Number 41 Out of Old Dominion (My Favorite Sun)

ed note: Sorry Boris, but Mark West has you beat in this GREAT show of love by our own Chboddis - who either needs a new screen name or at least has to explain this one

If you've only come to the Suns in the last decade or so, that subject line looks like a weird code or the title to a long-forgotten Johnny Cash song.  However, if you had the good fortune to be a Suns fan in what are commonly referred to as the KJ years from 1987 to 1994, then you know that was the introduction for the Suns' last franchise center, Mark West.

That's right. I said "franchise center."  With all the hubbub about Shaquille O'Neal being the Suns first premier center since Alvan Adams, I thought, "Where's the love for Big Daddy?"  How quickly we forget.  (OK, maybe not so quickly.  His last season as a starter for the Suns was 1994, Shaq's second season in the Association.)

Mark West was a clock-puncher.  Every night, he put on his hard hat, punched the clock and went into the low post banging away against centers who had either greater physical skills or attributes.  Remember that West played when Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutombo, Vlade Divac, Kevin Duckworth, and Mark Eaton were prowling the Western Conference lanes in their primes.  To a man, almost every one of these players was either bigger or faster (or both) than the 6' 10", 246 pound West.  And yet for six and a half seasons, Mark West bodied them up and made them earn their points every single night.

Literally.  From 1988-1994, he played in every Phoenix Suns game.  Let me repeat that.  From 1988, when the Suns acquired him, to 1994 when the Suns traded him away, he played in each and every regular and post-season game, averaging between 15 and 32 minutes a game.  Pair that with his career field goal percentage of .559 and what you get is a model of consistency seldom seen in the NBA.

He rarely had gaudy stats, averaging a modest 10.5 points, 8.9 rebounds, and 2.21 blocks per game in his best full season in purple and orange.  But like the Energizer Bunny, he just kept going and going and going...

...and his professional demeanor and blue-collar work ethic only served to underscore what an impression he made when he did go off.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my second favorite Suns memory of all time: Mark West's 24 point, 16 rebound, 7 block demolition job of the Los Angeles Lakers in Game One of the first round of the 1990 playoffs.  At age 30.  The Suns had never won a playoff series with the Lakers in 6 previous meetings.  The 7th would be different, in large part due to West's Game One performance.

If Kevin Johnson was the engine that drove that earlier incarnation of the Run'n'Gun Suns, then Mark West was the suspension.  Smooth and reliable to the point where it was easy to forget he was even there.  So, let's not forget.  

The Suns legacy at the 5 spot begins with undersized Ring of Honoree Alvan Adams and currently ends with oversized inevitable Hall of Famer Shaquille O'Neal.  But for six and a half of the twenty intervening seasons, that legacy was upheld with remarkable consistency by #41 out of Old Dominion, Mark West.