Week Three, baby. What will the Suns record be after three weeks? Take your best guesses and you’ll win a prize. I’m serious. I’ll figure out something. CLARKtoys sells $5 bobbleheads all the time. Maybe it’s that. Did you guess the right answer and you aren’t a bobblehead person? Hey, that’s no problem. We’ll just chalk it up to you’re getting a bobblehead anyway. Look, I don’t have to give you anything. You didn’t even work for it. you typed three numbers with a hyphen crammed in there. And unless I’m mistaken the hyphen is going to be to the left of two numbers and to the right of one.

But seriously, it might not be a bobblehead. Might not even be $5 if a $4 sale pops up. If it helps, last season the Suns were 2-8 in the first three weeks.

What else? Weather’s good. Dry. I’m a big fan of the dry climate. I’ve lived in a couple different places. Southern Indiana. Central Indiana. I bounced around Orange County. But this Vegas weather is where it’s at. I don’t even care when it hits 115. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gotten sick in my 4+ years in Vegas. Humidity is for chumps.

I appreciate you guys hearing me out last week on my rant about the state of the Suns. There was lots of constructive feedback. I’ll address that a little bit later. Here’s what’s going on:

Suns Stuff

The Phoenix Suns preseason schedule has been released. Home against Minnesota and Denver, on the road against Portland and Sacramento. The night of the Minnesota game a woman named Dodie who plays the ukulele is performing at The Van Buren. The night of the Denver game a gentleman named Tyler Childers whose musical talents are described as “authentic Americana,” is performing at the same venue. So as a consumer you’re going to have some difficult decisions to make.

Larry Fitzgerald went on a bike ride with Robert Sarver and I find it unsettling.

Robert Sarver spent $10 million in cash for the land on which the Suns’ new practice facility will be built. You may remember this practice facility as part of a plan for a $235 million upgrade to Talking Stick Resort Arena that is an absolute travesty to Phoenix taxpayers tourists.

If you don’t recall, Wisconsin’s Alando Tucker spent parts of three seasons with the Suns from 2007 to 2010. Well after retiring from the NBA, and doing whatever he did between 2011 and this week, he has now returned to his alma mater as an assistant coach. If you were a big Tucker fan, and why wouldn’t you be, you can pick up his game used jersey on eBay.

Here’s a collection of Instagram pictures of various players on the Suns spending their offseason in a very modest and frugal way.

Here’s a good Q&A our own Brendon Kleen did with Mikal Bridges for Forbes.

Corey Gaines, the winningest (not a word) coach in Phoenix Mercury history, is now on Scott Brooks’ staff in Washington. He was also the Suns’ player development coach once upon a time.

Some mystery coach said that the addition of Dario Saric is the best addition the Suns made this offseason. This is something I’m convinced the coach could have said without the cloak of anonymity.

NBA Stuff

I will be rooting for the Philadelphia 76ers to miss the playoffs.

Predictably, Lance Stephenson agreed to a one-year, $4 million deal with the Liaoning Flying Leopards of the Chinese Basketball Association.

Prep MarJon Beauchamp, who is from Arizona and very good at basketball, is passing on the college thing and will instead work on getting NBA ready. If he increases his draft stock, and the Suns trend continues, you may just see him in Phoenix in a couple years. That’s not positive Keith, knock it off.

Jeremy Lin, who has made north of $65 million in the NBA told a sad story about the league “giving up on him.”

Here’s an article about why Carmelo Anthony should be back in the NBA next season. I never liked Melo. I never loathed him. But like, who cares? Let’s move on. The Carmelo Anthony being back in the league story line will never grab me.

Rockets GM Daryl Morey wants free agency to take place before the NBA Draft. Now there’s an interesting conversation. I’m not saying I’m for or against it, but it’s certainly talkable.

Too Short is blaming the NBA for NFL players not getting paid more. After reading this I was compelled to check out Too Short’s, who I’m a fan of, discography. Too Short has six platinum albums. Six. Too Short. Six platinum albums.

My Stuff

What I’m reading: Haven’t started anything new, but I do want to make a rec on something I’ve read within the last couple months. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones is tremendous.

What I’m watching: I’m now five episodes in to True Detective. It’s spectacular. Spectacular enough that I go way out of my way to ensure that the ambiance is just right when I sit down. I watch plenty of things with a Mich Ultra in my hand and a box of Grippos (God’s greatest creation) at my side. Not with True Detective. No sir. I won’t even run the dishwasher when I’m watching. You’ve got to be locked in for a show like this.

With that said, I read several comments indicating season two isn’t great. We’ll see. But with the way season one is going, I’m definitely continuing on with the series. Hope to have S1 wrapped up this weekend.

What I’m playing: It’s been a lot of same stuff the last few weeks. This week I was heavy on Aero Fighters 2, Strikers 1945, and Gunbird 2. This MayFlash f500 Elite really does add a new dimension to these games. I can’t recommend it enough if you even have a casual interest in shmups. The PlayStation Classic is hacked, modded and loaded up with about a dozen shooters. If I find the time this weekend I may see if I can get the joystick working.

What I’m listening to: For the better part of two decades I’ve listened to sports talk radio on my daily commute. My wife has often complained that it’s too “shouty.” It took awhile, but I finally decided she’s right. There’s a couple of guys out here, Ed Graney and Clay Baker that talk Golden Knights hockey in the morning, and when I get in the car I’ll listen. If not, it’s music. I’ve noticed I’m in a better mood at work when I listen to music driving in.

As far as what I’m listening to, well that’s arguably the nerdiest interest I have today. Back in the day I was a big fan of movie scores, John Williams, Danny Elfman, you know stuff like that. I probably had 100. Today I am listening to video game scores, and it’s not stuff from the 8/16 bit era. Take a listen to the music of Radiant Silvergun and Danmaku Unlimited 3. Those are great.

What I’m thinking: Last weekend I was doing my chores and I put on The Office as the people of my generation are prone to do. My favorite character on The Office has always been Brian Baumgartner as Kevin Malone. And I submit that season eight is peak Kevin.

As I said earlier, I’m not listening to much sports talk radio these days. But flipping through channels earlier in the week I did stumble upon a familiar conversation. It was about how much better the Western Conference is than the Eastern Conference and whether or not we need to restructure the NBA, be it by division, conference, or playoff seeding.

I’ve never been a fan of this. And to tell you the truth, I think it’s kind of cool, charming even, that one conference is so much better than the other. It won’t be that way forever. Things will swing back the other way, they always do. I like that there are different rules in the American League and the National League. I like that the NFL’s conferences are not separated by geography. It just feels like we’re trying to make the game too sterile when our motivation for realignment is the ninth seed in the West would have been the sixth seed in the East. That’s not fun.

Kale’s good. I’m serious. My wife turned me on to it recently. I was incredibly skeptical. Now I’m asking for it. You need to try it.

Part of me thinks that Robert Sarver is hanging out with Larry Fitzgerald because Robert Sarver is disliked and Larry Fitzgerald is not.

I’m more enthusiastic about the Suns this week than I was last week. I don’t know why. Not much has changed. Several good points where made in the comments section last Friday. But the feeling I struggle to shake is, “Keith you always kind of, sort of do this kind of thing around this time every year.” I kind of thought Igor got a bad shake in a lot of ways, but I’ve decided I’m very excited to see what Monty can do.

Was this too long? It feels like it was too long. Ah, screw it, it was fun anyway. Thanks again for participating. Let me know if you have any suggestions. Filling out this poll would help too. We’ll do it again next week.