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Sun sets on coach of Phoenix as team hopes to rebound

Frank Johnson was fired as coach of the Phoenix Suns, a young team with high expectations that is off to an 8-13 start and has lost six of its last seven games.

The Suns promoted lead assistant Mike D'Antoni, a star player and highly successful coach in Italy who coached the Denver Nuggets in the lockout-shortened 1998-1999 season.

"There's been something amiss all year, in my opinion," Suns owner Jerry Colangelo said Wednesday. "The more I saw on the floor, the more I disliked what I saw as it related to body language, communication or lack of same."

D'Antoni, under contract through next season, promised to immediately try to boost the tempo, beginning with the next game Thursday night at home against New Orleans.

"It should be exciting the first couple of nights. Balls should be flying around. We'll try not to hurt anybody," D'Antoni said. "But hopefully it will make it exciting, anyway."

Bryan Colangelo, the owner's son and president of the Suns' basketball operations, accompanied the team on its four-game trip to the East. He watched Phoenix blow a 22-point early lead in Orlando on Monday night and lose to a Magic team that had dropped 19 straight.

On Tuesday night, the Suns looked unmotivated in a 92-72 loss at Miami.

On the long plane ride home, the younger Colangelo said, he began seriously thinking about a coaching change.

"Reflecting back to a few things that I was observing on the road trip, and just reflecting back over the past several weeks and months, it became pretty apparent," he said.

Johnson spent 10 years in the Suns organization as a player, community relations official and coach. Known as "Fourth-Quarter Frank" for his shooting ability, he was a key reserve on the 1993 team that reached the NBA Finals.

Johnson replaced Scott Skiles as the Suns' head coach late in the 2001-2002 season, going 11-20 the rest of the way.

Injuries to Stoudemire and first-round draft pick Zarko Cabarkapa added to the team's woes. Stoudemire is out for about four more weeks with an ankle injury. Cabarkapa will be sidelined for five to seven weeks with a broken wrist.

But D'Antoni, who expressed admiration of Johnson's work and accepted part of the blame for the team's failures, said the Suns can be much better.

"It just wasn't working out for whatever reason," D'Antoni said. ``It is a change, and it does put the onus back on the players, and they understand that.''

D'Antoni, 52, has dual citizenship in Italy and the US, and was a star point guard at Marshall.

"We've got to get some excitement into the arena," D'Antoni said. "Sometimes this year, it felt kind of down, like we were waiting to let the cannon fall on our head, like `When are we going to mess up so people can talk bad about us?'"
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