PHOENIX — For one weekend, basketball promised to be fun again in Phoenix.

The NBA's best were in town for the All-Star game, bringing the spectacle of endless entertainment, lots of laughs and plenty of points.

Just like the Suns used to provide.

Now, with the hometown team mired in so much misery that its own All-Star starter was perhaps days away from a ticket out of town, it was up to Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, LeBron James and the other high-scoring showmen to bring hoops happiness back.

"Right now, the dynamics with the Phoenix Suns, there is a lot of head-scratching going on right now," said Doug Collins, a Phoenix resident who will be part of TNT's coverage of the game on Sunday night.

"This team was the darling of the city for the last four years with Mike D'Antoni — high-flying and (they) had a wide-open style. There have been a lot of trades and changes, and I think they have more meetings in the last month than I have in my career trying to get things squared away, which is always a bad sign."

The Suns were championship contenders during most of D'Antoni's four full seasons, winning games and fans with their uptempo brand of offense. He's gone now, and he might not be the only one by next week.

Amare Stoudemire, scheduled to start for the Western Conference, is perhaps the biggest and most frequent name mentioned in trade talks ahead of next week's deadline. Teammate O'Neal, back in the All-Star game after missing out last year, also is on the block.

Suns fans should enjoy their favorites while they can — along with the other talent surrounding them Sunday night.

They'll see the return of the O'Neal-Bryant pairing that once dominated NBA headlines, on and off the court. Together they led the Los Angeles Lakers to three straight championships and four finals berths in five years, but that success was eventually overshadowed by the bickering that triggered their breakup.

They'll be on the same team for the first time since the 2004 NBA finals, when the Lakers lost to Detroit. They traded barbs through the years after O'Neal's departure, but say they've patched things up — with O'Neal saying they were never that bad in the first place.

"That will be kind of fun to see how well they hook up together," said Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who will coach the West. "I think there's no doubt about the fact they'll have a relationship. They still are very friendly."

O'Neal was chosen to
14 straight All-Star games before missing last year during an injury-plagued season. Few players match his level of popularity.

"I'm a very lucky player because I went through three different eras of the All-Star game," O'Neal said. "I went through the Mike era, where it was Mike (Jordan) and (Charles) Barkley and all those guys, and I went through the my era, where it was me all the time and Kobe, and now it's the Kobe-LeBron, D-Wade era, Dwight Howard eras. So I've been lucky enough to go through all three of those transitions."

Bryant and James have dominated recent All-Star games, combining for the last three MVP awards. James said the first three quarters are for fun, but, "the fourth quarter, that's when we all really start to play hard. The fourth quarter is buckle-down time.

"It's fun to go out there and compete," James said. "I love playing against the best in the world and on this stage, it's the best 24 guys in the world. I kind of rise to that occasion."




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