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Michael Redd sat slumped in a chair, icing both knees, looking more like a man in pain than one who minutes before had played one of the best games of his rejuvenated basketball career.
It's hard to come back from a torn ACL. Redd made it back from two. He missed over 100 games through two seasons. He dealt with the whispers that his standout career was over. Regaining the form he had with the Milwaukee Bucks seemed out of the question. Coming back, period, was doubtful.
But there he was on Wednesday night, after Phoenix drove a wedge through Utah's playoff hopes with a 107-105 win at EnergySolutions Arena. Redd scored a team-high 19 points, dropping in 3-point bombs like he used to.
"He was great tonight," Alvin Gentry said. "He just did a great job for us."
When told of those remarks, Redd looked at his knee, with the bulging ice pack, gave it a rub and smiled.
"I heard what everyone said," Redd remarked. "It was impossible not to. But I wanted to come back, and I did it for me. I thought I had more left in the tank, more to give. Everyone said that I had a good career, and that I should just retire. But I wasn't ready to retire. I wanted to come back and play basketball."
Redd once was one of the best shooters and scorers in the NBA, an contender for the All-Star Game with the Milwaukee Bucks. With his lethal left-handed jumper, and his ability to put the ball on the floor, Redd was good enough that at the height of his career, he became an Olympian.
Then, he tore his knee twice in a year. He left Milwaukee as the fourth-leading scorer in franchise history, owning a 20.3 points per game average through the 2010 season.
Facing a crossroads, Redd sat down with his family, and decided that he wanted to return. So he worked to strengthen his knee. Seeing how successful Phoenix was in rejuvenating oft-injured veterans Grant Hill and Shaquille O'Neal, he worked out a deal with the Suns.
He's been healthy all season.
"I think we have the best training staff in the league," Gentry said. "Up until last week, when Grant got injured, we had missed just four games to injury team-wide."
On Wednesday, the Jazz wished Redd wasn't playing. Displaying his trademark jumper, Redd got hot from the perimeter, scoring 15 of his points in the second half. He abused Alec Burks, running the Utah rookie off screens, forcing Ty Corbin to take him out before he wanted.
Redd is significantly slower than he once was, but his savvy and offensive knowledge haven't gone anywhere. He's figured out how to play with Steve Nash, and indeed, several of his bombs came from pinpoint Nash assists.
Most of all, Redd has been given another chance to play basketball. When asked about the doubters, he thinks about his draft night, when he lasted deep into the second round, despite being projected as a lottery pick by some.
Indeed, Redd has been proving critics wrong his entire professional basketball life.
Twitter: @tonyaggieville