For the first time since 1988, the Suns didn't send a single representative to the midseason classic or even one of Saturday's sideshows. Not that Shawn Marion accepting an invitation to the dunk contest ? he declined ? could have offset the PR damage done by Stephon Marbury.

Just as the rest of the basketball world was trickling into Philadelphia for the NBA's answer to the Super Bowl, word came from Phoenix that Marbury had been arrested early Friday on a DUI charge.
That's the same Marbury, of course, whom the Suns acquired from New Jersey for Jason Kidd. The same Kidd expelled from the desert by Suns boss Jerry Colangelo for his domestic-abuse arrest roughly this time last year. The same Suns who also traded away Clifford Robinson because of Uncle Cliffy's own DUI arrest.