For fans, the season doesn't truly start until November 1, but for the Suns, their work for the 2007-08 season begins today with the annual media session. Of course, for most of the Suns, their work has been unofficially ongoing for the past month, but with Shawn Marion back in town, this will be the first day for everyone to be there, including new Sun Brian Skinner who is supposed to sign his deal today. No doubt there will be lots of video from the media session on Suns.com. (Update: There's a webcast on Suns.com today at noon Pacific/3pm Eastern). In the meantime, here are a few reasons to start getting excited about the upcoming season (at the risk of jinxing everything, of course):
- The Suns have a rejuvenated and motivated Grant Hill, who seems eager to recapture his youth and help the Suns capture their first ring. Everything I have read about him so far has been 100% positive. It sounds like he has been working his tail off all summer to be ready and healthy for a championship run. Be sure to check out the diary by jasonsuns1 for more about Hill.
- There are two rookies on the team who have spent the summer working out with Steve Nash, and traveling the world with him playing in charity games. Both of them look like they'll know exactly what to do with those perfect alley-oop passes Nash likes to throw.
- The Suns have reason to hope that a trimmed-down Boris Diaw will have a season more like 2005-06 than 2006-07. He even took Suns trainer Erik Phillips with him to Europe.
- Mike D'Antoni has been quoted as saying he wants the team to have fun this year, and fun for them means fun for us as fans too.
- We really have a great group of guys on this team. If you didn't think so before, how about now when you're reading about how Andrei Kirilenko's teammates in Utah are talking about him, vs. the quotes from our guys about Marion like the one from Steve Nash in the top right sidebar? If any team can recover from the kind of public laundry-airing perpetrated on the Suns last week, it's these guys.
- By all reports our guys are motivated to win it all this year (well, except perhaps for Marion, who's likely to be motivated for a different reason). Despite having four new players coming on board, they've been practicing together and getting to know each other for over a month. I said all last season that if the rest of the team had been as "lasered-in" on winning a championship as Nash seemed to be, there would have been no stopping them. This year, we may get to find out if that was right.