“(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit lonely
and you're never coming round
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit tired
of listening to the sound of my tears
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit nervous
that the best of all the years have gone by…”

--Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

Please don’t ask me why I was listening to this song the other day. Just say that it was in a movie or something (NOT in my bedroom, alone, with all the lights off). It’s quite possibly the perfect breakup song of all time, and it perfectly described my feelings when I found out that Mike D’Antoni and his mustache had left the Big Desert for the Big Apple and its $24 million dollars. He’s gone, and he leaves a huge void in the Suns organization and the hearts of Suns fans everywhere, myself included. The Sun(s) have gone black. They’re dead. Kaput.

But then I thought about it. I wiped my eyes, turned the lights back on and realized that maybe it’s for the best.

The run ‘n gun, seven seconds or less experiment didn’t work. Flat out. It was fun to watch in the regular season (REALLY fun, actually), but it just didn’t work in the playoffs. New GM Steve Kerr saw that; D’Antoni didn’t, or was just too stubborn to try any other way. So Kerr let him walk. He realized that D’Antoni was the wrong coach for the direction he wanted the team to go in, the direction the team NEEDED to go in.

D’Antoni is an offensive genius, there’s no doubt about that, maybe the greatest offensive mind the league has ever seen. He’s the Don Coryell of the NBA. But do you know how many Super Bowls the Air Coryell Chargers won? Zero. And the Seven Seconds Or Less Suns were never going to win one either. Why? Defense. As in, they played not a lick of it. D’Antoni just never had the commitment to defensive basketball that he did to offense. If he did, the Suns could very well be going for a fifth straight title. Instead, he ran Steve Nash straight into the ground (don’t try to tell me that all those regular season minutes didn’t contribute to his turnover-ridden performance against the Spurs) and limped home every May.

And now the Suns are entering that phase that all sports fans dread: rebuilding. Not in a Pittsburgh Pirates, rebuilding since 1993 sense of the word, or a post Florida Marlins firesale sense of the word, but rebuilding nonetheless. Nash has got maybe two years left of All Star-level play, and two years (at $20 million per) of Shaq left, whether Suns fans want it or not (I, for one, don’t). Kerr has to bring in a couch to get the team playing defense, Amare Stoudemire and Leandro Barbosa especially. Who exactly that will be, no one really has any idea yet. Either way, he’ll be Kerr’s man, first and foremost – something that Mike D’Antoni never was.

As for D’Antoni, I wish him and his mustache well in New York. I think he landed in a better situation than people realize – the pressure of trying to win a title every year is lifted. I think Spike Lee and his Knick fan brethren will be happy just to see the team get out of the lottery. D’Antoni and Walsh will break up the unsightly excuse for a roster that they currently have and find some runners and some shooters to play D’Antoni’s style. It might take a couple years, but D’Antoni will be remembered as the guy who saved the Knicks. He’ll go down as the Anti-Isaiah, mark my words. But will he win a championship there...? History – both D’Antoni’s and the Knicks’ – says no.

But there’s still hope in Phoenix. With Steve Nash at the helm, there’s always hope. Now, if he could just grow a mustache…