The Suns have shown a deep and abiding penchant for mental lapses throughout this season. They seem to have a hard time dealing with prosperity. When they get up and on top of their prey, they are most vulnerable.

Mental toughness, or the lack thereof, may prove to be the undoing of Planet Orange but their malaise may have a cure: the playoffs.

The playoffs represent a change of context and this change of context carries a tangible force. The “second-season’s” undeniable force is pressure and pressure has the ability to destroy or repair brain cells.

This change of context has the power to focus the Suns, alter their concentration and heal their regular season woes. Then again, the power comes from within the hearts and minds of the players that take the floor.

Let’s hope Nash, Shaq, Stat, Raja, Hill and company feel the pressure, respond to it well, and let the Great Divider work its cognitive magic.

Remember: A body in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.

Winning isn’t learned, winning is understood.

We learn that 2+2=4 and it always equals 4. It will never be 6 nor will the sum suddenly yield a 5. 2+2 always equals 4. These are things we learn, truisms we carry with us throughout our lives.

But unlike things we learn, winning isn’t an absolute. In the world of professional sports, 2+2 doesn’t always equal 4. No matter the sport or the skill-level, sapient players understand this early in their development: there are no guaranteed victories.

Therefore, players don’t learn how to win they learn how to compete, to give their best. With skill assumed, players understand their odds of winning increase/decrease in direct proportion to their preparation, intensity and effort; but they also understand their preparation – and that of their teammates – can be impeccable, their intensity razor-sharp, their effort desperate, and they can still lose.

Regardless of whether they win or lose a game, players understand what it takes to win games. Although it guarantees nothing, the level of consistency a player and his team must bring to their sport each-and-every day is a known commodity. There will be ups, there will be downs but great players and great teams are not blown about like so many leaves in a parking lot. They bring it much more often than they leave it, especially in big games.

And this is why the Phoenix Suns may not have what it takes to win an NBA Championship. Mental toughness is something you simply have, innately, or have developed over the course of many games; it is not something you summon from one game to the next.

Houston was a big game for the Suns on Friday night. They lost…convincingly. The only things summoned by the Suns in Houston were doubts and questions.

The box score was not worth looking at. It didn’t matter what the Suns or Rockets shot from the floor; the turnover ratio was inconsequential; how many second-chance points the Rockets had or the number of three’s they hit or missed meant nothing. None of the numbers mattered.

The Suns were – inexplicably – flat. They played like banshees for 4-minutes and then – like leaves from a dead oak – they allowed themselves to be blown about the Toyota Center in a game that had significance.

Coming off their victory over the Spurs on Wednesday night, the Suns looked poised to make some noise in the Western Conference playoffs. They were prepared, intense and their effort was clear and dangerous to would-be contenders in the conference.

How could they not approach the Rockets with the same preparedness, intensity and effort? Where is the consistency, the mental toughness, the understanding of what it takes to win games against worthy opponents?

It was not there; it was gone…like the wind.

And that’s the scary thing if you’re a Suns fan: even though they understand what it takes to win games, they aren’t always willing or able to give it.

Let me be clear. It’s not that the Suns lost to the Rockets, it’s that they weren’t prepared to give the requisite effort needed and could not summon the intensity to play well in an important game.

The question is why?

The answer might be more troublesome than the question.

I went to US Airways Center to watch the Suns take on the Memphis Grizzlies. I decided to go to this game because I believe it might tell me more about where the Suns are, and where they’re headed, than the game against San Antonio.

It was easy for the Suns to rise to the occasion when San Antonio came to town. The Spurs represent everything the Suns want to be and their reputation, talent and accomplishment bring the best out of players.

This bothers many people. They don’t want to hear how a guy making millions of dollars must rise to any occasion when merely playing a game. Although I completely respect and understand fans disdain for such comments, their opinion is pure folly.

The game is played by human beings. An elementary, superficial study into human nature is all that is required to understand why a player’s intensity level flows in volatile streams.

To wit:

I draw a circle on the ground that measures 20’ in diameter. Then, I put you and another person in that circle. I announce to both would-be circle kings that the person that pushes the other one out of the circle is going to receive $50.

Where’s your intensity level?

Now, I tell you, the winner is going to receive $5,000 if he pushes the other person from the circle.

Is your heart pounding? Would you be more focused if the stakes got bigger?

Now, my friends, I announce that the loser of the next “circle-sumo” will be dragged from the sphere and decapitated immediately…

How would you fight in that circle? What kind of intensity, focus and determination would you generate in order to win?

Why is your heart racing? Why do you know your intensity level would be sky-high? Why didn’t you feel that way when $50 was at stake? Why didn’t you feel that way when $500 was at stake?

Human nature.

It’s not that you weren’t intense when $50 or $5,000 was at stake; it’s that you didn’t know how intense you could become when faced with a desperate situation.

This is why the Grizzlies game fascinates. It was easy for the Suns to get up for the Spurs. The stakes were BIG and it brought natural, human ferocity from the bowels of the Suns competitive well.

But how will the waters flow against Memphis?

Great teams and great players know how to summon their competitive muse, no matter whom they square up. Michael Jordan did it, the “Showtime” Lakers did it, Lawrence Taylor did it and the San Antonio Spurs have done it when it mattered most. It’s the sign of maturity, a signal that a team has become mentally tough, and the lead indicator that a human being has entered rare company.

The Grizzlies may represent the fulcrum of the Suns up-and-down season. If the Suns go out and play with great intensity and energy against an inferior team, they may have learned something about themselves from the San Antonio game. They may have found that intensity level and how to turn it on at will. They may have discovered what the New York Giants did when they played against the New England Patriots in week 17:

There is intensity and there is desperation and there are levels in between.

Got Jordan?

Shaq is going to bring a lot to the Suns if he can stay healthy. His greatest impact may be the effect he has on the talented players around him.

Reason with me, my friends.

A weightlifter gets calluses on his hands from exposure to free-weights. The more he/she works out, the more the calluses grow and harden.

Subconsciously, professional athletes can become calloused to the sport they play. They think they’re giving it their best but they’re really not. They realize their job is a business and, many times, the business end of professional sports can rob them of their passion.

You may not believe me or might think a professional athlete should never become calloused to his job but I’ll guarantee you if we examined your life (and mine) we’d find some calluses.

Are your passions as pure and galvanized as they once were?

What professional athletes need more than anything else – other than talent – is to remember the game of their youth, to rediscover the passion for the game and play it with the excitement and creativity they had when they were UNCERTAIN of where their talent would take them.

Shaq needs the Suns to make him remember, to make him regain the passion. The Suns need Shaq to remember and, in so doing, infuse the locker-room with hope and rejuvenation.

The “SunShaq Redemption” could be one of the better stories in the NBA this season and the early returns are already paying dividends – and Shaq hasn’t played a game!

Has anyone seen Stat play since Shaq became a Sun? For those that haven’t, think points, rebounds, energy, defense and smiles; think of a kid on a playground that realizes one sunny day that he’s better than all other kids around him and the only thing keeping him from ruling the day is his own effort. Now imagine that same kid one day looking over his shoulder and seeing his older brother smiling at him through the chain-link-fence.

This is not to say that Amare is Shaq’s “little buddy.” Stoudemire is a strong personality, has nothing in common with Gilligan and Shaq is much too style-savvy to wear a skipper’s cap. But even if he were, never forget, it was “Gilligan’s Island” not the Skipper’s.

Super Bowl XLII is right around the corner and the moment is rushing toward us. Unless the Hand of God intervenes, time will not be played the fool; it will be satisfied.

And the bells are tolling. And players are preparing to heed their call, wondering how it will go for them when the bells stop and the whistles begin. The drama will only get worse as the day approaches and, for many players, time and pressure will become their biggest enemy.

I love the game of football and see beauty in its brutality; I love literature and see understanding in its wordiness. But I never thought I would have found a piece of literature that would capture the essence of the game like I did on Wednesday night.

I was reading the last poem ever published by Edgar Allen Poe before his early retirement, The Bells, and thought the bells sounded a lot like football players and the game of football.

Here’s an excerpt:

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

I think Poe would have loved the NFL.