PHOENIX - The publisher of the state's newest and slickest sports magazine has big plans for SportsArizona, a glossy bimonthly now hitting newsstands.

The debut issue of Joel Harnett's magazine featured everything from Phoenix Suns' rookie sensation Michael Finley to a story on youth soccer. It also included features on former Arizona State athletes now playing professionally, such as golfers Phil Micke lson and Wendy Ward, and will expand its focus as more issues are published.

''We have lots to write about,'' he said. ''They'll be four pro teams here by next year. We have three major universities, some big high school programs, baseball spring training. All those elements combined is what convinced me that Arizona needed a spor ts magazine to capture the way it feels about sports.''

The magazine was born after Harnett watched a men's tennis tournament in Scottsdale in 1994, and then watched baseball fans flock to see Michael Jordan play in the Arizona fall league later that year.

He keeps expenses down by using free-lance writers and his 25-person production staff from Phoenix Home and Garden. It is a bimonthly now with plans to move to monthly circulation in 1998, the same time the Arizona Diamondbacks expansion baseball team beg ins play.

More than a dozen other sports magazines have tried and failed in the state since the 1960s, but Harnett believes - of course - that his will be different.

''I've been in this business for a lifetime,'' said Harnett, a transplanted New Yorker who has started 15 other magazines - some of which are still around. ''We'll lose our shirt the first year, break even in the second year and be cash positive the third year.''

Harnett does have success on his side. He and his wife founded Phoenix Home and Garden in 1980, which is still published. Ditto for Scottsdale Scene, born in 1991.

One of the recent sports magazines failures was Diamond, a Scottsdale publication devoted to baseball nostalgia. It debuted in January 1994 but folded 16 months later.

No surprise to Samir Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi who has studied magazines.

''Fifty percent of new magazines die within the first year, and 30 percent survive if they last at least four years,'' he said.

The publisher of Phoenix Metro Football, which has been around since 1971, believes Arizona is a tough market.

''There's probably been 20 magazines that have started around here since 1960,'' said Barry Sollenberger, who also produces regional football magazines for Tucson and Flagstaff. ''We're one of the few that didn't fail.''