Cotton Express: From the Ashes

This is the story of a team whose spectacular fall from relevance was matched only by its subsequent rise from the ashes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is the story of how three former backups, a second-round talent, a booed draft pick and an unwanted star combined for one of the best turnarounds in NBA history. More than anything, this is the story of how a round-the-mill coach found renewed life and success in the desert -- and how he made those qualities synonymous with the Phoenix Suns. This is the Cotton Express.

Rock Bottom | The New Old Coach | Setting the Table | From the Ashes | The Zenith | Rude Awakening | End of the Line | Epilogue

Who would start?

For Phoenix, that was the million-dollar question entering the 1988-89 season.

The answer, to this point, was incomplete. Fitzsimmons had plenty of options. The previous six months had essentially blown up his roster. His task was to evaluate the pieces remaining in the wreckage.

Tom Chambers was surely in. He was an All-Star forward, a playoff veteran and one of the few tested players that wasn’t due significant growing pains.

Kevin Johnson looked like a lock at point guard. In the 28 games after being traded to Phoenix, he averaged over 12 points, eight assists and four rebounds per contest. At just 23 years old, he would only get better.

But where did that leave Jeff Hornacek, the lone holdover and former starting floor general? More importantly, how would Fitzsimmons resolve the mismatched mess that was the frontcourt? Oh, there was talent to be sure, but how it would fit was a puzzle even Cotton was having issues solving.

Chambers’ versatility helped, but following him was a series of single-shape pegs. Mark West and Andrew Lang were centers (and which of those two would start?). Armen Gilliam was not only a power forward, but also a former second overall pick whose talent needed to be allowed to flourish. Cotton could shift Chambers to small forward to make room for two of those three, but would that leave enough playing time for sharp-shooting Eddie Johnson and seventh overall pick Tim Perry?

Fitzsimmons knew who he wanted to play: Dan Majerle, the same guy he’d so vociferously defended on draft night. There was just something about him that separated him from most young guys, including fellow rookies Perry and Lang.

“Majerle is still a rookie and will make mistakes, but he plays more like a veteran,” Fitzsimmons said. “Andrew, Tim and Steve [Kerr] play like they haven’t been around too long.”

By opening night, Cotton was sold. Majerle - the Central Michigan product who one writer said was “doomed to go through life as a victim of parenthesis” [due to his last name] - would start alongside Johnson in the backcourt.

The Majerle experiment didn’t last long. After Clyde Drexler (29 points) and Chris Mullin (30 points) took advantage of their rookie defender, Fitzsimmons realized the 6-6 swingman might be better utilized as an energizer off the bench.

There was another purpose to the switch that had more to do with Kevin Johnson than Majerle. Phoenix’s newly anointed playmaker was quickly finding out being a starting point guard meant having a target on his back. In the first three games (in which Majerle started), Johnson hit just 14 of his 38 shot attempts.

Cotton knew KJ was better than that. In the first pre-season practices, he’d come home giddy over what he’d seen from his new point guard. Here was a guy to whom he could entrust the keys to his run-run-run offense.

He couldn’t run it alone, however, at least not on a regular basis. Talented as he was, Johnson was still young and needed pressure taken off of his shoulders.

With that in mind, he tabbed Hornacek as Majerle’s replacement in the starting lineup just two games into the season.

“Jeff has the experience to help relieve pressure on Kevin,” Fitzsimmons said. “Point guards have been dogging Kevin. My only concern about Jeff is his size.”

Tom Chambers’ return to Seattle didn’t go well. Despite 27 points from him and a near-triple double (seven points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists) from Kevin Johnson, the Suns had fallen 126-116.

Not that the Suns took the loss all that badly. Heck, they were still above .500, which for this team was an achievement in and of itself.

As a team, they were scoring at a blistering pace. Chambers had been the go-to scorer the team had hoped for. Kevin Johnson was blossoming much faster than anyone could have hoped. Eddie Johnson had taken “instant offense” to a whole new level. Hornacek had proved to be not only a secondary playmaker, but a much-improved shooter as well. Armen Gilliam was putting up big numbers. The rest of the supporting cast (Mark West, Tyrone Corbin, Andrew Lang) were holding the fort down in the intangibles department.

In short, things were already a lot better than they had been.

“We thought we were all that and a bowl of chips,” West remembers with a shake of the head and a smile.

Fitzsimmons was having none of it. To him, all that progress simply meant the results were worse than they should be. In less than two months, he’d had seen Eddie Johnson score 46 points in a half, Kevin Johnson hold his own against Magic Johnson, Isaiah Thomas and John Stockton (48 points, 37 assists, six steals combined against the trio), and Armen Gilliam score in double figures 18 out of 19 games.

“You guys should be 15-4,” he told them in no uncertain terms.

The guys half-laughed before realizing Cotton was serious.

Hornacek dug up a schedule, his eyes widening at each loss that he deemed preventable.

Golden State. New Jersey. San Antonio. Portland. The Clippers.

The Clippers!

“Yeah, these teams sucked!” Hornacek exclaimed. “We should be 15-4!”

15-4? A Suns team that had won less than twice that many games all of the previous season?

Fitzsimmons didn’t care about comparisons or recent history. He just knew what his team was - and what it could be.

“Regardless of how good we were doing, he thought we should be better,” West said.

Over the next two months, Phoenix didn’t just get better. They became dominant.

They avenged losses. Portland, San Antonio, New Jersey and the Clippers were all drowned by a Suns offense that had become an avalanche.

Contenders weren’t immune. The day after Christmas, the Suns gave their fans a late gift by demolishing the seemingly unbeatable Lakers, 111-96. Chambers scored 23. Tyrone Corbin - fast emerging as a do-it-all guy at small forward - put up 21 points and 10 rebounds. Eddie Johnson scored 21 off the bench while the other Johnson (Kevin) had 18 points, 13 assists and six rebounds.

That could have been considered a fluke, except the Suns beat L.A. by an even bigger margin (114-97) just a few weeks later. The two Johnsons were again masterful. KJ (23 points, 12 assists) controlled the game. Eddie (32 points) broke it open.

The equally formidable Celtics tasted purple-and-orange defeat as well. Tom Chambers (33 points, 11 rebounds) out-dueled Kevin McHale (27 points, 10 rebounds) in a close-fought win.

There were still unresolved issues. The core eight contributors (KJ, Chambers, Hornacek, EJ, Gilliam, Majerle, West, Corbin) remained the same, but Cotton had resorted to playing lineups on a night-to-night basis. There were nights when Phoenix went without playing a conventional center and went all-offense with Corbin-Gilliam-Chambers on the frontline. On nights when defense and rebounding were need most, Gilliam might get squeezed out of the rotation. Ditto for the trio of shooting guards (Eddie Johnson, Hornacek and Majerle).

Kevin Johnson, Chambers and Hornacek were the only ones who would go on as mainstays in the starting lineup and their roles for the rest of the season. Until the other two positions were convincingly won, Cotton was resigned to playing them by ear.

Perhaps most pleasing to Fitzsimmons was seeing consistent effort. As long as that happened, he could live with defeat. A six-point loss to the defending Eastern Conference champion Detroit Pistons (at Detroit, no less) - despite missing both Majerle and Hornacek to various ailments - drove that point home.

“When we’ve had our backs to the wall before, we’ve caved in,” said Kevin Johnson. “Now we’re persevering and we’re going make a team go all out to beat us, or we’re going to come out on top. It’s exciting to see that growth so soon.”

If the Suns were excited, the rest of the league was incredulous. 32-17? They’d won 28 games all of last season. Were they really second in the West and just a game behind the Lakers?

Was Kevin Johnson (18.5 ppg, 11.9 apg, 4.4 rpg, 1.7 spg to this point) really this good? Would Phoenix continue to rank second in the league in scoring (117.8 ppg)?

Wouldn’t reality set in at some point?

Over an 11-game stretch from February into March, it looked like the Suns would indeed come back down to earth. Phoenix went 5-6 in that span, showing all the signs of a team that had peaked too early before realizing it had overshot its own potential.

The contenders they’d briefly conquered learned from their mistakes and exacted their own vengeance quickly. The Lakers, Jazz and Knicks all proved to be rude hosts to the visiting team from the desert.

It wasn’t just them. Bottom-feeders caught Phoenix napping.

The Suns made Indiana, a team that would go on to finish with a familiar-sounding 28-54 record, appear unstoppable. Five different Pacers scored over 20 points, including Suns pre-draft favorite Chuck Person and journeyman reserve LaSalle Thompson.

Fitzsimmons didn’t panic. He didn’t rage. That wasn’t his style. He understood the NBA season was a marathon, that one game didn’t deserve condemnation.

To him, out-of-character losses were just that - out of character. Rant and rave too hard after one or two or even a few, and the players would truly believe something was wrong.

That was the opposite of what he wanted them to believe.

“After games like that, Cotton would go over to one of the locker room toilets and flush it,” West recalled. “That’s what he’d tell us. ‘Well, let’s flush that one down and move on to the next game.’”

Somehow, Phoenix did. Over the last 22 games of the season, they went 19-3. Chambers scored 30 or more points nine times in that stretch. KJ logged 15 or more assists on nine different occasions, including 20 dimes against the Spurs. Hornacek shot under 50 percent in just five contests. West blocked eight shots in another win over the Lakers. The only time Eddie Johnson didn’t score in double figures: the season finale, when Cotton rested the regulars in preparation for the playoffs.

By the time the dust cleared, Phoenix was 55-27, a 27-game improvement over the previous season, the stench of which many thought would last much longer.

The league had noticed. Chambers was named an All-Star. Kevin Johnson missed the cut despite being named the NBA Player of the Month in February and averaging over 20 points, 12 assists and four rebounds on the season. KJ did win the NBA’s Most Improved Player of the Year award, however. Both he and Chambers were named to the All-NBA Second Team.

Eddie Johnson, who averaged a whopping 21.5 points off the bench that year (second on the team), was the runaway winner for the Sixth Man Award.

And then there was Cotton: the man who’d been ridiculed for the Larry Nance trade. The guy fans had booed for drafting Dan Majerle. The coach who’d taken on the supposedly “uncoachable” Chambers.

To Cotton, a national media panel gave the NBA Coach of the Year award. He accepted it gratefully and graciously while admitting the team’s improvement hadn’t hurt his chances.

“But without all that help from the players, coaches and the organization, there ain’t no way!” he laughed. “The award is great, and I have to share it with everybody.”

Sharing was, perhaps, the defining characteristic of Cotton. He and his wife shared their home with the players. He shared his knowledge. He shared honesty, even when - or especially when -  his players weren’t ready to hear it.

Eddie Johnson was in the best position to appreciate Cotton’s impact, which he’d experienced early in his career before losing it for several seasons. He knew Fitzsimmons’ presence and his individual success was no coincidence.

“Cotton is the best coach I ever had,” he said.

Phoenix scored the most points in the 1988-89 season (118.6 ppg). Denver, at 118.0 points per contest, was a close second.

So when the third-seeded Suns and sixth-seeded Nuggets found themselves matched up against each other in the first round of the NBA playoffs, everyone assumed the series would be a high-scoring affair.

The teams themselves, meanwhile, were attempting the tried-and-true formula of praising the opponent in an attempt to shed the "favorite" label. Cotton bemoaned that he’d have preferred Houston in the first round because Denver’s home record (36-5) was much better. Nuggets head coach Doug Moe gushed that Phoenix “had the best year of anybody in the West and I was saying that before I knew we’d have to play them.”

And as if that wasn’t enough…

“It would take a miracle for us to best the Suns,” Moe added.

In the most bittersweet form imaginable, former Suns All-Star Walter Davis nearly became that miracle in Game 1. So fresh was his history in Phoenix, so recent his departure, that the Suns’ P.A. announcer actually referred to him as “Phoenix Suns guard Walter Davis” at one point.

For the next 48 minutes, he played like the Walter Davis that Suns fans remembered all too well. His jump shot was just as sweet as ever, particularly in the fourth quarter. He scored 12 of his game-high 34 points in the final period (all off the bench, to boot), almost single-handedly turning a seven-point Suns lead into a one-point Nuggets advantage.

Phoenix went back ahead thanks mostly to an absurd rebounding advantage (62-45) and Fat Lever’s off-night (8-for-21).

After two Chambers free throws put the Suns up by one with three seconds left, Fitzsimmons proved he could set up a solid defense for at least that long. He inserted Majerle - who had scored all of two points in 19 minutes - and switched Chambers’ length onto Denver’s inbounds passer following the timeout.

The tweak worked to perfection. Chambers disrupted Darwin Cook’s vision. Majerle saw an off-ball screen coming to free up Lever and (as he had planned with Kevin Johnson in the timeout) switched.

The Suns’ rookie, booed almost exactly 10 months earlier by the fans that were holding their collective breath, anticipated the errant pass and intercepted it.

Phoenix escaped Game 1, 104-103.

Denver would not threaten again in the series. KJ (34 points, 14 assists) and Chambers (24 points, 12 rebounds, six assists, three blocks) dominated Game 2 in route to a 132-114 victory.

The same formula worked again in the series-clinching Game 3. Johnson had 32 points and 17 assists and Chambers threw up 32 points and 16 rebounds.

Just like that, the Suns - a team most had pegged as a lock for the lottery before the season started - had swept a playoff series for the first time in its history.

“This team is unbelievable,” Fitzsimmons said after the win. “It is not bound by any particular circumstances.”

As for Davis, that series would mark the last stretch of elite basketball he would play before slowly fading into role player status, retirement and, eventually, a spot in the Suns’ Ring of Honor.

For Kevin Johnson, the second round of the 1989 NBA playoffs seemed scripted - with him as the main character.

In a colossal upset, the seventh-seeded Warriors had upset the second-seeded Jazz in the first round. To Johnson, this meant the rapidly brightening spotlight would follow him back home, to Oakland.

“I’m from Oakland, so I’d like to go home and play in front of the home crowd,” he said. “And Golden State might run with us a little more than Utah.”

This was true. The Warriors had ranked fourth in the league in scoring, just two-points-per game shy of Phoenix. They were led by a newly formed perimeter duo in Chris Mullin (who Jazz coach Jerry Sloan compared to Larry Bird) and Mitch Richmond (the guy Phoenix had hoped would fall to them in the ‘88 draft), the newly minted Rookie of the Year.

The series was also a matchup of the Coach of the Year (Fitzsimmons) and his runner-up (Don Nelson), both of whom preferred to fuel their respective offenses with small lineups.

In the end, Cotton was simply able to do it better. Nelson realized this early in Game 1 and, in an effort to adjust, inserted 7-7 center Manute Bol.

If Bol was meant to deter the Suns from attacking the rim, Majerle didn’t notice. More likely, he didn’t care. Because the next time the 6-6 rookie drove, he did so all the way through and over Bol for a one-handed dunk that made Veterans Memorial Coliseum erupt and cemented the “Thunder Dan” nickname as legit.

It didn’t matter that the basket was negated after Majerle was called for charging. The play was far more helpful to the Suns’ psyche than the scoreboard.

“We weren’t going to take it to Manute, but he said forget that. I’ll dunk,” Eddie Johnson said with a tone that was both impressed and mockingly disgusted. “It got him going. It got us going.”

That was an understatement. Majerle went on to score a career-high 22 points. Richmond, the rookie the Suns and their fans had wanted, netted only 12 on 5-of-14 shooting. Phoenix outscored 72-44 in the second and third quarters combined, pulling away for the 130-103 win in Game 1.

Phoenix suffered a temporary setback in Game 2. Golden State simply shot and rebounded better. Kevin Johnson’s ongoing bout with a cold and asthma didn’t help. Consequently, the Warriors won Game 2, 127-122, to steal home-court advantage.

KJ’s cold extended to his shot and to Hornacek’s as well in Game 3. The two combined to hit just 6-of-29 from the field.

In the midst of poor shooting and physical play (Corbin, Mullin and Larry Smith were all banged up by the end), Chambers emerged in the fashion Cotton and Colangelo had envisioned. The All-Star forward hit seven of his last nine shots, finishing with 31 points and 14 rebounds as the Suns won 113-104.

The Suns made Game 4 a historic laugher, a 135-99 win that set a franchise playoff record for margin of victory. Phoenix pushed Golden State around, out-rebounded them by 25, made them look “like a high school team”, Nelson mourned afterward.

Cotton was nonplussed. He was wise enough to demand elite effort without hoping for elite results

“I didn’t expect any knock-outs,” he admitted.

Technically it wasn’t, but the Suns had the Warriors down for the count. They kept them there in Game 5. KJ, who the day before received the Most Improved Player award, nearly logged a triple-double against his hometown team (24 points, 11 assists, nine rebounds). Three other Suns players logged double-doubles (Chambers, Corbin and Eddie Johnson) in points and rebounds.

The Warriors couldn’t keep up, even after trying to throw off Phoenix by inserting aging center Ralph Sampson into the starting lineup. Phoenix officially ended their season, winning 116-104.

Suddenly, the Suns had made it to a place they’d only been three times in their history (and for the first time since 1984): the Western Conference Finals.

Not that Cotton wanted to talk about that. Not yet. As Eddie Johnson had put it after the game, “I think we all would have been satisfied to be 41-41.” This was beyond what even Cotton had dared to hope for.

No. He didn’t want to talk about the Conference Finals or the team waiting for them, a team he and his players knew all too well.

“I just want to savor this victory,” Fitzsimmons said. “I have never had the horses before to get this far. I want to enjoy this one.”

To Phoenix, the Lakers were a demon whose purple-and-gold claws had drawn immeasurable blood and pain over countless games.

Actually it just seemed that way. Even pain could be put into numbers:

The Suns were sick of it. Sick of the Magic’s seemingly effortless dominance over them. Sick of Showtime’s reign. Sick of Pat Riley smiling beneath a helmet of wet hair every June. They were ready for it to end.

“We feel we have a good shot at them,” Kevin Johnson declared. “We’re right where we want to be -- with a chance to play the world champions and dethrone them.”

Tickets for the conference finals had sold out 80 minutes after the Suns eliminated the Warriors. It seemed everyone was looking forward to it.

Everyone, that is, except Phoenix’s coach.

There was a reason Cotton hadn’t wanted to talk about the Lakers after ousting Golden State in the previous round. It was the same reason why he’d tried to get Suns fans to stop changing “Beat L.A.!” in the closing minutes of that series-clinching Game 5.

It was fine to look forward to the next step. But who in their right minds would look forward to facing the Lakers?

“The Lakers are the [two-time] defending champions, the team of the 80s,” he reminded everyone. “They’ve been there and they’ve done it.”

Fitzsimmons’ desperate attempts to bring the collective city of Phoenix back to earth were in vain. “Beat LA” had become a community phenomenon. It had become bigger than team vs. team.

“At that point, it was the town of Phoenix against the city of L.A,” Hornacek recalled. “It was more about the glitz versus the cowboy town or whatever.”

Cotton didn’t care about that in the short-term. He felt if his team was as grounded and focused as they had been in the regular season, they would have a shot.

After a scary Game 1 start that saw Phoenix fall behind by 16, it looked like Fitzsimmons’ crew would pull through. The Suns rallied behind 27 points and 18 assists from Kevin Johnson, who seemed every bit as ready for the Magic matchup as the media had hoped. They took the lead in the fourth quarter. Twice. Heck, Magic Johnson even fouled out of his first playoff game in eight years.

Somehow, the Lakers escaped. Orlando Woolridge, an unheralded veteran role player, helped L.A. match Phoenix’s bench trio of Majerle, Eddie and Gilliam. Chambers and EJ went cold (13-31 FG) and KJ’s only efficient help came from Hornacek (20 points, 8-12 FG). It was too much to overcome in the end, by which time the Suns had lost 127-119.

Cotton allowed his players to have as low-key an off-day as possible between Games 1 and 2. He knew Phoenix had played well enough to make the Lakers sweat, and for now, that was enough. Practice too long, nit-pick too much, and his young team would overthink itself out of the series.

They didn’t need to hear more about the Lakers or Magic Johnson, who that very day was being awarded the NBA Most Valuable Player Award. They just needed to start and finish better than they had in Game 1.

Phoenix completed part one of that goal in Game 2, taking a one-point lead after the first quarter and a four-point edge into halftime. The Suns were running, but they were also keeping L.A. in check.

It got even better in the third quarter, when a Chambers three-point play put them up 68-60.

Then the wheels fell off. The Lakers outscored Phoenix 30-12 over the next 12 minutes. In mostly solving James Worthy (32 points in Game 1), the Suns had lost track of Byron Scott. He poured in 30.

Meanwhile the Suns’ league-leading offense had gone A.W.O.L. Chambers scored 21, but needed 23 shots to get there. KJ continued to show he belonged on the same court as Magic, finishing with 22 points (6-12 FG, 10-10 FT) and 10 assists, but most of those numbers had come in the first half.

He and his teammates trailed off drastically after halftime and, in the end, could only muster 95 points to the Lakers’ 101.

Phoenix was down 2-0 and heading back to desert, still reeking with its 19th consecutive defeat at the Forum. Cotton still hadn’t won there since 1974, when he was with the Hawks.

Surely the friendly confines of “The Madhouse on McDowell” would cure what ailed them. If Eddie Johnson’s shot - which had missed on 20 of 28 times through two games - could fall anywhere, it was in front of the fan base that fueled him.

Win at home. Take care of home. That was all that mattered.

“We’re going to have to go home, protect our turf then find a way to win one [in Los Angeles],” Fitzsimmons said. “Of course I wish it were different. Only a fool would not rather be 1-1 at this point. But we didn’t get it done.”

If nothing else, the Suns had motivation to get it done at home after seeing Cotton receive the Coach of the Year award before Game 3. Between that, a sold-out crowd impatient to see the home team, and the knowledge they’d given the Lakers a run for their money in the first two games, Phoenix seemed well positioned to turn the tables.

Before Game 3, Chambers addressed the 14,000-plus Suns faithful in attendance during a pre-game ceremony to honor Cotton’s award.

“We’re a team of the future,” he declared.

Maybe they were, because they once again fell short in the present. For the third time in the series, Phoenix led in the fourth quarter. For the third time in the series, they lost anyway.

This edition of Laker heartbreak was the worst yet. The Suns had erased a 10-point Laker lead and taken a one-point lead on an EJ three-point play with 1:50 remaining. Gilliam, who had fallen heavily out of favor with Fitzsimmons in the playoffs, put Phoenix up three on an offensive putback with 1:20 left.

Worthy drew a foul on Chambers on the next possession and cut the lead to one with a pair of free throws.

KJ ran the clock down as far as he dared with under a minute remaining before running a pick-and-fade with Chambers. As they had done so many times before, the pair ran it perfectly. Chambers ended up with a wide-open, 14-foot baseline jumper, the kind of look he’d mastered on his way to All-Star status.

It clanged off the left side of the rim.

The miss fed the Lakers’ fast break, which produced another trip to the free throw line. The foul was on Chambers, who slammed the ball with his hands, frustrated over both the infraction (he thought his block was clean) and the unlikely miss on the previous possession. Mychal Thompson sank the free throws, putting L.A. up one with 35 seconds left.

Again, the Suns went through KJ on the right side, but this time the Lakers showed an immediate double-team.  The ball rotated looking for the open man that should have been there.

He never materialized. Four passes later and with the shot clock winding down, the rookie Majerle was forced to put the ball on the floor and hope for either a shot or a foul. Instead, he was blocked by Thompson.

Two more free throws and L.A. was up by three. Again, the ball ended up in the rookie’s hands. His three-pointer was off.

The Lakers, however, weren’t themselves. Woolridge’s free throws both missed, giving Phoenix another last-gasp chance.

Chambers nearly used the full five seconds before inbounding the ball at half-court. Again, the only teammate he could find open was Majerle.

Majerle, the player about whom one writer had scribed “Dan Majerle: shooter. The label seems as ill-fitting as one of Frank Layden’s suits.”

For the third time in less than a minute, the rookie misfired.

Two Michael Cooper free throws and a meaningless KJ dunk later, the game was over.

Technically, the Suns weren’t eliminated until Game 4. In truth, Game 3 was the end. The emotional toll of three consecutive close losses to a despised rival, combined with the knowledge that no team had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit, became a weight Phoenix simply couldn’t shoulder.

Oh, the Suns made it close again. They were even within two with under a minute left. But they never had the ball with a chance to tie. The Lakers -- who ultimately entered the Finals with perfect playoff record -- weren’t about to give life to the near-dead.

The players were disappointed, but not crushed. They knew the series had been closer than “4-0” made it appear. The final margins of defeat had been eight, six, three and five. L.A. had won, but they hadn’t strolled to victory.

More importantly, Phoenix had youth in its favor. Kevin Johnson had just turned 23. Chambers and Eddie Johnson were turning 30 and in the middle of their primes. Hornacek, Majerle and Gilliam were all in their mid-twenties.

And Cotton was sticking around.

“I think this is just the beginning,” KJ declared. “Our goal is to be the team of the 90s.”

Rock Bottom | The New Old Coach | Setting the Table | From the Ashes | The Zenith | Rude Awakening | End of the Line | Epilogue