Ex-Buck Brian Skinner and veteran Maurice Taylor will join two other NBA veterans at US Airways Center Thursday as the Suns continue their auditions for free agent big men. P.J. Brown is still the preferred answer and Vitaly Potapenko — who like Taylor, languished on the Sacramento bench last season — emerged as a leading candidate after his impressive workout here last week. But Skinner has a lot of the attributes the Suns are looking for (he averaged four points and six rebounds playing 22 minutes a game for Milwaukee last season). Taylor is a guy who is known more as a scorer but has a good body at 6-foot-9 and 260 pounds. As far as the Shawn Marion-Anderi Kirilenko rumors go, here what I can tell you right now: (1) The Suns do like Kirilenko, he only 26 and there are those in the organization that he would return to his All-Star form once released from that shackles of Jerry Sloan’s system. (2) The Suns know they can’t (OK, won’t) extend Marion after the 2008-09 season. (3) This would never get done as a straight-up, player-for-player deal. The Suns need to dump a salary (guess who?) and get back another serviceable player, preferably a shooter (Gordan Giricek makes sense) for things to even get serious. Having said all that, the chances of anything getting done, even after Kirilenko’s poorly-timed trade demand, are very remote.

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