BOSTON – If Boston rookie big man Greg Stiemsma had not experienced his welcome-to-the-NBA moment, he probably did not expect it to come against Suns center Marcin Gortat.

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Suns vs. Celtics photos | Box score | Twitter updates

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There often is that regrettable yet memorable play for each young player when he discovers what an elite skill level he has entered in the NBA.

On Friday night, Gortat already had scored 12 consecutive Suns first-quarter points when he received the ball on the extended post with Stiemsma on his back. Gortat’s spin move to the baseline froze Stiemsma for a score.

“Polish shake,” Suns forward Grant Hill said in deference to the “Dream Shake” of Hakeem Olajuwon, who taught moves to Gortat for a week in June.

The Suns have lacked a go-to scorer who creates his own shot since last season, but Gortat at least has proven to be a reliable, efficient scorer. Steve Nash is creating more scores than any NBA player, averaging 10.0 assists per game, and leads the Suns in scoring with 14.8 points per game, but his pick-and-roll partner, Gortat, is up to 14.7.

“I know where to put myself in the position to score,” Gortat said. “Having Steve going to the bucket every time hard, then I’m going to be open or the other way around, and I’m going to draw attention on my roll. That’s a pretty good combination. I like that.”

Since a splint was removed from his right thumb, which had sustained a hairline fracture, Gortat has averaged 17.0 points and 11.2 rebounds in nine games. His 59.9 percent shooting leads the NBA.

If the Suns’ record improves, Gortat could be an All-Star candidate in a shallow pool of West centers. It would be a fitting return to Orlando, where he spent 3½ seasons as Dwight Howard’s understudy.

“I don’t really care about that,” Gortat said. “My thoughts are not on All-Star. I’d rather take a rest. I don’t think I’m going to make it. I care if my team is going to win.”

Gortat does not lack for motivation. An acquaintance criticized his play in New York, stirring him into a 24-point, 12-rebound performance Friday night at Boston, his seventh consecutive double-double and third 20-10 game in an eight-day span.

Gortat, 27, is far from a perfect center, but he has come so far in his first season as an NBA starter. He is hesitant to dunk for fear of reinjuring the thumb and missing the season. He knows it would help the team if he drew more fouls (2.2 free-throw attempts per game) and made more free throws (63.6 percent shooting from the line). He is a key to improving the defense, which he boosts with 1.6 blocks per game. He is needed to turn around the team’s rebounding issues.

“I still believe I can do better,” Gortat said of his 9.3 rebound average. “Every time I see Dwight Howard and his numbers, those numbers are out the roof. I want to reach 20. Because Coach told me if I have 20, then I’ll be able to shoot 3s. Trust me, I’m aiming for that. If I get 20, the next possession is a 3.”

Offensively, Gortat has shown more offensive variety than being set up for layups. He has a mid-range jumper and made four of four left-handed shots, layups and hooks, in Friday’s first quarter. A strong left hand, engrained in him by European coaches, is what carried him through the frustrating first six games with the splint.

Gortat still is not a player that teams focus on eliminating defensively.

“Some of them know I can play, but they still defend me the way they always defended me,” Gortat said. “They still treat me like an Orlando backup. That’s fine. At the end of the day, I’m going to smile.”

Suns (4-9) at Knicks (6-7)

C: Marcin Gortat … Tyson Chandler
PF: Channing Frye … Amar’e Stoudemire
SF: Grant Hill … Carmelo Anthony
SG: Jared Dudley … Landry Fields
PG: Steve Nash … Iman Shumpert

Key Knicks subs: Toney Douglas, Mike Bibby, Jared Jeffries, Bill Walker, Josh Harrellson.
Key Knicks injury: Baron Davis (herniated disk) is out.

Today’s Orange Slices, a little travel-tardy:

* Somebody is going to get their team right tonight. One team might even rediscover its offense too.

The parting of Mike D’Antoni and Amar’e Stoudemire from Phoenix to New York in recent years has proven good for nobody this season. The Knicks have lost three games in a row. D’Antoni is on the hot seat. Stoudemire is shooting 42 percent and the glory time of it being his team did not even last a season before Carmelo Anthony took over. The Suns are worse off than the Knicks, having lost five in a row and going into year two of having no player to get baskets or free throws when all else fails.

Both teams have lost their offensive swag, experiencing double-digit scoring drop-offs from last season.

“Back to the drawing board,” Suns coach Alvin Gentry said after the Suns’ Tuesday loss at Chicago.

* Steve Nash continually points out the Suns lack of talent as a reminder that we all need to readjust our bar of expectations. The realists knew that a fringe playoff race would be a best-case scenario for this team, one that needed to have everything go right with healthy and performances to even get to that point. Health problems hit them early and several players have not shot well to squelch any early optimism.

The most dangerous problem now is they are reverting to their porous defensive ways. Sometimes, they have just been bit by their own game plan. You want Kyrie Irving to shoot jumpers because he gets to the rim so well. But the Cavaliers’ key second-quarter run in that game was full of Irving jumpers. Deron Williams was a 35 percent shooter who torched Phoenix and then went 3 for 15 the next night. The Suns wanted Carlos Boozer to take outside shots and he got hot.

“You can blame the defense but there were some stretches where everything was going in,” Nash said of the Chicago loss. “That put them in a position to have a lot of confidence to make plays the rest of the game. They made a lot of shots in the first quarter outside 15 feet that were abnormal.”

But at some point, the Suns should want to shed their soft label in those moments. Boozer made 11 shots in the first half Tuesday night. How many would it take before a defender knocked a screener to the ground, put a hand in Boozer’s face, fingers in his eyes, a body to his chest?

“We’ve got to be more physical,” Gentry said. “That’s slipped a bit. Our rotations have slipped. We haven’t done a good job of communicating. We’re dying for practice time and we don’t have any time until we get to Dallas.”

But as Gentry acknowledged, the lack of practice time is every team’s problem is this compressed schedule. Part of the Suns’ defensive problem recently is they adhere to a plan but do not adjusted individually during the game.

“Ultimately, defense is pride,” Grant Hill said. “I’m going to do all I can to prevent my man from scoring. There is a team concept. Elston (Turner) is doing a good job of trying to teach it. You have to take pride in doing the assignment the right way. We’ve shown when we do it, we can be pretty good. When we don’t, we can be pretty bad.”

How about Shannon Brown? He goes from the Lakers to this.

“We’ve got to trust each other out there,” Brown said. “We’ve got to know our defensive assignments and go out there and do it. We’ve got to see each other and be on a string. It has to be a constant rotation of us playing together.

“We’ve got to stick together and have confidence. The only we’re going to come out of this slump is if we stick together rand stay positive with each other.”

* With no top-50 scorers for a second consecutive season, Nash could win the assist title again (he is tied at 10.0 with Rajon Rondo). That has New York salivating at the thought of the city’s offseason resident joining them in free agency next summer. The New York Post headline today read, “Hello Sunshine … Knicks taking close look at Nash.” The New York Times’ headline read, “The Power of a Single Player … Knicks lack point guard to elevate their offense.”

As much as Phoenix is struggling offensively, New York might even be worse off. The Knicks sorely need a playmaking point guard to execute D’Antoni’s offense but instead rank in the NBA’s bottom five for field goal shooting and assists. Stoudemire, who had back issues, is shooting a career-low 42 percent and seeing Tyson Chandler get the pick-and-roll calls and the Olympic finalist nod. Carmelo Anthony is not shooting or feeling much better with a 42.7 percent clip and a sore left wrist and right ankle.

The Knicks are waiting on Baron Davis, 32, to get well from a herniated disk but he is still weeks away from playing.

* Nash lost more ground on the career free throw percentage record he has held a few times before relinquishing it. Nash missed another free throw Wednesday, making it so that he needs a streak of 12 made free throws to retake the league record from Mark Price. Nash is at 90.35 percent and Price’s record is 90.39.

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Photos from the game

Jason Terry contributed 18 points, including nine in the fourth quarter, to help the Mavs (3-4) string together consecutive wins for the first time this season.

“We said at the beginning, we’re going to be a piece of work and everybody is going to come along and I think this team is more set up to peak down the stretch and not now,” Nowitzki said. “Everybody’s got to work themselves back into shape, get the legs strong and play with each other more and I think we’re going to be a good team down the stretch.”

Lamar Odom added 15 points and five rebounds in his best game since joining the Mavericks in a trade with the Los Angeles Lakers on Dec. 11.

But Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said Odom can do better in just about every area.

“He had good stats, but there are areas where he needs to improve.” Carlisle said.

Steve Nash had 15 points and 12 assists for the Suns (2-4), while Marcin Gortat had 22 points and 10 rebounds.

The Mavericks lost their first three games while trying to introduce five new faces into the lineup after the departures of five key players from the team that won its first title last season.

Now the Mavericks are playing with more cohesion and energy, winning three of four.

“These are steps in the right direction,” said Mavericks forward Shawn Marion, who had 13 points despite being listed as questionable before the game due to illness. “Things are starting to click on both ends of the floor.”

Nowitzki is the team’s career leader in most categories, including points. He already had the record for games played and was appearing in his 975th game as a starter.

“I’m still working to get back to where I was,” said Nowitzki, MVP of the NBA Finals last season. “It’s definitely good to get to 1,000 games, that’s a lot of games and means I was healthy a lot and I was able to help my team and this franchise a lot. It’s great and now we’re looking for another 1,000, we’ll see how far we can take it.”

The Mavs broke the game open with a 13-4 third-quarter run capped by five straight points from Nowitzki, including a three-point play for a 62-49 lead.

Terry hit a 3-pointer at the third-quarter buzzer to make it 77-66.

“It was a 3-point momentum play at the end of the quarter, a huge play,” Carlisle said.

Terry connected on three more from behind the arc early in the fourth, the final one pushing the Mavs’ advantage to 92-71 with 7:46 remaining.

The Suns kept hustling and trimmed the deficit to 96-87 on Nash’s 3-pointer with 2:50 to play, but the Phoenix couldn’t get any closer.

The Mavericks were up at halftime, 49-41 behind Nowitzki’s 13 points.

For the game, the Suns were outrebounded 53-42, 19-11 on the offensive glass.

“I think we gave up tons of offensive rebounds,” Nash said. “We held them to 41 percent shooting which is more than acceptable, but we missed a lot of shots. We’re OK offensively, but you can’t give up so many offensive rebounds like we did tonight.”

Terry and Odom led Dallas to a 51-21 advantage in bench scoring.

“That’s where the separation came, with the second units,” Suns coach Alvin Gentry said. “That’s where the lead came and it was hard for us to overcome.”

NOTES: Nowitzki is the 98th player in NBA history with at least 1,000 games. … The teams met for the first time this season. Dallas swept all four games last season. … Recently-signed Phoenix G Michael Redd has begun working back into basketball shape but Gentry said Redd won’t be ready to be activated for 10-14 days. … Football players from Arkansas and Kansas State were in attendance. The teams meet Friday in the Cotton Bowl at Cowboys Stadium. … Dallas’ Jason Kidd appeared in his 1,274th regular-season game, tying Terry Porter for 16th on the NBA’s career list. Kidd is the league’s active leader in games played.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Suns coach Alvin Gentry shared the thought he and his staff had about Hakim Warrick entering the preseason.

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Profile: Suns forward Hakim Warrick

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“I don’t see how he’s going to play.”

And now?

“I don’t see how he can’t play.”

Warrick went from not playing in the opener to leading the Suns in scoring average as a reserve. Warrick, whose role vacillated last season, is averaging 13.8 points per game by hitting 50 percent from the field and making 13 of 16 free-throw attempts.

In Monday’s 102-91 victory over Golden State, he had lows for minutes (16) and points (eight) but might have solidified his fit in the rotation as a backup small forward. The Suns are stocked in the frontcourt with rookie Markieff Morris’ emergence. Warrick has always been slender for the spot and the Suns experimented with him at a wing spot during training camp, when his midrange shot proved reliable. He gives the Suns a post-up edge at times, although Warrick is frustrated that teams put a power forward on him and a small forward on Morris when they play together.

Gentry started the fourth quarter Monday with a front court of Channing Frye, Warrick and Morris, giving the flexibility of two forwards who can roll to the hoop or pop out for a midrange jump shot after setting screens for ball-handlers.

“I knew coming in it was going to be crowded,” Warrick said. “That’s why I really worked on playing the three more after we drafted Markieff. We had a lot of bigs. I knew for me to be able to get on the floor, I’d have to be more versatile and play more positions.

“Last year, I think I started well. Then when we made adjustments and trades, I didn’t adjust well. My confidence got down and I didn’t play the way I’ve been playing my whole career.”

Warrick’s 8.4 scoring average last season was his lowest since his 2005-06 rookie year, but so was his playing time (17.7 minutes per game). Warrick seems more fully integrated into the team this season, from the training room to the floor.

“He’s dedicated himself,” Gentry said. “But also he spent a year in the system, trying to understand how to play and where to get minutes. He came back in really good shape and shooting the ball better than he has. He’s been really engaged in practices. He’s earned his playing time. It hasn’t been anything we’ve given him. He forced us to play him.”

Redd-letter day

New Suns guard Michael Redd practiced for the first time with his new team Tuesday and joined some half-court, five-on-five work that was the most basketball contact he has taken since he returned in April from January 2010 knee surgery.

Redd joined the team trip to Dallas for Wednesday night’s game but he is expected to be at least several days away from playing a game.

“I felt like I moved great,” Redd said. “I was a little rusty with the game. I’m just trying to figure it out. I haven’t played since April. I’m trying to figure out the plays and schemes. But it was fun. It was good to be part of the team finally on the court.”

Gentry said Redd has “a long way to go” but saw how Redd’s shotmaking and shot-creating ability can help if the twice-repaired left knee holds up.

“I played free with no pain, which is the big thing,” Redd said. “I moved freely without worrying about anything. The medical staff said it is rock solid. I’ve been training the last couple days. The trainers have been really attacking the body and I feel great. They’re pleased.”

Free throws

Amid offensive struggles, the Suns are averaging 12.8 turnovers, third lowest in the NBA.

Center Robin Lopez sat out Tuesday’s practice with a foot bruise but is expected to play Wednesday night.

Gentry on Grant Hill practicing Tuesday: “I’d like to keep Grant out but Grant thinks it’s better for him and he gets more of a rhythm when he’s practicing, which is total bull. That’s what he wants to do and there’s nothing you can do about it. He wants to be out there.”

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Inside Hoops

Jan
2

The Phoenix Suns today waived center Garret Siler, the team has announced.

The 6-11, 300-pounder averaged 2.1 points per game for the Suns last season in 21 games played. He did not play in any of the 2011-12 regular season games.

The Suns’ roster now stands at 13.

Welcome back to Planet Orange. Try not to bump your head on the low ceiling of expectations.

The Phoenix Suns are no longer chasing a championship trophy.

“Our job is to get this thing back on track,” Suns head coach Alvin Gentry said. “We have to change the culture a little bit.”

The 2011-12 Suns season begins Monday at US Airways Center, and in the world of sports, changing the culture is a popular euphemism for starting anew. Kirk Gibson said the same thing about his baseball team last spring before guiding the Diamondbacks to the playoffs.

This is a little different.

The Suns have too many weaknesses. The lockout-condensed, 66-game NBA schedule does no favors for a team relying on aging leaders. Center Marcin Gortat has a fractured thumb on his shooting hand. The franchise has missed the playoffs twice in the past three years.

The delusions are gone. So are many of the familiar faces. So is the debate regarding the Suns’ up-tempo style and whether it’s designed for postseason futility.

Now, a diminished franchise is merely hoping to make the playoffs.

“The room for error is real small,” Suns guard Jared Dudley said. “We’ve lost so many pieces over the years. We have to play scrappy, smart basketball, and we didn’t play smart basketball last year. If we don’t do that, and if we don’t become a top-15 defense in the league, it’s going to be hard for us this year.”

In a previous era, this team would be considered a Steve Nash specialty, appealing to his underdog sensibilities. Few players in NBA history have done more with less supporting talent. No one fosters better team chemistry.

But the Suns are lacking a big-time scorer, someone to deliver when the game is on the line. Nash is a former two-time Most Valuable Player, but he’ll turn 38 in February and is unable to carry his team for long periods of time.

Nash is also in the last year of his contract, so at some point he and the team might agree that a trade is the best solution for everyone involved. That speculation will follow in Nash’s wake for most of the season and will surely be a distraction.

“In a perfect world, he’d like to finish up here, get this organization back to respectability,” teammate Grant Hill said. “I just know how proud Phoenicians are of Steve and what he’s been able to accomplish. And I think we all feel like we have something to prove. When I came here, the franchise was trying to compete for a championship. To leave it the way things were last year just doesn’t sit right.”

From 2004 to 2010, the Suns were the little engine that couldn’t, a team that reached and lost the Western Conference finals three times. Their success captivated a region that swears allegiance to the Valley’s oldest major professional franchise. The failures led to deep heartbreak in the community and great angst surrounding the team’s owner, Robert Sarver.

Now, the Suns are at a crossroads. Regrets and miscalculations no longer matter. The future needs our attention, not the past.

The Suns will have plenty of salary-cap space next off-season to recruit free agents. A poor record in the upcoming season could yield a high draft pick, the best way to regenerate a mediocre team. And in the coming months, the Suns need to target their future franchise players, the ones who will restore championship aspirations.

In the meantime, Gentry will attempt to change a culture that never valued the art of defense.

I know. We’ve all heard that one before.

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying,” Gentry said. “I’m going to be adamant about it. We can’t have this culture of ‘If you score on me, I’ll score on you.’ In the last five minutes of a game, we have to know that we don’t need to make a ton of baskets to win.”

Former Suns star Charles Barkley thinks it’s about time for a change in mind-set and direction. He says that the run-and-gun philosophy has been exposed as flawed strategy and that peddling Nash is a necessity for this team to turn the page. He thinks Gortat and Robin Lopez can be the “best 1-2 punch at center in the NBA,” helping the franchise move into a new era.

“They are maybe a playoff team,” Barkley said. “But they are no longer a championship contender. And at some point, you have to begin the rebuilding process.”

Alas, that time seems to have arrived, even though few Arizonans want to hear such gloomy forecasts.

Already, it’s been a bleak winter for Valley basketball. Arizona State is in the midst of a horrific season, prompting head coach Herb Sendek to apologize to his fan base. Don’t be alarmed if Gentry must do the same in the coming weeks.

Rebuilding is never fun, and chances are, the upcoming NBA season will not go down easy. That is, unless you enjoy the taste of medicine.

Reach Bickley at dan.bickley @arizonarepublic.com. Follow him at twitter.com/danbickley. Listen to “Bickley and MJ” 2-6 p.m. weekdays on KGME-AM (910).

The Phoenix Suns completed their brief training camp and preseason and are just days away from starting the 2011-12 NBA season. He’s our evaluation of the roster.

With Alvin Gentry entering his third full season as Suns coach, the team will keep pushing a fierce tempo. Scoring points has never been a problem for Phoenix. Stopping the opponent from scoring has.

Gentry has long preached the need for better defense. Now he’s added assistant coach Elston Turner to specifically address that aspect of the game.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever be the Chicago Bulls or the Boston Celtics or the San Antonio Spurs,” Gentry said, “but I don’t think those teams will ever beat us offensively.

“What we have to do is continue what we do offensively but we have to know what we’re going to get night in and night out defensively.”

With a lineup that features the 37-year-old Nash and 39-year-old Grant Hill, the Suns hope to rely on improved depth to cut down the minutes for everyone in a compacted 66-game season.

“The one thing that we’ve done around here is we’ve always tried to play nine or 10 guys,” Gentry said. “I think it’s going to be important this year that you have a deep bench because you have certain situations where you’re playing five games in seven nights or six games in nine nights, where it’s going to be really important to have depth where you’re not burning guys out.”

The Suns signed three free agents — shooting guard Shannon Brown and point guards Sebastian Telfair and Ronnie Price. They also are expecting help from first-round draft pick Markieff Morris, a 6-foot-10 power forward from Kansas. They join a reserve corps that already includes Josh Childress, Robin Lopez and Hakim Warrick.

A major area of potential improvement is at center, where Marcin Gortat will have more time to work on what already is an effective pick and roll with Nash, who despite the team’s issues a year ago still led the league in assists at 11.4 per game.

Gortat was the centerpiece for Phoenix in the blockbuster trade with Orlando less than halfway into last season. Escaping from the considerable shadow of Dwight Howard, the 6-foot-11, 240-pound Polish center averaged 13 points and 9.3 rebounds in 55 games with the Suns.

Phoenix also is hoping to benefit from what appears to be a rejuvenated Lopez. The 7-footer is coming off a subpar season that followed a strong showing in the Suns’ surprise run to the Western Conference finals two years ago.

Jared Dudley, for now, is the starting two-guard with the athletic Brown coming off the bench. Channing Frye, Dudley and Nash will provide the outside shooting power, while the ageless Hill, who spurned offers from more obvious contenders to return to Phoenix, again will draw the toughest defensive assignments.

But this, as always, is Nash’s team. He enters his 16th NBA season, the last eight with the Suns. This is the final year of his contract. Suns President Lon Babby said he wants Nash to retire as a Sun, but the team isn’t in position to give him a new contract until after the coming season.

“We’re trying to be disciplined and stick with our overall plan, which is to remain as competitive as we can be and at the same time put ourselves in a position of flexibility beginning next summer,” Babby said. “That doesn’t mean everything is going to get accomplished next summer or the summer after that or that we don’t have high expectations for this year, but I think you have to have an overall plan and an overall strategy, and then the details unfold.”

Babby knows that speculation about Nash being traded is inevitable.

“We want him to stay here as long as he wants to be here,” Babby said, “and we want to have him go into the Hall of Fame as a Phoenix Sun and the (Suns) Ring of Honor as a Phoenix Sun. On some level, I’ve communicated that to him. It’s really going to be his decision, together with us I suppose, but that opportunity is there for him. That’s the right thing for our franchise.”

Babby said he thinks Nash “understands where we are.”

“We’re kind of at the end of one cycle and starting another cycle and we want him to help us return to elite status with the contributions he can make over the next period of time,” Babby said. “What I want to try to avoid, and I think I’ve communicated to him, is to not let it be a distraction.”

Nash said he isn’t looking beyond this season.

“I’m not really thinking about it,” he said. “I just want to try to make this team into a playoff team. At this stage of my career, I’m not thinking about tomorrow. I’m just thinking about today.”

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

DENVER – A Suns starting lineup that was mostly in the air wound up with a familiar look.

Suns coach Alvin Gentry opened the preseason Tuesday night with the same starting lineup that finished last season, except for Grant Hill sitting out with a sore right knee.

Josh Childress started in place of Hill, whose absence was precautionary, alongside Steve Nash, Jared Dudley, Channing Frye and Marcin Gortat.

Gentry said there is no guarantee that will be his opening-night lineup Monday and that he might look at a different combination Thursday.

The most intriguing starting lineup decision was at shooting guard, where Dudley fared well starting at the end of last season. The Suns had brought in free agent Shannon Brown to add athleticism. Dudley’s dedicated off-season regimen had him ready to hold onto the job that he said would take an All-Star to unseat him.

“Jared’s had as good of a training camp as anyone,” Gentry said.

Brown could be the same dynamic, change-of-pace reserve he was for the Lakers but with more opportunities (shots and minutes) in the Suns system.

“However that happens, I’ve got to take advantage of that situation and bring that energy and intensity,” Brown said. “Everything that I bring to this team, I’ve got to let it show. I can’t hold back. I’ve got to go play Suns basketball.”

Brown has played with his team only since Dec. 9 but said he likes the fit with Phoenix.

“I’m not hanging onto everything,” Brown said of his Lakers years. “I definitely appreciate and am thankful for it but it’s a new chapter in my basketball life and my life, period. It’s kind of like starting over. I might look at the rings when I go home to remind me. Just a little bit of motivation on the mantle. Other than that, it’s time to write another chapter.”

The Suns appear far from such elite ground and the predictions will begin to show that. Espn.com’s John Hollinger tabbed the Suns 14th in the West, ahead of only New Orleans.

“That’s just disrespectful,” Brown said. “That should be motivation to everybody. Maybe I can bring some of that intensity and will to win.”

Scouting the world

During the lockout, the one Suns basketball operations area that continued as normal was scouting. The Suns return most of the same scouts: Kornel David (international), Andrew Kennedy (Midwest colleges, some Europe), John Shumate (West colleges) and Lane Odom (Atlantic colleges), who is the son of former Wake Forest coach Dave Odom. Amin Elhassan shifted his in-house duties to cover scouting in the Northeast.

The Suns added an NBA and D-League personnel scout last year to prepare for trades and free agency but that hire, Dan Panaggio, left to coach in China. He was replaced by Bubba Burrage, who worked for Sacramento and will also do some colleges. Overseeing it all, Suns Director of Player Personnel John Treloar will also scout games in the U.S. and abroad.