Dan Bickley

azcentral sports

The Valley is full of negative energy.

It flows from underwhelmed sports fans who’ve seen one major professional championship in 15 years. It pours from the transplanted masses, people who firmly believe their hometown teams are better than the ones offered here.

You’ve heard the latter. Residents from elsewhere find easy affirmation when Arizona teams fall on their faces. They add to the noise and derision, even though they don’t care a whit about the local scene. They are known to occupy sports bars and demand that televisions are changed to their liking, just to alleviate their homesickness.

But here’s some good news:

Suns coach Earl Watson seems to have a grasp of the Valley’s brutal nature, and he has a plan to win over the skeptics on a very personal level.

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“I want to get involved in this community, so I’m going to events all the time, being part of the community, like the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,” Watson said. “My mom is Mexican. My dad is African-American. My grandparents are from Mexico. So diversity is key to me, and being part of this community is the most important thing to me in the evenings, after leaving the gym and the arena in the mornings.”

Watson will be 37 in June and represents the latest roll of the dice on Jefferson Street. Most NBA head coaches have very little staying power, no matter how polished they sound. The Suns elevated Watson with shocking speed, before the job market opened up, without interviewing any other candidates.

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As previously stated, I wish the Suns would’ve gone with an experienced hand like Tom Thibodeau or Frank Vogel. But this franchise clearly believes in Watson. Or they think they’re far enough from a championship that the next three years won’t matter in the long run.

Either way, Watson understands the power of language and personality. He remains loquacious and infectious. He still drives himself to radio interviews just to enhance his presence. He’s staying on message, still talking about integrating himself in our communities, even though he won the job.

That’s a good sign.

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Watson has a compelling story. He was recently told he’s the first former UCLA player to be a head coach in the NBA. He brands himself as a John Wooden protégé. He believes in destiny, and thinks he’s ended up in Phoenix for a reason.

He believes off-court relationships with his players is the key to unlocking a team’s collective potential, enabling and incentivizing them to share the basketball. As you may have noticed, he is full of profound phrases.

“Belief is stronger than reality,” he says.

As good as that sounds, Watson has his hands full. The NBA is a stars league and full of contentious player-coach relationships. Navigating a team’s mood can be treacherous, especially when the locker room is full of good players and big egos.

This much is certain: Watson will never show up to work with lower expectations. He’ll never coach a less talented team. This will be dramatically different in 2016-17.

Yet Watson says the belief cultivated over the final 33 games of the season has carried over into the offseason. He claims four players, including Brandon Knight, are already in the gym daily for two one-hour sessions. And recently, while vacationing in Los Angeles, he met up with rookie Devin Booker for an impromptu workout.

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The two met on the campus of UCLA, where Watson imported former Bruins star Baron Davis, who taught Booker the art of misdirection, and how to get to the offensive move he really wants.

“We were in the gym for 3-4 hours,” Watson said. “It was a great time for Devin. He learned a lot.

“We have to, as individuals, commit to getting better. Commit to finding the pain of the summer to have the joys of the season. So every individual has to become the best he can to raise competition to the highest level. This is the NBA.”

It’s also a league where coaches are easily marginalized and quickly fired, and Watson is smart enough to understand that not everybody likes this hire. He admits that he never thought he was going to be hired as the full-time coach in Phoenix. Many Suns feel the same.

But now that Watson has built relationships with the current group of Suns, he’s going to work on Valley basketball fans, one community at a time. He’s convincing enough to change your mind, if you let him, and if his bosses get him some better players.

Reach Bickley at dan.bickley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8253. Follow him at twitter.com/danbickley. Listen to “Bickley and Marotta,” weekdays from 12-2 p.m. on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM.