Suns top the West: Un-happy at 23-9 ?

Coach D'Antoni (AP Photo/Paul Connors) opening training camp last October reaffirmed that the Suns needed to "enjoy the journey".

"It can't be, 'This is all a disaster if we don't win the championship', "You don't enjoy the journey that way and I think we didn't enjoy the journey enough last year", said the Coach to ESPN.com Marc Stein on Oct. 12th, 2007.

At the start of the season it was quite clear that the Suns would have won a lot of games in the regular season but as almost everyone knew, this is a team built to win it all. Anything less than a trip to the Finals will be considered a failure.

Now, in early January, with about one third of the season gone, the Suns have the best record in the West (23-9 on Jan. 4th) but more or less seem one of the unhappiest team in the NBA. Somewhat I think I agree with Marv Albert on that (check the broadcast of the Sonics game last night on TNT)

The Suns have been somewhat inconsistent this year, from game to game and sometime within one single game: on and off; scoring 35 one quarter and then 15 the next.

They have played with a lack of energy, mostly on defense, on various occasions (that e.g. costed loss in Atlanta and Minnesota.)

The Suns have also been outrebounded almost every night. Stoudemire have been fantastic on offense, awful on defense, more or less the same with Steve Nash.

Defense has been poor as the Suns won most of their games just by running over worse teams - those being almost 25 teams in the NBA. Phoenix defense was nothing special last year too, it's no big surprise, but it's very important the Suns put a lot of energy on both side of the floor as playing the lanes on defense is the key to scoring in transition.

Despite all of this, the Suns have won over 70% of their game and are in perfect position to enter the playoffs with the best record (and home court advantage) in the Conference.

So, Why is (almost) everyone so unhappy with the Suns right now?

Were we really expecting to be 32-0 at this point? Of course not.

I think the lack of enthusiasm has a lot to do with just a handful of games, those against the teams the Suns will be playing to win the West next spring: Dallas, San Antonio and the LA Lakers (and maybe to a lesser extent Golden State, New Orleans, Houston and Utah).

Against those big three the Suns are just 1-3, with two painful losses vs. the Lakers (booed at home in the opener and defeated on Christmas). The only win came in San Antonio facing the Spurs without Tony Parker and with Tim Duncan just back from missing a few games with injury.

On those occasions I think we more or less felt a little shiver-down-the-back as we saw a Suns team unable to solve last year's problems: playing against teams with talent and athleticism and defending the inside.

You get the idea, it's more fear, than lack of enthusiasm.

The fear that comes with the idea the Suns have only a 2-year-opportunity to win the championship with their current core of players; the fear that comes with the belief that, if possible, this year will be even tougher.

Go Suns !