirt from his grandmother who lived in Phoenix.

Lockman, a 4.0 student and a winner of the Bobby Beynon Memorial Scholarship from the Cronkite School for sports journalism, has also spent time with AthleticPress.com, KASC The Blaze 1260 AM, and The Gateway Tour. Hopefully he will provide a negative contrast to the sometimes homeristic writing we feature.

As opposed to last season when I was essentially a one-man band with a couple of guest contributions, ValleyoftheSuns now boasts a staff of three reporters (Mike Schmitz, a current Arizona Daily Wildcat reporter is the other, and no for the hundredth time, we’re not the same person).

According to sources close to the team, ValleyoftheSuns is also speaking with the agent of a female correspondent who has interned at Fox Sports AZ and a few local TV stations to head our video and promotions department. If there is to be any movement on this front it would likely occur around her expected December graduation from ASU, making her a potential midseason acquisition so to speak.

Today is also a special day because one year ago today (OK, one year ago the Sunday before the season started to be exact), I came up with the name “ValleyoftheSuns” while riffing with some forming Daily Wildcat colleagues in my old newsroom during Homecoming weekend last year. That afternoon I bought the domain name, and the next day ValleyoftheSuns.com was on the air.

I really didn’t know what to expect in that first year. I could see it both failing miserably or being wildly successful, but at the time it was kind of a way to stay in journalism while looking for my next job after ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz requested I start a Suns blog to join an ESPN-affiliated network that had yet to be founded.

Since then, ValleyoftheSuns has officially joined the TrueHoop Network, gotten credentialed to a good number of Suns games and has started to develop a video and social media presence.

We have come so far in one short year, but we still have so far yet to go to reach the heights I hope this site reaches.

With a full staff, we will now be able to provide more analytical pieces and fun features, whereas last year at times I got bogged down by recaps and previews. With the increased level of access, we’ll know what’s going on with the team more and be able to provide a much better perspective of what’s actually going on.

The journalism world is changing, as we get set to begin the Suns’ first official season in essentially a one-paper town.

ValleyoftheSuns strives to become a new form of journalism, blending old school reporting practices with new school video, social media and style just like the Suns plan to blend old school vets like Nash and Hill with a team full of kids.

Stay tuned to ValleyoftheSuns the next few days for a slew of season preview coverage.

We knew yesterday that the big guns (Gilbert Arenas, Jerryd Bayless) were out, but Hassan Adams, Eugene Edgerson, Kenny Lofton and Ben Davis were all no shows as well.

Arizona’s only former scholarship men’s basketball player was Joseph Blair, a key force on the 1994 Final Four team.

Meanwhile, the Devils had many of their top guys of the past decade aside from their 2009 draftees and their two NBA players (Eddie House and Ike Diogu), with guys like Curtis Millage, Bobby Lazor, Donnell Knight and even Serge Angounou leading the way to a 78-60 win.

Arizona’s second-best player was Lute Olson’s grandson Matt Brase, a former UA walk-on whom I once played against in Intramurals. Sure, Brase’s team crushed mine, but somebody I once played against in Intramurals shouldn’t be the second best player on an Arizona alumni team.

Honestly, I’m pretty disappointed in my fellow Wildcat alums. I can understand Gilbert backing out and even Bayless (I never expected them to play, Gilbert at least, and such an event is really below Bayless when he’s the only NBAer), but what did guys like Hassan Adams and Ben Davis have to do today that was more important than a rivalry game for charity?

I can understand the NBA guys with big contracts wouldn’t want to take part, but why shouldn’t the others have chipped in for charity and enjoyed another 15 minutes of fame?

Anyway, watching that joke of a basketball game made me think how great it would be if every four years or so the top 16 or so college programs would stage an NCAA Tournament-style event with teams consisting of alums.

I would definitely watch that, wouldn’t you?

You know these guys would go hard, too, maybe too hard to get the blessings of their NBA owners.

Arenas once said he would give up one NBA season (and the ensuing multi-million dollar paycheck) just to get his payback against Duke. The Blue Devils beat Gilbert’s Wildcats in the 2001 Championship Game when he had a bum shoulder, and Coach K also cut him from the national team. Gilbert hates Duke, and you would see playoff intensity in such a game.

You would see chemistry between players who grew up playing basketball together before making it in the NBA, and you would see grizzled vets leading 20-year-olds who played at the same school 15 years apart.

You could bring back celebrity coaches, such as Lute Olson for Arizona, and you could possibly get big-time TV ratings.

In an age of insurance policies and teams ever so politely asking their stars not to play for their countries, you know they’d never let them play for their schools, but it would be really great to see NBA superstars playing for the love of their universities like they did back in college.

Unlike today, when a bunch of former Wildcats chose not to support a good cause.

Oh well, at least my $15 ticket went to charity.

Back to a one-paper town?

More sad news today in the newspaper department as reports say The East Valley Tribune will be declaring bankruptcy this week.

I’ve been used to four major papers in Arizona for most of my life, the Republic and the Trib in Phoenix and the Daily Star and Citizen in Tucson. The Tucson Citizen has now been dead for a few months and it looks like the Tribune may be on its way to its demise in the coming months.

This is particularly heartbreaking for me because I’ve been reading Trib sports for as long as I could read. That is, until they decided they couldn’t deliver out to my North Scottsdale home and then stopped publishing on certain days.

The Tribune gave me my first journalistic experience when I hooked up with their subsidiary Scottsdale Views and basically covered my high school for them with no experience. Views sports editor Matt Simpson became my mentor, and I got to write the occasional high school football story for the paper.

I always thought I would end up working there when I graduated college, but then when I covered the D-backs in 2007 I would hear the Trib writers whisper about layoffs and the like, and I just tried to tune them out.

I remember when their fine Cardinals writer, Darren Urban, took off to AZCardinals.com for better pay and a more secure position, and they just replaced him in house and spread the workload among everyone else.

I remember the night in San Diego when I got to cover a D-backs road game because I was visiting my grandparents over there, yet Trib baseball writer Jack Magruder was nowhere to be seen because they didn’t send him on that short trip.

I certainly remember the day I first covered a Suns home game for this blog and asked the reporter sitting next to me on press row where Suns beat writer Jerry Brown was, and he replied, “Oh you didn’t hear? Jerry was laid off a month ago.”

The Trib has laid off a Pulitzer Prize winner in the news department and gifted writers all through the sports department to the point where they’re just not working at anything close to full capacity. When you’re not even covering Phoenix Suns home games anymore, you know the writing is on the wall.

If it doesn’t happen this week, you know it’s happening soon, and whenever Phoenix inevitably becomes a one-paper town (if it isn’t already in theory), we all lose.

We’ll be missing the viewpoints of columnists like Scott Bordow, who has been covering Arizona sports as long as I’ve been able to read and probably a lot longer, and we’ll be missing the balance that a second paper provides.

I honestly feel that if I graduated five years ago, or maybe even two years ago, my first job would have been at a paper like the Tribune. That’s just how it used to be.

But all along I didn’t want to jump on a sinking ship after it had hit an iceberg, and I truly feel the future of sports journalism involves entities like the TrueHoop Network.

If this all is true, today is a sad day in Phoenix, just like there were previously sad days in Denver, Seattle, Tucson and a number of other cities around America.

Journalism is changing as we speak, and I could not be more excited for the new era ahead of us.

But as we await the new world, it’s never easy to say goodbye to a fine paper like the Trib, the paper that gave me my start in journalism and that has been my breakfast companion from the days of Barkley to the days of Nash.

If you would have asked me a few years ago, the team I picked might have only been just above the Spurs and Lakers on my list of favorite NBA teams, but times have changed. A close second and third were Portland (I just love B-Roy, Rudy and, of course, Jerryd Bayless) and Oklahoma City (that Durant guy is kind of good and I’m a big fan of how they built that team).

Here goes:

I grew up hating all things New York sports and thus I never thought I’d ever type the following sentence: the New York Knicks are my second favorite professional basketball team.

Then again, I never thought a lot of things.

I never thought the Suns would go from everyone’s second favorite team to afterthoughts in about two years, I never thought Phoenix would ever trade for Shaquille O’Neal and I certainly never thought Mike D’Antoni would ever jet to New York to turn a franchise once known for bone-crushing defense into an offensive powerhouse.

But he did, and since we never got a definitive answer on whether an NBA team can win a championship in Seven Seconds or Less in Phoenix, I would love to see it happen in New York.

Granted the Knicks are still a mess and I’d ditch them immediately if they become the New York LeBrons, but if New York makes the run that Phoenix never did I’ll be cheering Mike D along every step of the way.

Looking back at offseason predictions

Anybody who has ever played in a fantasy league with me or taken my money in an NCAA Tournament pool knows how often I’m wrong when it comes to sports.

Maybe it says something about how unsurprising the Suns’ offseason was that I predicted most of it to happen at the beginning of the offseason and even called the Earl Clark pick.

Let’s just say I wasn’t so right when it came to my preseason prediction for last season or when I famously posted on a friend’s Facebook wall “I GUARANTEE it doesn’t happen,” in the hours leading up to the original Shaq trade that, of course, did indeed happen.

I missed on Matt Barnes leaving after I put too much stock into him telling the fans after the regular season finale how excited he was to play for a contender in Phoenix next season, and I also underestimated how much it would take to get a Nash extension done. But all in all, I’d be pretty happy if I’m right nearly that often in my next rendition of NCAA Tourney picks.

Shaq responds to Republic column criticism

Paola Boivin posted Shaq’s response to her column that has since been analyzed here at ValleyoftheSuns:

“Steve is a good guy and was a fantastic teammate. He has made great contributions as an Executive Producer on ‘Shaq Vs.’ and we are all excited about the show.”

That quote really doesn’t tell us anything. Were the so-called contributions the fact that it was originally his idea? That is left unsaid, and I wonder how excited Nash really is about the show.

I agree with my reader MikeF who suggests Nash and Shaq should play one-on-one in a future episode to settle this thing.