I'm hoping they stay in the Phoenix area. I think sending them to Glendale was a bad idea to begin with, and they should of stayed at the US Airways Centre.
The problem with US Airways Center is that a quarter of the seats were obstructed view. Those seats on the north end couldn't see anything below the near blue line. I would know, I spent one game in those seats. Trust me, they needed to move out of that place.
Now, I can't complain about Glendale too much because I'm on that side of the Valley. Their arena is only 9 miles from my house. But I agree that the arena location is one of their major problems, but it's not entirely of their own doing. They were going to put in Scottsdale (East Valley) and in a location that is fairly accessable (I've been by there many times). But politicans dragged their feet and Glendale stepped in with a deal.
Problem is that the guys who owned the team weren't in it for the right reasons. One was a real estate magnate who just brought the team to get the business/residential/shopping complex next to the arena (and he left 2-3 years ago). The other, the bum/thief/moving company guy who put the team into bankruptcy, wasted the teams money on things such as:
-paying for office space in the complex and leaving offices inside the arena empty
-having the team overpay for work done by his other companies, effectively using the team to keep his other companies in the black.
-paying the greatest player to play the game over $7 million to coach the team to no playoff appearances (average coaches salary is about $1 million). At least he resigned last week and now we have a good coach in Dave Tippett (at least everyone I've heard from says it's a good hire).
-of course, playing poorly leads to less tickets sold, which leads to less money.
Put all of that together and you get one massive clusterfuck.
That said, I'm cautiously optimistic about this year. We finally have a real coach. I think we have a very talented team. I think the players are going out there with a chip on their shoulders because they hear what all the "experts" are saying. If they can stay away from injuries, I think this is a playoff team. Not a high seed, but certainly a 6-8 seed.
But when there's only one team in the West that you can say "no way in hell are they going to the playoffs," who really knows.