Defeating the Golden State Warriors is HUGE for the Young Phoenix Suns

The Phoenix Suns beat the Golden State Warriors for the first time in what feel like forever, which could be bigger for the young Suns than we could ever know.

Going into last night’s game at the Golden State Warriors, if a soothsayer had somehow accurately predicted that the Suns would follow up their previous night’s loss at Portland with a blowout loss in Oakland, not a single Suns fan would have batted an eye.

Not only would it have been expected based on the tremendous disparity in talent, but the Warriors had won 18 straight over Phoenix, the longest streak of one team by another in all four major professional sports at the time.

But then the unthinkable happened: the young Phoenix Suns pulled off the biggest regular season upset since…well, they beat the Milwaukee Bucks just a week ago.

Okay, so maybe not unthinkable.  I mean, I did  predict this very victory in July (Adam wryly smiles at his lottery-level odds prediction).

Some will say that the Warriors overlooked the Suns.

Maybe they did on some level, but it’s not like Phoenix blew them out, they were up only three points with less than 90 seconds remaining. Golden State did score 7 points less than they average on the season, although 15 over the 45 wins have come when scoring less than their average of 118 points so they don’t need to blow a team out to beat them.

All they had to do is hold Phoenix to 110, something the Suns had only done 28 times out of 67 games this season.

Some will say that they wouldn’t have won if Kevin Durant had not been taken to the locker room due to a mysterious injury mid-way through the fourth quarter.

Phoenix Suns

Then again, the Warriors are not  only a Kevin Durant better than the Phoenix Suns, and if this exact Suns team added Kevin Durant, they would still not be as good as the current Warriors sans Durant.

The Suns aren’t a PG and PF away from being the Warriors with or without Durant either (obviously presuming that they somehow don’t acquire superstars at both positions) so even if they had a legitimate NBA starter at both positions, I wouldn’t expect Phoenix to be any better than 1-3 during the regular season in that situation either.

And yet here we are.

A young Suns team with lots of young talent but missing talent at two starting positions and no outside expectations to win any game they play; a team that forone meaningless regular season night near the end of the regular season just knocked off the two-time defending champions.

This is huge  for those young Suns players.

Devin Booker, Deandre Ayton, Kelly Oubre Jr., Mikal Bridges, Josh Jackson, et al., knew  they were supposed to lose this game. They honestly probably did not actually allow themselves to foresee a victory in Oakland during shoot around as the odds were stacked so high against them, hoping merely to remain competitive as long as they possibly could.

And now that they have pulled it off, it means more to that roster of players than we could even imagine.

I venture to guess that even if they were to lose every game the rest of the season (for some crazy reason), losing their final fourteen games, the fact that they pulled off this win will carry them into next year as a team who believes  that they can be better than this year’s.

The small group of core players will know that on any given night they can  beat the best team(s) in the league, if they can play a hard and smart game for a full 48 minutes.

For a team who has lost more to this point this season than all but the inaugural team in the franchise’s history, who’s veterans of the roster – namely Devin Booker and T.J. Warren – have lost more than any other players in franchise history over any stretch of time, to win this game, on the road, has all but certainly raised their confidence in not only themselves but the team around them to levels they have never faced since their original draft acquisitions.

What the core of this Phoenix Suns roster needs more than just additional talent (on the roster), is a belief that they, themselves, actually have the talent already to compete.

Granted, none of them should ever believe that they are “this close” to being a playoff team, on the contrary, they are who their record says they are. But they must know that if the right players are brought in, and that talent meshes with the existing (and remaining) talent, then maybe they can  compete for a playoff spot as early as next year.

On March 10, 2019, the Phoenix Suns defeated the Golden State Warriors in Oakland for the first time in 2,953 days.

Don’t tell me that if Robert Sarver doesn’t screw up what is building right now that this roster can’t compete next season in a way that the franchise hasn’t experienced since 2014. And a victory like last night’s is one that will help carry the core in that direction if they are only given the help at the two lacking positions that they so desperately need.