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Bledsoe Merging Best of KJ's Game With His Own

The hallway leading to the locker room in US Airways Center is a mural of Phoenix Suns history. Iconic scenes and players stretch from floor to ceiling on both sides of the narrow passageway. Their likenesses dwarf the tallest current Suns players who pass them every day, looming like some kind of standard from the not-so-distant pass.

“This is the tone we have set,” they seem to say. “This is the bar you must meet.”

Two of the huge depicted scenes feature the same former Suns player. In one, he is crouched in a dribbling stance, staring down his defender (B.J. Armstrong), seemingly poised to make a move.

The latter is more dramatic, the unrelated end to the former’s contemplative beginning. It shows the same Suns player, now revealed to be relatively short, dunking all over Hakeem Olajuwon – one of the best defensive centers of all time – in obscene, unbridled, unstoppable fury.

Eric Bledsoe passes these scenes of Kevin Johnson's glory nearly every day, several times per day. He recognizes KJ as one of the most cherished members of a long line of great floor generals that have donned purple and orange over the years. His new long-term status in Phoenix carries hope and confidence in his potential to become the next one.

“The Suns keep great point guards here,” Bledsoe says.

Phoenix’s head coach remembers Kevin Johnson well. Jeff Hornacek played with him for four-and-a-half seasons, forming one of the best backcourts in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Hornacek isn’t the type to stop, pause and make dramatic comparisons. He doesn’t need to see his current point guard, Bledsoe, walk next to murals of KJ’s glory to see the early similarities. He recognizes those in more practical fashion: during the game.

There are times when, as Bledsoe speeds past everyone up the court, Hornacek can’t help but flash back to his own playing days. It’s hard not to. His current point guard’s jersey doesn’t sport the Western font version of “Phoenix” on the front, nor does it boast the number seven. Still, the second-year head coach’s point of view is often a case of double vision.

Part present, part past.

Part Bledsoe, part KJ.

“I see a lot of Kevin Johnson in [Bledsoe’s] strength and his ability to get to the basket,” Hornacek admitted.

He noticed the similarities as soon as the young point guard arrived over a year ago. In pickup games, and then later in the regular season, Hornacek saw how his newcomer’s size had little bearing on his ability to get anywhere he wanted. Big men would bump, bang, and lunge as the 6-1 guard (the same height as Johnson, by the way) drove with the authority of someone much bigger than himself.

More often than not, those defenders’ attempts accomplished nothing. In 2013-14, Bledsoe ranked eighth in the league in points per game on drives to the rim. Of the top 30 in that category, only LeBron James shot a better percentage on those drives.

Bledsoe and KJ are not the same player. Hornacek is the first to point that out. He refutes the notion of his point guard being “the next Kevin Johnson.”

“You’re not comparing them necessarily as players,” Hornacek reminds us. “You’re comparing their skills.”

The most similar of those is the way they fearlessly attack(ed) the rim. There are other likenesses. End-to-end speed. The sixth sense of a teammate and the ability to thread a needle of a pass in traffic. Defensive anticipation.

Getting caught up in those similarities is dangerous and unfair. Johnson was only 22 when he averaged over 20 points and 12 assists per game to win the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award in 1988-89.

Bledsoe was born seven months later.

Still, the tools are there. Hornacek, who sees Bledsoe’s potential to develop some of the nearly unstoppable weapons KJ used, tries to describe them in a way that registers. Johnson was always on the attack, he tells him. If you do this and this, the defense won’t have an answer for you, he says.

“I see [Bledsoe's] abilities and that’s why I try to keep stressing it to him,” Hornacek said. “Obviously he may not have seen Kevin play. Maybe he’s seen him on tape, but he knows how great a player he was in this league.”

The most glaring disparity between Bledsoe and Johnson is the jump shot. Outside of five feet, Bledsoe hit just over 36 percent of his attempts in 2013-14. He kept defenses honest enough with his three-point shooting, though his preferred north-south line of attack was evident by season’s end.

Contrast that to Kevin Johnson’s last All-Star-caliber season (1996-97), and it’s easy to imagine how lethal Bledsoe could be with a similarly accurate jumper.

Hornacek remembered only too well how KJ presented defenders with the ultimate dilemma: close out quickly and risk Johnson blowing by you, or sag off to prevent the drive and give up an easy mid-range attempt.

“You can come down full bore and hit the pull-up jumper from anywhere between 15 and 20 feet, teams are going to be back there just going ‘what the heck do I do?’” Hornacek recalled, almost reliving the anguish opponents dealt with on a night-to-night basis. “You can’t just lay back and guard the drive because then he just kills you with the jumper.”

Almost as soon as Bledsoe got off the plane in Phoenix in 2013, Hornacek told him that he, too, could give defenders nightmares with the shoot-or-drive game. All he needed was a reliable pull-up jumper from 15-18 feet.

Bledsoe saw what his coach meant, especially after watching film of Johnson in his late-eighties, early-nineties heyday.

“I watched him a little bit, watched a little film of him,” Bledsoe said. “Coach Hornacek was telling me, if I want to score the ball, just pull up.”

Injuries, however, cut Bledsoe’s first season in Phoenix in half. By the time he returned, the Suns were in the midst of a playoff push. Precious little time remained to craft new skills. Even so, the fourth-year guard turned in a career year with averages of 17.7 points, 5.5 assists, 4.7 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game.

The 24-year-old’s potential, it appeared, had just begun to emerge.

Bledsoe was now a free agent. His first choice was to remain in Phoenix, but the free agency process dragged out longer than usual.

Ironically, this was another similarity Bledsoe shared with Johnson. After KJ’s breakout 1988-89 campaign (also his first with the Suns), his representation and the Suns took their time hammering out the terms for a restructured, long-term contract extension. Like Johnson, Bledsoe’s deal was finalized in September.

“For me, it’s all just about playing my game. I can’t do a Nash or a KJ. I can’t play their games.”

— Eric Bledsoe

Hornacek wasn’t sure what kind of player would be returning. He hadn’t seen Bledsoe in five months. He was thrilled to find out the answer was a coach’s dream.

“We didn’t really know what he’d been up to that whole time,” Hornacek said. “He worked his tail off.”

Turns out Bledsoe had taken his summer homework with him everywhere. Whether it was in his home state of Alabama or in Cleveland with LeBron James, a day’s work usually included improving on two things: shooting and stamina.

The first didn’t require a complete deconstruction. Familiarity was the issue, not form. While Bledsoe's first option is and always will be a lay-up, he needed to get more comfortable pulling up from mid-range or – when Goran Dragic handles the ball – spotting up on the perimeter.

“I just stayed with the same form every time,” he said. “Hopefully I’m getting the kinks out.”

“He worked on [his shot] a lot this summer,” Hornacek added. “He worked on his threes. He worked on his pull-up jump shots.”

Stamina is different than strength, the latter of which Bledsoe possesses in spades. Hornacek, however, wanted him to run even faster and, more importantly, as frequently as possible last season. He knew that when Bledsoe shifts to fifth gear, he gives Phoenix an unstoppable combination of raw pace and power. When his point guard showed any signs of slowing, the rookie head coach would bluntly ask if he was tired.

Bledsoe’s spurt-like speed doesn’t require a ton of research. Prior to arriving in Phoenix, he was strictly a backup playing in six-to-eight-minute stretches, a sparkplug off the bench. In his first season with the Suns, his minutes-per-game jumped from 20.4 to 32.9.

Endurance is a learned skill. Bledsoe’s body may be inclined toward physical fitness, but the heart and lungs must be conditioned to operate at faster-than-usual speeds for long stretches of time. Last season served as a reality check in that regard.

“When I was young, I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Bledsoe said. “I’m just scratching the surface, now. As far as having trainers and working out, I didn’t really know what to do. Alabama’s a football state and you really don’t get too many basketball players out there.”

The difference in Bledsoe’s game has been glaring. He is shooting better than 57 percent in the preseason. His read-and-react process on pick-and-rolls seems smoother. He has used the pull-up jumper in transition as a ready weapon rather than a last resort. His three-pointers (7-for-14) have given defenders, defedning him almost exclusively for the drive, fits.

“The more and more I play, I learn from each game,” Bledsoe said. “I try not to make the same mistake I made last game.”

When Bledsoe passes the artful homages of Kevin Johnson on his way to the locker room, he doesn’t pay them too much heed. Whatever similarities exist between them, Bledsoe assures us, are accidental. He is not trying to be the next KJ, nor does he want to be.

“For me, it’s all just about playing my game,” he says. “I can’t do a Nash or a KJ. I can’t play their games.”

He is, however unintentionally, walking a similar path. Like Johnson, he was once an over-talented backup to an All-Star point guard on another team. As they did with Johnson in 1988, the Suns recognized Bledsoe’s untapped talent and did everything they could to bring it to Phoenix. As Johnson did, Bledsoe has – in concert with other youthful talent on the team – brought renewed hope to the Suns’ present and future.

Yet Bledsoe, Hornacek says, doesn’t need those parallels to justify his status as a rising star.

“With Eric, everybody already knows that he’s a great player,” he said.

No comparisons needed.