Cotton Express: The New Old Coach

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

Cotton Fitzsimmons was out of a job.

Well, kind of. His second season as San Antonio’s head coach had not ended well. The Spurs went 35-47 in 1985-86, the fourth-worst record of his 15-year career.

Even that was good enough for a playoff berth that season, but the subsequent 3-0 sweep at the hands of the Showtime Lakers was enough to convince the Spurs’ front office it was time for Cotton to go.

Not that the Fitzsimmons family was torn about it. Cotton’s San Antonio contract was a three-year deal, which meant they’d still be receiving paychecks from the Spurs for another year.

The only question now was where they wanted to spend them.

His wife JoAnn had a soft spot for the East Coast, particularly New York. That couldn’t have been a worse match for Cotton’s small-town heart, which had flourished in stops like Kansas City and Northern California.

She thought Walnut Creek, California, was a more-than-fair compromise. Fitzsimmons had lived their during his short tenure as director of player personnel for the Warriors in the mid-1970s. JoAnn considered that time “truly one of the best years of our relationship.”

One city, however, kept nudging itself back into Cotton’s conscience.

“What do you think about Phoenix?” he asked his wife.

JoAnn knew what she thought. It was hot. The desert didn’t exactly shout “home” to her soul, but she could tell it was for Cotton.

Phoenix had always pulled at his heartstrings, long after the Suns had been the team through which he’d broken into the NBA’s head coaching ranks. Those had been bittersweet years, with the “sweet” part holding more and more sway as time passed.

Under Cotton, the Suns had won 48 and 49 games in 1970-71 and 1971-72, respectively. Despite the lofty win totals, Phoenix failed to make the playoffs due to their then-membership in the Midwest Division. It also didn’t help that Cotton’s postseason-less years had come immediately after the Suns’ first-ever playoff appearance (1969-70). The Suns were new and impatient after their sooner-than-expected success.

Two years hadn’t produced a second playoff berth for Phoenix, and when Atlanta came knocking for Cotton’s services, both he and the Suns allowed those advances to move forward.

Fitzsimmons found sustained success in Kansas City. In 1981, his fifth-seeded Kings upset their way to the Conference Finals. One of their victims: the top-seeded Phoenix Suns.

Long-time Suns center Alvan Adams would go on to say that the 4-3 series defeat was among the most disappointing of his career.

In contrast, that postseason turned out to be the apex of Cotton’s coaching career to this point. The next five years failed to see him win another playoff series, a stretch that saw him move on both from the Kings and the Spurs.

Cotton knew he wanted stay in the game, but he was in a financial position that didn’t require rushing for the first available gig. He could literally afford to wait until the job he wanted cropped up.

Ultimately, he convinced JoAnne to wait with him in Phoenix.

Fitzsimmons may not have had a job, but he’d be damned if he was going to stay away from basketball until an offer was actually extended. He attended several Suns games in that ill-fated 1986-87 season, eager to stay involved in his career field.

Yes, Cotton was staying close to the game, but this particular brand of basketball was none too pretty up close. This wasn’t just any team struggling, either. It hurt to see his first and former team - once so consistently associated with hard-earned wins and night-to-night competitiveness - fallen to such depths.

His own, more successful history with the Suns was not lost upon the locals. Long-time fans pointed him out and, eventually, television crews caught on as well. Coaches/players formerly associated with the local sports teams are highly valuable sources of opinion.

“What’s wrong with the Suns?” they asked him eagerly. “What does John McLeod need to do to make this team play better?”

It could not have been more awkward for Cotton, who knew better than to walk into a snake-pit of his own quotes, particularly involving a former colleague who he liked and respected.

Not that he kept quiet. Cotton had his own way of dealing with potentially awkward situations: disarming bluntness.

“Read my lips: the Suns need better players,” he deadpanned.

Someone else noticed Fitzsimmons’ frequent presence in the stands: his old boss, Jerry Colangelo.

The Suns’ general manager and majority owner was also remembering Fitzsimmons’ success from the early 70s. Between that and his stint as director of player personnel for Golden State, Colangelo knew Cotton knew what he was talking about when it came to needing “better players.”

It was the latter role that was on Colangelo’s mind. After nearly two decades of extreme hands-on attention, he felt the time had come to create a new position within the Suns organization, one that would allow/require him to delegate more than he had ever allowed himself to do.

The drug scandal clinched it. The team needed a serious makeover, one that Colangelo felt he couldn’t do alone.

“I know you still want to coach,” he told Fitzsimmons. “ I don’t know if you’ve had any opportunities, but would you be interested in working with me to rebuild this team and be the director of player personnel?”

Colangelo’s offer came with a condition.

“The only thing I ask,” he continued, “I don’t want you to take this job as a fill-in. If you take this job, I want you to commit that if someone calls you in two months and offers you a coaching job, that you’re not going to leave.”

Cotton understood. He promised Colangelo that if he accepted, “I’m with you for the long haul.”

He didn’t need long to think about it. On May 13, 1987, the Suns hired Cotton Fitzsimmons as the team’s first-ever director of player personnel.

Colangelo wanted a young head coach.

He’d made that point abundantly clear the previous summer with the hiring of John Wetzel, who had paid his dues as an assistant in Phoenix for eight seasons. He was not tempted by Fitzsimmons’ presence in his backyard. He wanted experience in the front office and a new face on the bench.

“It’s not that I don’t think you can do the job,” Colangelo explained to Cotton. “I just don’t want to recycle coaches. You were already here. I think we’re better off as a team with you helping me rebuild the team [from the front office.”

At least, that was the idea. Whatever the duo did in the front office wasn’t translating to wins on the court, where Wetzel’s Suns dropped 54 losses in 1987-88: the second-most in team history.

Even after a series of moves to clean out the stench of drugs and defeats, the team was in clear need of new sideline leadership capable of helping right away.

Colangelo knew Cotton was an ideal short-term answer, yet he was also looking to the long-term future of the Suns’ bench. His solution: groom a young, up-and-coming assistant under Fitzsimmons, one who would be handed the reins relatively soon.

“This is just a short-term thing,” Colangelo found himself telling Cotton. “I just need you to right this ship and let’s hire an assistant with the intention of him replacing you.”

Fair enough, Fitzsimmons thought. He had an idea of who that assistant could be, too, though Colangelo would need some convincing.

Paul Westphal was synonymous with the Suns’ most successful era to that point. He had represented Phoenix in the All-Star game four times and been a major cog in their run to the 1976 NBA Finals.

His last season in the league saw him return to Phoenix, but the ending was not happy. Westphal’s final contract contained an incentive clause based on the number of total games played in 1983-84. If he hit the 60-game mark, he’d make an extra $250,000.

He played in 59 games.

Westphal sued for breach of contract. The Suns won the case. The overriding result, however, was that neither side was on good terms with the other. It represented a worst-case scenario for a team that had few historical figures on which to lean.

Since then Wetsphal had moved on to coaching at the college level. His reputation regained a local flavor after leading Phoenix schools Southwestern Baptist (21-9) and Grand Canyon College. The latter institution won an NAIA national title in 1988, just before Fitzsimmons was ready to take over.

Now four years removed from the ugly affair, Cotton recognized an opportunity to accomplish three goals at once: mend fences, get a popular local name on his staff, and supply the ideal head-coach-in-waiting.

“Cotton was the one who said, ‘I think it’s time for you to make peace,’” JoAnn said. “He was a big part of this team. He brought them back together.”

Again, the Fitzsimmons-Westphal tandem was to be a temporary setup, one that wouldn’t last more than a couple seasons. When Colangelo introduced the duo to the media in their new capacities, he felt no need to hide the arrangement. The only thing he wouldn’t commit to was a definitive length of Cotton’s tenure.

“There is no timetable. We really don’t want one at all,” he said. “Cotton will remain our coach for as long as I think it’s necessary. We’re looking at Cotton and Paul as a team and I think Paul will learn a lot working under someone of Cotton’s experience.”

Westphal may have been hired for the future, but Fitzsimmons was faced with the present. It wasn’t pretty, but how much worse could it get after the season - really, four seasons - Phoenix had just endured?

Besides, he and Colangelo had a plan in place. Part of it had been executed already. More would take place before his first official practices with the team.

"I like our game plan,” Fitzsimmons said. “This is a ballclub of the future. It’s also a big challenge."

That may have been the understatement of the year. There was no telling, of course, how much their “game plan” would pan out, assuming it did at all. “Righting the ship,” he knew, was a three-word phrase that sounded much simpler than it actually was.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Cotton said. “Now we just have to do it.”

Truth was, they’d already started.

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