Things that are more pleasant for a Suns fan than watching last night's game against the Utah Jazz:

• Listening to half-inch fingernails scrape slowly across a blackboard
  
• Finding a half-eaten worm in your salad
  
• Visiting your mother-in-law
  
• Watching the Spurs play the Pistons again and again for 24 hours straight
  

In other words, any combination of things that make you want to cringe, puke, pull your hair out, or die of boredom pretty much sums up the experience of watching the Suns play without their MVP floor leader, their primary hustle and rebounding guy, and their fifth leading scorer.

Seriously, once it was announced Shawn Marion was going to sit this one out with a sore elbow, in addition to the already-announced absences of Steve Nash (flu) and Grant Hill (appendectomy), the Suns' chances of pulling out a miracle win in this game went from maybe 20% to practically nil. So, the primary reason to watch--other than, perhaps, sheer morbid curiosity--was the possible chance to see the rookies get some real minutes in something other than garbage time. But that was not to be either. The Suns recalled D.J. Strawberry from the Albuquerque Thunderbirds in time to suit up for this game, but they also sent Alando Tucker off to be his replacement. And when it came time to sub in a two guard to back up Raja Bell, it was Eric Piatkowski who got the call instead of D.J. That wouldn't have been so bad, given that the Suns were still within sniffing distance of keeping it respectable at that point, but when a guy whose sole function is to make three-pointers can't buy one in a situation like this, it turns an already excruciating game into darn near unwatchable. D.J. got his chance, playing the entire fourth quarter (and doing pretty well, considering), but by then, the game had been into garbage minutes territory for quite some time. Still, with no Nash, no Hill, and no Marion, I don't want to be too hard on the guys, or even on the coach because his job is to try to win every game regardless of circumstance, and I think that was his rationale behind playing a seasoned vet over a rookie. In short, write this one off and move on to the next one.

Player of the Game: The Flu. A bit of a cop-out, but this game is impossible to judge.

Runner-Up: The Elbow and the Appendix.

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