By Tom Danehy ACCORDING TO THE Nielsen ratings, I'm one of exactly four people in the United States who watches the TV show Sliders on FOX. It's a cute little sci-fi show where these four mismatched travelers slide inter-dimensionally between duplicate Earths. (A few weeks back, they were on an Earth where J. Edgar Hoover was still alive and in charge of a Gestapo-like national police force where all the male officers wore what appeared to be kilts but were actually skirts, in honor of their boss.) Anyway, if duplicate Earths exist, I have no doubt that on Earth 5.1 (the updated, slightly improved version), the Phoenix Suns are working on a four-peat. On that Earth, John Paxson of the Bulls didn't hit an improbable three-pointer to beat the Suns in the 1993 NBA Finals. And then the next year, Charles Barkley didn't get hurt with the Suns up 2-0 in the best-of-four series with Houston, and the Rockets didn't storm back to beat the Suns, 4-3 and go on to the NBA championship. And, of course, on Earth 5.1, Danny Manning didn't blow his knee out in practice last year and the Suns didn't blow another 2-0 lead to Houston, allowing the Rockets to repeat as NBA champions. Of course, all of those things did happen back here on plain old heartbreaking Earth, and instead of looking at their fourth championship, the Suns are at a franchise crossroads, beaten down by the thought of what might have been and crushed even further by the realization it ain't gonna happen now. The Suns have a proud, if acutely unlucky, tradition. They started off unlucky when they lost a coin toss which would have given them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar right out of UCLA. Milwaukee got Kareem while the Suns got a stiff named Neal Walk. Still, within four years of their inception, the Suns were taking the Lakers to the limit in the playoffs, and in less than a decade they had reached the NBA Finals. Throughout the early 1980s, they were half an inch behind the Lakers and the Celtics, who would win a combined eight titles in the decade. In the late '80s, the Suns were torn apart by a drug scandal, one which turned out to be more innuendo than anything else. Owner Jerry Colangelo turned the team around in the blink of an eye, and the Suns went on to have seven consecutive 50-plus win seasons. In 1992-'93, the Suns put it all together. They brought in Charles Barkley, who would have an MVP season. The Suns almost lost in the first round of the playoffs that year, but they righted themselves and stormed into the finals against the Bulls. Somehow, the Suns managed to win two out of three games in Chicago and still lost the series when Paxson pulled a shot out of his butt. The next year, the Suns came back, full of fire (if you'll excuse the expression), and stampeded through the league. They crushed Golden State in the first round, then won the first two games of the next series in Houston. But Barkley got hurt, the Rockets came back to win the next two games in Phoenix, and Houston went on to win the series, 4-3. The Rockets crushed their next two opponents and easily won the title. The series with the Suns had clearly been their toughest test. Last year, the Suns came out strong again. Then free agent acquisition (and All-Star) Danny Manning blew out his knee and the Suns had to adjust. Even without the All-Star, they were still the best team in the West. Again they met Houston in the second round and again they won the first two games. Then they went up 3-1 and the monkey was almost off their backs. But Houston would win the last three games of the series, including two in Phoenix. The final game was a one-point loss, again on an improbable three-pointer. The Rockets went on to win another championship. This year, the Suns struggled out of the gate and staggered home at .500. A trade of popular Dan Majerle for Hot Rod Williams looms as one of the worst in franchise (if not league) history. Hot Rod turned out to be a Scooter with two flat tires. They would make their eighth straight playoff appearance, but it was the first time since 1988 that they didn't win at least 50 games. They got punched out of the playoffs in the first round, winning only one of four games against San Antonio, and even that one they probably should have lost. The Suns have fallen far and fast and there are no easy answers to reversing the trend. The team has several high-priced stars locked into long-term contracts, the team is old and fragile, and there is no money available with which to bid on free agents. With the exception of the Williams debacle, the Suns management did all they could to put a championship team on the floor. They went out and got the marquee players and surrounded them with a solid supporting cast. They got a good coach and stayed out of his way. But bad luck just sneaked up on them. All-Star guard Kevin Johnson's hamstrings turned out to have the tensile strength of toothpicks. The years of carrying that extra weight caught up with Charles Barkley at the wrong times. And Dan Majerle turned out to the anti-Jerry West, an absolute disaster in the clutch. I watched the Suns slip into mediocrity last Friday and it wasn't pretty. The Spurs slapped them around at America West and the fans went home thinking, "Wow, that could've been much worse." The Phoenix papers are already calling for the Suns to trade Barkley while he still has some value. I hope they don't. I hope he comes back for one more year, KJ gets a hamstring transplant, the Suns replace Hot Rod Williams with a (more mobile) cigar-store Indian and the Suns charge to the 1996-76 NBA title. Hey, that's what's going to happen on Earth 5.2. Why not here?

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