Some leftovers from Christmas in Los Angeles:

 *Kobe Bryant moved past Suns Ring of Honor member Tom Chambers (20.049 points) and into 30^th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with his 31^st point in the fourth quarter. Bryant now has 20,057 career points.

 *With 36 minutes played, Shawn Marion (15 points, 10 rebounds) took over second place on the Suns all-time franchise list with 26,479 minutes, surpassing Dick Van Arsdale (24.262). Only Alvan Adams has spent more time in a
Phoenix uniform.

 *Nash had 14 assists on Tuesday, tying him with Lakers legend Jerry West for 23^rd on the all-time NBA assist list with 6,238.

 *The celebrities in the crowd for the Christmas Day game included Denzel Washington, Dyan Cannon, George Lopez, Jim Belushi, Pat O’Brien and rapper Ice Cube. Lakers die-hard Jack Nicholson was a no-show – which was fortunate for him, since Bryant went diving for a loose ball right into the seat he normally occupies near the Suns bench.

Contact writer: (480) 898-6528 or jbrown@evtrib.com

 How do you ensure a Merry Christmas in Chicago? You fire the Grinch.

 You can’t put all the Bulls woes on ex-Suns coach Scott Skiles, who was fired Monday as coach of a 9-16 team that was the choice of many to reach the NBA Finals (OK, before Kevin Garnett wound up in Boston). Between the contract hassles of Luol Deng and Ben Gordon (neither of which was resolved) to all the Kobe Bryant trade rumors, there was so much garbage hangning over this team that it was bound to stumble out of the gate.

 But while Kirk Hinrich has been terrible and Ben Wallace has been invisible and Gordon a non-factor, Skiles’ abrasive style had worn out its welcome among the core players. Publicly ripping young players Joakim Noah and Tyrus Thomas was uncalled for, especially when there were so many other worthy candidates.

 You can’t get off to bad starts two years in a row and survive. Last year, the Bulls rose up after a 3-12 start and reached the playoffs. This time, they went 2-10 and have been a .500 team since. And when a team that lives on defense stops playing it, the time for a new voice had arrived.

 
Phoenix’s top two 3-point shooters – by volume – continue to struggle.

 Leandro Barbosa, who made 43 percent of his bombs last season, is down to 34 percent (54-for-157), and both he and Raja Bell were 10-for-33 over the five games heading into Wednesday. 

 A career 41 percent shooter from 3-point range, Bell’s percentage isn’t awful (.378) but even after making a season-high six behind the arc against
Washington on Dec. 7, he’s on pace to make 158 3-pointers this season – well behind last season, when his 205 makes tied Gilbert Arenas for the NBA lead.

 He’s also on pace to take about 80 less 3-pointers, some of which is attributed to poor health early in the season

 “Physically I feel good now,” said
Bell, who was bothered by ankle and back trouble for the first month of the season. “I’m looking for consistency. This year, it seems like they’ll be game when I can get into a good rhythm, and then one where I have to grid through and just give what I can give.

 “I’ve had looks and I don’t feel like I’ve been shooting the ball poorly. Our team is different and I’m still trying to find where I fit in and get the chemistry pointed in the right directions. I do feel like that’s coming.”

 Steve Nash ranks third among Western Conference guards, Amare Stoudemire second among centers and Shawn Marion and Grant Hill fifth and 10th respectively among forwards in the first returns of the 2008 NBA All-Star balloting.

 Nash  (with 317,091 votes) sits behind Kobe Bryant of the Lakers (who leads all Western Conference players with 569,302 votes) and Tracy McGrady of the Rockets (388,959) among Western Conference guards. Stoudemire (286,401) is second to Houston’s Yao Ming (439,125). Marion is a distant fifth with 154,641 votes, well behind forwards Carmelo Anthony (482,127) and Dirk Nowitzki of Dallas (443,117). Hill has 83,544 votes at the forward spot.

 Voting continues until Jan. 13 (for paper ballots) and Jan. 20 (for on-line voting at NBA.com).

  Steve Nash had a pretty game Wednesday night with 29 points, 11 assists and six rebounds in Phoenix’s 103-98 win over Utah. But his smile took a real pounding.

 Just before halftime, Nash won a rebound battle with Carlos Boozer but took an elbow to the mouth in the process, chipping one of his front teeth just before he was to do an intermission interview with ESPN Michelle Tafoya. Nash handed what was left of the tooth to trainer Aaron Nelson and answered a few questions, clowning about the tooth.

 ”I took and elbow or something and it chipped off,”Nash said, showing off his new crooked smile. “So I get to spend my day at the dentist, as luck would have it.”

 This isn’t the first time a Utah Jazz star has taken aim at the same tooth. “This one got bent backward into my mouth by Karl Malone five or six years ago, and last season I finally got a veneer put it. ”

 Well, at least Nash knows the drill — right?

It’s funny how last week, when the Suns were averaging 12o points a game and rolling through opponents like water, no one seemed to notice that Boris Diaw was contributing little, if anything to the cause.  

But once Phoenix drops back to back games and gets pounded on the boards, Diaw’s lack of production is suddenly the reason? Is Diaw earning anywhere near the $45 million the team lavished upon him before last season? Of course not. But he is also the only Sun who doesn’t have the benefit of playing with Steve Nash — or any real point guard when he’s on the floor. His gave thrives on blending in, moving the ball and distributing. But with Grant Hill now around to handle a bulk of those chores when Nash is on the bench, Diaw’s role with the team has again become blurred. Now he is asked to finish, rebound and defend, not his strong suits.

  For all the talk about defense and rebounding, the Suns’ biggest need might be another shooter. Nash doesn’t want to put up 20 shots a night. Leandro Barbosa will do that in a heartbeat, but his accuracy has been wild – he’s had 35- and 39-point games, but 4-for-17 nights have popped up more frequently as well. And with Raja Bell fighting through injuries for the first 20-plus game, the Suns desperately need another shooter, and instant-offense guy off the bench to keep the points coming when others struggle. 

 Those players won’t be found at the league minimum. A dead-eye assassin like Mike Miller could be had from
Memphis, but would the Grizzlies take Diaw’s salary — about the same annually but longer in term — to acquire a playmaker to go with their other up-and-coming pieces? The Suns are never going to be a great defending or rebounding team, but another 3-point threat could go a long way toward covering the deficiencies. 

 Steve Nash was back in the motherland Tuesday and other than Edmonton – where superstar Sidney Crosby visited for the first time – all of Canada was talking about his decision to bypass the national team and its Olympic aspirations to focus his time and energy on winning an NBA title in Phoenix. Fans screamed that “Captain Canada” was letting his country down.

 Fellow Arizona squatter Wayne Gretzky, they argued, played for Canada until he was approaching 40.  And when he hung up his skates, he selected and ran the national team. So why doesn’t Nash do the same? It’s a silly comparison:

*Gretzky was a complimentary player in his last few international competitions. He was window dressing on teams that boasted Mario Lemieux, Joe Sakic, Joe Thornton and a dozen other stars. But Nash isn’t only the most popular and best basketball player from Canada… he’s just about it, folks. Gretzky played on a team that could have won with or without him. Nash would be playing for a team that couldn’t win, with or without him.

 *The Winter Olympics came in the middle of the NHL, when the league shuts down for three weeks and the players are in prime shape. For NBA players, the summer games come right in the middle of the off-season, forcing conscientious starts like Nash to train year-around and risk injury, fatigue and burn-out in the process.

 Nash has put Canada on the basketball map. He played internationally. He played in the Olympics. He raises millions of dollars for charities in Canada, opened gyms in Vancouver and has been an impeccable ambassador.

 Let his country down? If only everyone was so neglectful.

 What a difference 48 hours makes.

 Sunday in New York, the Suns were a testy bunch. Whether it was Raja Bell and Amare Stoudemire jousting on the court about Stoudemire not moving the ball in a timely fashion to Stoudemire and Marcus Banks having some heated words on the bench, the win over the Knicks wasn’t representative of the closely-knit team Phoenix prides itself on being.

 “That stuff happens with a team,” said Steve Nash, downplaying the incidents although he felt compelled to get between Stoudemire and Nash and play the role of Switzerland on the bench. “It’s just a matter of how you deal with it, and getting it resolved.

 “I don’t see us as a team with problems or one that will have problems beyond the everyday junk that pops up. That stuff will happen a couple of times a year, and for us it’s even more of a rarity. I don’t see it as anything more than caring.”

 And Tuesday in Indiana, the Suns cared. Despite the negatives of handing back a pair of double-digit leads, the Suns played a strong final two minutes and pulled what would have been a disastrous loss out of the fire. Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire made the big plays and the on-court euphoria was finally palatable.

 “It could have been a really bad night. But we won and we can turn it into a real positive because we showed a little of what we’re made of,” Bell said.

 As usual,

Madison
Square
Garden handed out  their photo tip list to give photographers a road map of the celebs who will be watching the Suns and Knicks do battle. So as you watch the game on TV tonight, be on the lookout for:

 *Actor/Actresses: Kim Catrall, James McAvoy, Jason Lewis, Julianne Moore, Masi Oka (NBC’s “Heroes”);  Sean William Scott (”American Pie”)

 *Music: Rapper Fat Joe, Rapper Rev. Run.

 *Sports: Magic Johnson, Paul LoDuca

 *Et cetera: Model Diana Dondoe; bull rider JB Mauney.

 Happy star gazing.