At long last, House may have found home in Phoenix

In other words, Eddie House has finally found an NBA home.

Returning this season to the place where he first made a national name for himself, House has become an integral part of the Suns' rotation, providing at times point-a-minute scoring as the backup at point guard for league MVP Steve Nash.

"I guess you could call me a journeyman," said House, who has bounced around between six NBA franchises, including three last season alone. "I would love to make this my home."

Through Phoenix's first 36 contests, House is averaging a career-high 10.9 points and 1.9 assists per game in coach Mike D'Antoni's double-time offense, numbers that are generating some heat behind a push for Sixth Man Award recognition.

"I think he's going to finish his career there," said Alonzo Mourning, House's teammate for two seasons in Miami. "That's the perfect system for Eddie."

House couldn't agree more. D'Antoni's style was one of the major reasonshe chose to sign a two-year deal with Phoenix for $1.77 million — the minimum figure a team has to pay a player with House's five years of NBA experience — rather than go back to Miami, the organization which drafted him out of Arizona State in the second round of the 2000 draft and pursued him hard this summer.

"I gave (Miami's offer) two days' thought, but from the moment I heard Phoenix was interested, I wanted to get that done," House said. "The ball is shared here. Everybody has a chance to shoot. In Miami, the ball's dominated by (Dwyane) Wade and Shaquille (O'Neal). ... Coach doesn't look down upon you for taking any shot. If you feel you can make it, then you're not just throwing it up."

Thanks to his 61-point outburst against Cal as a senior, House still shares the Pac-10 single-game scoring record with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and will forever be a legend in Tempe. (According to Warriors rookie Ike Diogu, another Arizona State product, House's record-tying game is a potent weapon in Sun Devils coach Rob Evans' recruiting arsenal.)

But for House, the final two-thirds of last season meant more to his professional prospects than any of his collegiate exploits. Landing in Sacramento after brief stops in Charlotte and Milwaukee, House got a chance to play behind his brother-in-law, the Kings' Mike Bibby, and prove that he could quarterback an NBA offense.

"How I look at stuff is, everything happens for a reason," House said. "All that stuff that was going on last year, it was just something for me to end up in Sacramento and showcase what I can do at point guard."

While House's assist-to-turnover ratio isn't fantastic (1.67), his 39.3 percent 3-point shooting more than makes up for it. House has also become famous for his fourth-quarter production, having scored eight points or more in that period nine times this season, including a run of 12 straight points in the final 12 minutes of Phoenix's 115-106 win over Cleveland on Saturday.

Jerry Colangelo, Phoenix's president and CEO, said House had surpassed the Suns' expectations for him, but said the success wasn't a surprise.

"So often in our business, we categorize players — 'Aw, this guy can't play,' or, 'He's limited, he can't do this, he can't do that,'" Colangelo explained. "But it's circumstances. If you have a situation that's conducive for a guy ... So you always have to judge that. A lot of players, they need a new opportunity. They bounce around three or four times before they hit."

Now that House has landed in Phoenix, he'd prefer to stay put rather than keep bouncing.

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," House said. "That's a long ways away."

Thanks to this season, however, home is a lot closer for House.

OFF THE GLASS: When Sonics coach Bob Hill joined the organization prior to this season as an assistant under Bob Weiss — who Hill replaced earlier this month — he was shocked to find the state of depair of Seattle's defense. "This team, when I first got here, played defense with their hands down worse than any other team I've ever seen," Hill said. "They never used their hands to play defense. We didn't contest shots. We didn't get deflections. Even double teams, they would double team the low post with their hands down." ... Like many NBA players, Mourning caught "Glory Road," the movie about Texas Western's triumph with five black starters over an all-white Kentucky squad in the 1966 NCAA Division I title game. His take: "It opens your eyes to the sacrifices they had to make. I couldn't imagine having to go through some of those things back then, especially with my tolerance to things. They would have strung me up somewhere, I'm going to tell you that right now." ... If you think the NBA's grown too commercialized, consider this factoid from the Philippines Basketball Association: Darvin Ham, a member of the Pistons' championship team of two years ago, recently signed with the Talk and Text Phone Pals, who play in the San Mig Coffee PBA Fiesta Conference.

Inside Bay Area

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