Last season when it was announced that Phoenix Suns center Amare Stoudemire would miss most of the season because of microfracture knee surgery, the chances of the team repeating its 62-win season seemed to dim. Instead, the Suns pulled together and, with Stoudemire available in diminished form for a mere three games, Phoenix soared to 54 wins and returned to the Western Conference Finals.

So with Stoudemire back, some observers began forecasting 70 wins for the Suns. Then the Suns began the season by losing five of six, and cooler heads began to remind people that Stoudemire might take a couple of months to return to his old form, which included a 26 points per game, 8.9 rebounds a game season in 2005 and Rookie of the Year honors in 2003.

Since their sluggish start, the Suns, who visit the Meadowlands tonight, have been on a tear. They’ve won nine out of 10 and during the last two weeks, Stoudemire has been positively scary: 25 points and 10 rebounds against the Nets in Phoenix, 20 and 11 against Portland, 22 and 15 against Houston, 22 and 11 against Milwaukee, and 17 and 13 against Sacramento Tuesday night. What’s more Stoudemire shot a scorching 66%, 35 of 53 during this run.

What’s scarier is that Stoudemire isn’t all the way back. The Suns are still carefully measuring his minutes, playing him in five- to seven-minute stints, and he’s averaging only 26 minutes a game — 10 fewer than his last two full seasons. When the Suns play at their preferred turbocharged tempo, Stoudemire does appear winded at times. But unlike his last trip to the Meadowlands in March, when his knee wasn’t right, the entirety of the concern right now appears to be with conditioning. During the first quarter of the Sacramento game, Stoudemire grabbed a rebound on the left side of the rim, faked going back up on the left side, elevated and moved horizontally to the right side where he dunked the ball. He didn’t nail the landing, but it didn’t seem to affect him. He came out of a stumbling start and raced down court in time to grab a rebound on a miss from a Kings fast break.

The other key question involving Stoudemire’s return pertained to the Suns. They’d just won 54 games with him in the lineup for a scant three games. Many observers thought the situation in Sacramento a couple of years ago would provide a parallel. In the 2004 season, the Kings were without their star power forward, Chris Webber, for the first two-thirds of the season. Without Webber, Sac-Town went 43–15; however after his return, and despite solid production (18.7 ppg, 8.7 rpg) from him, the Kings flatlined, finishing 12–12 down the stretch and falling out of first place in the Pacific Division on the final night of the season.

Those parallels look to be merely theoretical. Without drowning you in numbers, point guard Steve Nash as well as swingmen Leandro Barbosa and Raja Bell are having better seasons alongside Amare, and forwards Shawn Marion and Kurt Thomas are having comparable seasons in slightly reduced minutes. Boris Diaw is the only member of the Suns rotation whose production is down sharply, and there may be other issues at work there, as he reported to camp out of shape and has yet to play himself back into form. As a team, the Suns are playing at the same tempo as last season, just over 95 possessions a game, and scoring just over 108 a contest. However, they are allowing two more points a game, which worries Suns coach Mike D’Antoni.

It isn’t enough that the Suns finish among the elite in the Western Conference. With Dallas and San Antonio in that bracket, the object for each of the three is to finish with the best record in the conference so that their second round playoff matchup is with Utah, one of the Los Angeles teams, or Denver — rather than a donnybrook with one of the other elite squads. Thus every game matters, particularly after their slow start, and the Suns will be scoreboard watching all season long.

Tonight’s game in New Jersey is the first of five in seven days on the East Coast for Phoenix, and that should provide the Suns with a decent test of their mettle. Although Orlando is the only team on the slate that is playing anywhere near the level of the Suns, tired teams are easy picking for upsets as Washington’s thrashing of Dallas and Portland’s defeat of Detroit reminded us this week.

This concentration of games will also provide a good chance to gauge Stoudemire’s progress. If he’s able to sustain anything remotely like his current excellence, then it’s time to break out the early season talk about MVP. It’s an award that should have been his two seasons ago, and at the rate he’s playing, there will be no disputing it this time.

mjohnson@nysun.com