Michael Ventre

As we have learned the hard way in these 2006 NBA playoffs, predicting the outcome of a series can be a perilous, frustrating and embarrassing endeavor.

The Detroit Pistons were supposed to come out of the East. They didn’t. The San Antonio Spurs were expected to emerge from the West. They didn’t. The Los Angeles Lakers should have finished among the dregs; instead they pushed the second seed to a seventh game. The Cleveland Cavaliers forgot they were the Cleveland Cavaliers and threw a shrek into the Pistons.

After the chaos and upheaval involving those teams and more, a prognosticator would have to be naïve at best or severely misguided at worst to make an attempt at selecting the winner of the 2007 NBA Finals.

At the risk of my reputation as a hardwood clairvoyant getting more battered than it already has been, I am hereby reserving the first seat on the Phoenix Suns’ bandwagon for the 2006-07 season.

The Suns will win the championship next year.

What has characterized these 2006 playoffs is uncertainty. Because there is no dynastic franchise currently operating in the Association, the landscape is like a modern Wild West. It’s wide open, available to any club with the gumption and the weapons.

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Lots of players have the swagger, but as we have seen this spring and summer, that’s not nearly enough. If it were, the Pistons would still be playing, because they led the league in arrogance.

The Suns will enter next season as a supremely confident bunch. They played a frenetic style, even while short-handed, and yet got all the way to the conference finals. In the end, they were running on fumes, and they still almost pulled it off.

With Amare Stoudemire out almost the whole year, it allowed Boris Diaw to grow and flourish. He can score, rebound and defend, and he’s an ideal athletic finisher in the Suns’ Steve Nash-led jailbreak offense.

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If Stoudemire returns to peak form next year, there is concern that he won’t be able to slip seamlessly into the mix. Some feel he is a tad selfish, and that could disrupt the remarkable chemistry the Suns showcased in the 2006 playoffs.

But I have to think Stoudemire is no fool. He sat and watched while his teammates prospered this season, and rather than create the desire to return and take over, it had to illustrate to him that his best course of action would be to assimilate.

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All Stoudemire has to do is look at the example set by Tim Thomas. There was a player who kicked around the league, never finding a home, and known more for being sullen one minute and cocky the next. But he fit in beautifully with the Suns. He is a big forward with a three-point touch who seems happy deferring to others, but is ready when called upon to step up.

The Suns should have Stoudemire, Thomas, Diaw and Kurt Thomas back and fit next season. Add to them the two-time MVP of the league in Nash along with a rapidly improving Raja Bell plus Leandro Barbosa and you have the seven-deep nucleus of a potential champion.

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