Colangelo Turns Phoenix Into Valley Of Sons -- `Jerry's Kids' Realize They're Lucky To Be Regarded As Family

PHOENIX - He is sitting in his usual spot, eight rows behind the men he has made millionaires, when Jerry Colangelo, who has been in NBA front offices now for three decades, announces he used to shoot baskets himself.

In the dark.

As a kid growing up in Chicago, he would purposely play without lights, aiming at shadows and outlines, forcing himself to hit bull's eyes in the blindness.

That makes all of this, the two teams he runs - basketball's Suns and baseball's Diamondbacks, the third franchise he helped lure to the desert - hockey's Coyotes, this entire athletic kingdom so large it needs two castles - America West Arena and Bank One Ballpark, seem strangely simple.

A decade ago, Colangelo had 25 full-time employees. Now, he has 400. He formed a group to buy the Suns for $44.5 million in 1987. Today, the club is worth nearly five times as much.

But, come on now, how difficult can this be really, hitting a target you can see?

"He's a powerful, powerful man," Diamondbacks third baseman Matt Williams says. "You can tell when he's in a room even if you can't see im. All you have to do is look at the way other people act."

Colangelo's new baseball team is on the road on this night, but his Suns are hosting San Antonio, and one of his guests is Dan Quayle. Another is a local politician who calls Colangelo "a saint" and "the man who made this town."

It can become faceless, you know, something this large, growing this fast. As it spreads wider and wider, each step is away, moving farther and farther from that figure in the middle - the father. And this matters to Colangelo, whose story isn't so much about moving ahead as it is catching up, coming back from a relationship with his dad, Larry, that barely existed.

"The very poor situation with my dad had a great deal to do with my priorities," he says. "I wanted to give my children what I didn't have. I wanted to give them that love."

He is so rooted in the value of family, the tradition of being together and staying that way, that inside his basketball arena he had them build an alumni lounge. And just check the Suns' payroll. Dick Van Arsdale is in player personnel and Connie Hawkins is in community relations. Neal Walk heads the speakers bureau and Alvan Adams works for the arena. Danny Ainge is the team's coach and Frank Johnson is an assistant.

Are these guys former Phoenix Suns? Or former Phoenix Sons?

"People refer to us as Jerry's kids," Hawkins says. "I don't mind that at all. Players want to play here and people want to work here, and it's because of Jerry Colangelo. There is no in between with him. If you're here, you're part of the family."

That's why he has had the same assistant - Ruth Dryjanski - for 30 years. And why former coach Cotton Fitzsimmons is still around, serving as executive vice president, working the last 10 years on a handshake rather than a contract. And why Colangelo's only son, Bryan, is the team's general manager, making him a family member-squared.

This is not normal, not in professional sports, a business where loyalty is as dated as double-knit flannels. Also unusual is the case of Jorge Fabregas, a catcher who wasn't good enough to play for two established teams - the Angels and White Sox - or win an arbitration case. Still, the morning after the Diamondbacks beat Fabregas, Colangelo awarded him a two-year, $2.9 million contract.

"No one was more shocked than me," Fabregas says. "He called me into his office, and I figured I must have done something wrong. He has a special way of making you feel like you belong. It just shows you that when he believes in something, he does it."

The Diamondbacks called Manager Buck Showalter one minute after he became available in 1995, freed from his commitment to the Yankees. Showalter soon signed a contract for $7 million and seven years, the first two of which he managed nothing.

Colangelo's sense of salesmanship is like his reputation, strong enough to lean against. He helped design the city-owned America West Arena so that fans can't get in or out without passing a concession stand. When there were 20 baseball teams interested in free agent Travis Lee, Colangelo won him with manufactured drama. He led the rookie into a dark room, then shined a single spotlight on Lee's prospective Diamondbacks uniform. Impressive? So was the $10 million contract Colangelo showed Lee next.

But a man having so much strength can be as scary as a man having none at all. Colangelo is involved in a lease dispute with the Coyotes, some officials of the NHL team so upset they refuse to speak to him. There also is a dark line of discontent among Suns fans because the club offers some telecasts only on a pay-per-view basis.

This also matters to Colangelo, who, given the significant size of his image, understands the importance of keeping it polished. When a new baseball writer was hired by a Phoenix newspaper last fall, Colangelo called him two weeks later just to introduce himself. He loves saying he can relate to the regular folks, that he is far from his home of Chicago Heights, Ill., only in distance.

"I'm a sensitive person," Colangelo says. "I've tried to live a clean life and do things the right way. Every time I hear criticism, it hurts. It's like somebody's twisting a screwdriver inside me."

He nearly lost it when a stranger confronted his mother in a grocery store, complaining about her son's business practices. He did snap during the 1993 NBA Finals in Chicago, when a fan swore at his mom. The incident escalated to the point where he was diving over seats and people, swinging wildly while being restrained.

"One of the things I've learned," Colangelo says, "is that once you're perceived as having made it, you become a target."

But literally? Remember the regular folks, being just one of the guys? Because of shifting attitudes toward Colangelo and his mounting pyramid, certain security measures have been adopted at his office. And how typical can you really be when you're separated from the common man by bullet-proof glass?

In the past decade, he has negotiated more than $1 billion worth of deals from up here, where the walls are tall and the floors are marble and the mood is coldly corporate. But he is telling a story about his family now, and Colangelo has tears in his eyes.

"That's my heritage, it's who I am," he says. "I'm not going to apologize because I have feelings and emotions. If I sometimes cry and someone sees me, so be it."

Only a few feet away is what Colangelo calls his "roots corner." The old bottle is direct from Italy and the second century, an amphora which used to hold olive oil. The picture is of the house he grew up in. He lived in the upstairs flat, which had less room than this office does today.

And the accordion? That was sent by a friend when Colangelo moved to Phoenix in 1968 to become the Suns' first general manager.

It is traveling backward like this - past the first job with the Bulls, past the All-Big Ten basketball honors at Illinois, past the high school stardom as a left-handed pitcher - when you find the twist in this story, the link missing in this golden chain of a life. This is when you realize Colangelo, the family man, the born-again Christian who can talk passionately about the Father, has almost no relationship with his dad.

Larry Colangelo isn't much of a role model. He isn't, in fact, much of anything. He eventually left the family and didn't see his wife for more than 30 years. This might seem out of place, an ugly page in a biography that could be a family photo album. But, in fact, it fits perfect with only one adjustment: Throw away the picture and keep the negative.

Because it was the void left by his father, the feeling of nothing planted deep inside his stomach, over and over each day, that Colangelo was convinced he had to be just the opposite.

His parents did finally reconcile, before Colangelo's mother died last year. Their reunion happened in this very office, another piece of brilliant business by their son.

"It's not something I want to talk about," he says, softly. "The only thing that matters is that the story turned out to be all right."

And Jerry Colangelo, one of the most powerful men in sports, the desert's brightest force next to the sun, the king with two castles, is crying again.