EX-GM hopes Suns win, awaits three Olympians

MILWAUKEE — Jerry Colangelo is headed to Game 5 of the NBA Finals in Phoenix, hoping to see his old team move closer to clinching its first NBA title.

Getting the series over would sure help his current team, too.

Colangelo was the Suns’ first general manager when the organization entered the league as an expansion team in 1968. Over the next 43 years, he went on to hold titles of coach, president, managing general partner, chief executive officer and chairman.

“You give birth to a franchise like I did and was part of it for 40 years, I have a vested interest in their success, and I’m hopeful that this is it for them, that they can win a championship,” Colangelo said. “It would mean something to me.”

Now managing director of the U.S. men’s national team, Colangelo is with the Americans in Las Vegas for training camp and exhibition games before the Olympics.

Milwaukee’s Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday, with the Suns’ Devin Booker, will join the national team after the Finals are over. The series is tied 2-2 after the Bucks’ 109-103 Game 4 win. Without those three standouts, the U.S. has dropped two of its first three exhibition games.

“We’re operating short-handed, and if you have a guy down because of even a tweak, we don’t have a lot of depth,” Colangelo

said. “So it’s been challenging here from that perspective.”

Colangelo has gone to some of the Suns’ playoff games, their first since 2010. He watched their strong run in the bubble last year and believed early on that the addition of Chris Paul to a good young core could make this a strong season.

“You could just sense it and see it coming together and they’re fun to watch, they really are,” Colangelo said.

All negative

No players have tested positive for the coronavirus during the NBA Finals.

All players are being tested daily during the series. The NBA and NBPA said Wednesday that none has returned confirmed positive tests since results were last announced on July 7, in between Games 1 and 2.

Making history again

Rapper Vo Williams was at Fiserv Forum for a second straight game to do a pregame performance of his song “History In The Making,” which has served as the theme for the Bucks’ playoff drive.

It marks the second time this year one of Williams’ songs has been used in a professional team’s championship bid. The Tampa Bay Lightning made Williams’ “Ready Set” the theme song of their postseason as they won their second straight Stanley Cup title.