Tom Chambers

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tcs-top-5-2018-19-suns-at-grizzlies

TC's Top 5 2018-19: Suns at Grizzlies

Matt Petersen

In truth, one of the best halves of individual NBA basketball began two weeks before it happened.

Cotton Fitzsimmons had just been appointed as the Suns’ new head coach. His unenviable task: turning around a grounded basketball team fresh off four consecutive losing seasons.

Labeling Fitzsimmons as “new” was misleading, however. He had coached the Suns previously in the early 1970s. He was also extremely familiar with many individuals on the Suns’ staff and roster, including veteran guard Eddie Johnson.

Fitzsimmons was the head coach of the Kansas City Kings team that drafted Johnson 29th overall in 1981. Under the fiery head coach, Johnson quickly earned a reputation as a scorer capable of catching fire at any moment. Their paths had diverged before reuniting in Phoenix.

Johnson averaged 17.7 points per game the previous season with the Suns, his lowest output since his rookie season, but still nothing to sneeze at. With Cotton back at the helm, he figured his role and production would get a boost.

To his astonishment, Fitzsimmons’ first words were a warning that the opposite could occur.

“I was in the locker room and I was hot. I was pissed off. I told [point guard] Kevin Johnson, ‘I’m telling you right now: give me the ball the first four or five times in the second half.’”

“At the beginning of the year,” Johnson recalled, “Cotton came to me and said, ‘Eddie, you’ve got to play good defense this year or I’m going to mess with your minutes.’”

Johnson was nonplussed and shaken. He thought his rapport with Fitzsimmons meant bigger things were ahead. Instead, he didn’t know what to expect. His play suffered as a result, and he shot just 7-of-26 through his first two games.

In Game No. 3, the Suns’ home opener, Johnson hit a new low.

“I normally would go into the game at about the end of the first quarter, maybe a minute or two left,” Johnson remembered. “He didn’t call me. I was sitting right there. I was like, ‘This man’s not going to play me.’ I started steaming. I just said, ‘I’m going to show him.’”

He did, but only because Phoenix fell behind 38-15 early in the second quarter. Veterans Memorial Coliseum resounded with the boos of fans who had hoped a better season awaited. In search of anything that might turn the tide, Fitzsimmons motioned for his irate guard to check in.

By halftime, Johnson already had 17 points and the Suns had sliced the lead down to 13. They wound up winning 111-103 thanks to two factors: 1) Johnson’s game-high 37 points in 29 minutes and 2) Phoenix limiting Dallas to just 21 fourth-quarter points.

“That was his way of motivating me,” Johnson admitted. “He always wanted to shock me. He always thought that I played better when I was mad.”

Fitzsimmons promptly inserted his reawakened scorer into the starting lineup. He scored 20 points on just 10 shots against Golden State two nights later.

Johnson’s head angrily rang with this thought during the first half of that night’s road game against the Clippers.

Williams was a second-year forward out of Georgetown, the Clippers’ first-round pick a season earlier. He was a decent player, but injury-prone. He had played just 35 games in his rookie campaign, and thus was still an unproven commodity in the NBA market.

Yet there Williams was, talking smack to Johnson, the proven veteran. The problem was EJ’s game wasn’t providing much of a response. In the first half, he shot just 1-for-7. This seemed especially rare since it was happening against the Clippers, a team that won a grand total of 29 games in the previous two seasons combined.

Williams didn’t want the rim-rattling effect of his words to be forgotten, so he continued to let Johnson hear him after the halftime buzzer.

“We were walking off the court at halftime and I told him, ‘I’ll be back,’” Johnson said.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day was still three years away, but Johnson was intent on making his words as respected as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rendition.

“He’d talk before he got the ball. He’d talk when he got the ball. He’d talk after he shot the ball. Then, when it went in, he wouldn’t shut up. I was dying laughing inside because he just loved being right in front of their bench talking smack.”

“I was in the locker room and I was hot,” he remembered. “I was pissed off. I told [point guard] Kevin Johnson, ‘I’m telling you right now: give me the ball the first four or five times in the second half.’”

KJ waited a couple plays before doing so, but it didn’t take him long to realize that the other Johnson’s number was the best number to call. After his first two jumpers, Eddie trotted nearly side-by-side to Kevin, hands up, pleading for the ball. KJ gave it to him. EJ hit another jumper.

“I hit my first two or three shots and it was on,” Johnson said.

An and-one fast break layup followed. A pullup jumper. Another one. A baseline jump shot. A step-through move under his defender.

The Suns’ game plan was abundantly clear: get the ball to Eddie Johnson.

“It felt like a surreal time frame,” recalled former Suns center Mark West. “You’re seeing the next one and the next one and the next one go in. It’s the same thing when Tom got his 60 points. It was crazy. More than excitement, you’re just waiting to see how many he ends up with. When is he going to miss?”

Johnson did miss, but it wasn’t often and he knew it. He also felt his former tormenter should know it. And his teammates. Especially the ones with a front-row seat to his shooting exhibition.

“As I’m going past their bench, I’m looking at Reggie and saying, ‘I guarantee you never open your mouth again,’” Johnson laughed. “His teammates were laughing.”

They weren’t the only ones. Tom Chambers, the Suns’ leading scorer who found himself suddenly taking a backseat, could barely stifle his own laughter over the best comeback half he had ever witnessed.

“The thing that really amazed me about it was he was lining up in front of the Clippers bench to take shots,” Chambers said. “I always stayed away from the guys. I’d got to the other side. He’d talk before he got the ball. He’d talk when he got the ball. He’d talk after he shot the ball. Then, when it went in, he wouldn’t shut up. I was dying laughing inside because he just loved being right in front  of their bench talking smack.”

Johnson didn’t stop taking shots or talking smack. He kept scoring. Fitzsimmons kept him on the floor for nearly the entire half. How could he do otherwise? Johnson’s shots barely grazing the rim.

As for Clippers head coach Gene Shue, the best he could do was throw up his hands after each make – that and keep Williams on the bench and out of Johnson’s ear.

It didn’t matter. Johnson was on fire, and neither silence nor fatigue could quench him. Meanwhile his teammates were only too eager to fuel him.

“It felt like a surreal time frame. You’re seeing the next one and the next one and the next one go in...More than excitement, you’re just waiting to see how many he ends up with. When is he going to miss?”

“The guy could just shoot lights out,” West said. “At the time he was one of the best shooters in the league and he had the green light. And Kevin [Johnson] was one of those guys where if you got hot, he was going to get you the ball.”

Kevin Johnson certainly did, racking up 17 assists thanks mostly to his scorching teammate. Aside from passes and the occasional high five, however, neither KJ nor other teammates interacted too much with Johnson, even during timeouts. Why distract the man with a bulls-eye on the basket?

“We were always very conscious of that,” Johnson said. “When a guy has it going, you don’t want to give him too much conversation. I had a way of taking myself away from it. My celebration was almost by myself in that situation because you don’t get to a zone that often.”

In terms of the zone Johnson enjoyed that night, you can count the number of players to have lived it on one hand. He finished with 43 points after halftime, compared to the 44 points Phoenix scored as a team in the first half. The Suns didn’t win, falling short in overtime, but he did manage to score one more point after the game was over.

“After the game,” Johnson laughed, ‘[Williams] came up to me and said, ‘You got that right. I’ll make sure I don’t say anything next time!’”

the-flames-that-fueled-eddie-johnsons-43-point-half

The Flames that Fueled Eddie Johnson's 43-Point Half

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, a game can be overshadowed by the accomplishments of one player. When it happens, particularly before the home fans, the event becomes legendary.

In the long history of the Phoenix Suns, one night fits that category very well. The date: March 24, 1990. The opponent: The Seattle SuperSonics. The player: Tom Chambers.

Before triggering the memory bank, consider a few odd facts. Of the top 10 individual scoring nights by Suns players, six of them had occurred away from home. Suns fans had seen Gail Goodrich score 47 points against the San Diego Rockets in 1969, and had witnessed Paul Westphal's 48-point performance against Denver in 1977. More often, however, a Suns scoring binge took place in someone else's building. In fact, Chambers had established a single-game high for scoring in a game at Golden State (56) one month earlier.

This night, however, would buck the trend.

The tempo was set early. Chambers started hot, and never cooled down. As Phoenix raced to a 58-44 lead at halftime, Chambers set Veterans Memorial Coliseum records for points (35) and field goals made (15) in a half. In the second quarter, Chambers scored the Suns' first 18 points, and finished with 21 of the Suns' 29 points in the quarter.

The second half was no different. Chambers had 49 by the end of the third quarter, and had 52 when he committed his fifth foul with nine minutes left in the game. With the game itself firmly in the Suns' hands, Chambers pressed on, cautiously. With 6:58 left, Chambers sank a free throw for his 57th point - breaking his month-old Suns' record. With 3:08, a 17-foot jumper made Chambers only the 14th player in NBA history to score 60 or more points in a game.

By the way, did we mention that Chambers was playing with a pulled hamstring in his right leg?

A sellout crowd of 14,487 was delirious as Public Address Announcer Stan Richards confirmed that, as Chambers left the floor, he had scaled the Phoenix Suns' version of Mount Everest, as the Suns won, 121-95.

It was not lost on those in attendance that this scoring avalanche had come against Chambers' former team.

"Two of Chambers' former teammates - Dale Ellis and Xavier McDaniel - had nothing to say afterwards," wrote Arizona Republic writer Gary Horowitz. "Perhaps their silence said it all."

Another Republic writer, Mark Armijo, attempted to describe what kind of a roll Chambers was on, making 22 of 32 field goal attempts.

"First, it was Chambers from outside," Armijo wrote. "Then inside. From the wing, then the paint.

"If he had been forced into the eighth row of Section 208, Chambers likely would have swished it from there."

"He just had it going," said Seattle Head Coach Bernie Bickerstaff. "He got it going early. He had the inside going, he had the outside going. You have some of those nights."

"That's what we expect from Tom every night," said Suns guard Kevin Johnson. "When he gets his game going like that, it's impossible to stop him."

"An unbelievable offensive show," said Suns Head Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons. "He is a monster."

Chambers himself was modest afterwards, choosing to cite his teammates as the reason for his success.

"My teammates were trying like crazy to get me the ball," Chambers said. "That's the neat thing. Some teams have guys who just want to get their 20 points. But this team gets excited for their teammates."

The excitement was evident on KJ's face as Chambers closed in on the 60-point mark. In his post-game comments, KJ summed up the feelings of all who witnessed a true virtuoso performance.

"Oh, man, how many games are you going to be at where a guy is going to go and have a night like that and just be on his team? To me, that's kind of history in itself."

throwback-chambers-drops-franchise-record-60

Throwback: Chambers Drops Franchise Record 60

Tom Chambers remembers when an NBA player’s destiny lied with the whims of his team.

Before 1988, you could be drafted or traded. Signing with another team after your contract was up, however, was not the wide-open option it is today. Even if your team was willing to let you go, they had to receive compensation[1].

In short: if you were good, chances were you weren’t going anywhere.

“There was no such thing as free agency,” Chambers said. “If a team had you, then you had to sign with that team unless they traded you. You really couldn’t move. There was no movement at all. Therefore, contracts were kind of locked into what you could make.”

Chambers was better than good. The 6-10 forward was coming off a stellar five-year stretch in Seattle in which he averaged 20.4 points, 6.6 rebounds and 2.4 assists. His MVP performance in the 1987 All-Star game had put him firmly in the consciousness of NBA personnel and fans, alike.

The Sonics, however, appeared less than thrilled with the state of their frontcourt despite Chambers’ presence. They pulled off a draft-day trade to bring up-and-coming forward Michael Cage to Seattle. They had drafted another long-limbed, athletic forward in Derrick McKey the year before.

Chambers knew his own worth, but wondered how he’d be able to show it with the Sonics’ shifting toward a different group of frontcourt players. With his contract now up for renewal, Chambers assumed he’d simply be retained and then traded when the right deal came along. Until that happened, it looked like he had no choice but to return to Seattle under uncertain circumstances.

Until head of the NBA players’ union Larry Fleisher called.

“He called my agent after Seattle had given me a qualifying offer,” Chambers recalled. “He said ‘don’t accept it, because we feel like we’re going to get this unrestricted free agency thing done.’”

Days later, it became official. Players whose contracts had concluded would be truly free to choose their teams if they met two conditions:

1) have been in the league seven years or more and  2) have played through two NBA contracts.

As a player who met both requirements and whose talents would be in high demand, Chambers, it turned out, would be the perfect pioneer for the NBA’s new frontier of free agency.

When the new collective bargaining agreement – and its subsequent unrestricted free agency rules – became official in 1988, Suns General Manager Jerry Colangelo looked over at Seattle owner Barry Ackerley.

“You’re going to lose Chambers,” Colangelo said.

The long-time Suns’ manager did not dare assume the star forward would wind up in Phoenix, but he and his staff were determined to do all they could to make that possibility a reality.

At 12:01 a.m. of Friday, July 1, 1988, Chambers’ home phone in Los Angeles rang. On the other end of the line was Suns assistant coach Paul Westphal.

Phoenix’s choice of caller was nostalgically strategic. The two had a history derived from having the same agent and having run basketball camps together. The Suns had also left a good impression on Chambers in his last game against them the previous season.

“The year before we had played against the Suns [after] they had gotten Kevin Johnson, Mark West and Tyrone Corbin,” Chambers said. “Loved what they were doing as a team. Loved Kevin Johnson as a point guard, Jeff Hornacek [also]. I jut felt like, since they had [traded forward] Larry [Nance], they needed that guy to come back and fill that spot.”

His train of thought ran parallel to that of the Suns.

“If you look at our roster, we have a young nucleus,” Colangelo said just days before signing Chambers. “In the [1988] draft[2], we added defense, rebounding, athletic ability, quickness and a lot more scoring than people might realize. If we can add a bona fide veteran player who can play and get some numbers, that would be perfect.”

The negotiations between Chambers and the Suns became the predecessor of free agent wining and dining that would define the process in decades to come. Westphal had secured a meeting with their potential prize at his home in Los Angeles. He was joined by Colangelo and head coach Cotton Fitzsimmons, who had recently taken over the job that summer.

The trio went armed with three things: niceties, a vision and a contract.

“Our intention in going there to meet with Tom was not for cordial conversation, but to come back with a signed contract,” Colangelo said. “I don’t think Tom knew that morning that he would be a Phoenix Sun by that night.”

He didn’t, but the idea became more and more appealing as that summer Saturday saw the sun pass overhead. The meeting had started at 9:00 a.m., and there was little sign it would end after lunch.

“The Suns were very aggressive,” Chambers admitted. “Cotton, Jerry and Paul were sitting in my house and they basically weren’t going home until they made a deal.”

Chambers wasn’t put off by Phoenix’s proactive approach. They might have been trying to beat him into submission, but they were beating him with millions of dollars. It was hard not to accept, let alone complain.

“They made a hell of an offer, and in my judgment we had to take it,” he said.

The speed with which an agreement was reached and ultimately announced blew the NBA and its followers away. Even with the ink of his own signature drying at the bottom of a five-year, multi-million dollar contract, Chambers was still trying to grasp what had happened.

Instead of being off-handedly used as a property, he had been wooed as a highly-sought after athlete. More importantly, the final decision had been his.

“They came in the door and offered me a deal. I couldn’t refuse it,” he said. “It caught me off guard. I was prepared to talk to six or seven other teams. I was in a unique situation to be able to pick and choose a team. I never had a chance to talk to anybody else.”

“[Unrestricted free agency] was cutting-edge stuff. It was stuff that hadn’t really been done...You could get a player and not have to give up anything for him except for money?”

“It was cutting-edge stuff,” Chambers now reflects. “It was stuff that hadn’t really been done. Even though they offered me more money than Seattle – quite a bit more – and it seemed like a huge contract, it became obsolete almost instantaneously. You could get a player and not have to give up anything for him except for money? That’s where it went kind of crazy after that.”

The Suns, meanwhile, were elated. Not only had they jumped out ahead of the rest of the league to nab that summer’s free agent prize, but they had set a precedent, one that would eventually land them the likes of Clifford Robinson, Steve Nash and Goran Dragic.

“This is a statement,” Colangelo declared at the time. “We will do whatever we can to be competitive. When we looked at the free agent list, there was no question in our mind who would have the most impact for our team – Tom Chambers. He is in the prime of his career with a lot of great years ahead of him.”

The words proved prophetic. Chambers improved his scoring 25.7 points per contest in 1988-89, then poured in an other-worldly 27.2 points per game in 1989-90. He and Johnson became on the league’s best duos, one that helped lead the Suns to consecutive Western Conference Finals appearances. In the following four years, he was named an All-Star three times (1989-1991) and honored with two All-NBA Second Team spots (1989, 1990).

Before all that happened, Fitzsimmons joked about the immediate effect of Chambers’ arrival.

“I immediately became a better coach when Tom signed,” he laughed.

[1] The latter scenario occurred in Phoenix in 1980, when Gar Heard – a hero from the Suns’ 1976 NBA Finals run – signed with the then-San Diego Clippers. Phoenix received a pair of third-round draft picks in exchange for Heard’s departure.

[2] Phoenix has just drafted forward Tim Perry (7th), swingman Dan Majerle (14th), big men Andrew Lang (28th) and Dean Garrett (38th) and point guards Steve Kerr (50th) and Rodney Johns (55th).

tom-chambers-the-first-unrestricted-free-agent

Tom Chambers: The First Unrestricted Free Agent

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