Since both AZCentral and East Valley Tribune headed up their Suns coverage today with stories about Boris Diaw, this is as good a time as any to devote 24 hours of main page space to the guy who helped save the season two years ago with his Oscar-winning performance in the role of "mini-Amare". Besides, after what happened the last time we tried to do one of these, I'm eager to try another one and get that previous attempt behind me.
I have to admit, I didn't think much of Boris when the Suns first picked him up in the Joe Johnson trade two years ago. After all, what had the guy done in Atlanta? But I underestimated both Boris and Mike D'Antoni's creativity (not to mention Atlanta's ineptitude), and by the end of the season, I was referring to Boris (prematurely, as it turns out) as my "future favorite player" once Steve Nash retires. He has probably forever lost his "future favorite player" status--that quote in Jack McCallum's book kind of summed up how I felt about his play last season following the big contract: Like I had been "had". However, it's not too late for him to have a huge impact on this team and redeem himself in the eyes of both the Suns and the fans. Of all the players on the team, I really think that Boris has the potential to become the best. He has all the moves and could easily be a triple-double threat any time he wants. He just needs to find the desire that Steve, Amare, and others have to turn all that potential into a raging fire that does whatever the team needs in order to win. Plus he may just have the coolest (and most appropriate) nickname on the team.
We're going to do this player day a little differently than the others. Since Boris's nickname is 3D, we'll split this into three parts instead of two. The usual facts and trivia will be posted in Part 2 this evening, and the YouTube bonanza will go up tomorrow after readers have had some time to post their favorite YouTubes and other thoughts in the comments of the first two parts. And as always, we'll preempt if necessary should major news come along.