The St. Louis Blues won their first NHL championship in history after 52 years. The next night, the Toronto Raptors won their first in 24 years. The Phoenix Suns will be next NBA team to win their first championship.
The Phoenix Suns have made the playoffs 29 times in 51 years. In those playoff appearances, they have been to the Western Conference Finals nine times. They have moved onto the NBA Finals twice, having never won that final round.
With the Toronto Raptors taking home the Larry O’Brian trophy signifying an NBA Championship on June 13, the group of current NBA teams who have never won a title has shrunk by one, to 11, the Phoenix Suns being among them.
Unfortunately, even before the Raptors won their title, the Suns were the NBA’s longest-running franchise to have never reached the league’s pinnacle, having suffered through the agony of losing since the end of the Lyndon Baines Johnson administration.
The remaining franchises who have never won an NBA title are:
Brooklyn Nets* – they won two ABA championships
Charlotte Hornets
Denver Nuggets* – 52 years in continuous operation, but been in the NBA for 43 years
Indiana Pacers* – won three ABA championships
Los Angeles Clippers
Memphis Grizzlies
Minnesota Timberwolves
New Orleans Pelicans
Orlando Magic
Phoenix Suns
Utah Jazz
Although the Nets, Nuggets, and Pacers have all technically been in operation for longer than Phoenix (by one year each), the Suns are the longest-running team to have played the entirety of it’s history in the NBA to not win a title.
Thus now with the Raptors’ championship, the Suns, mired in the longest playoff drought in the franchise’s history, have been lapped again by a team formed earlier than they have, winning a title in their 24th season – which would have been the 1991-92 season the Suns, the final season at the Madhouse on McDowell, and the year prior to the acquisition of Charles Barkley.
Yet, for Phoenix Suns fans, hope springs eternal, and truthfully, the Raptors’ victory should actually heighten those hopes to a level that has not been for some time.
Toronto’s victory came against the greatest dynasty of the last twenty years.
It took some luck, sure – although even had Kevin Durant played the entire series, and Klay Thompson not gone down in the final few minutes of Game 6, the Raptors’ roster was definitely strong and hungry enough to have pulled off the upset regardless – however, Toronto was a well build and coached team that needed to be highly skilled enough just to be the beneficiary of such luck.
Once a seemingly unbeatable team has gone down, and with the Warriors age showing it’s ugly face and LeBron James floundering about spending more time focusing on his post-playing career rather than on his current one, the times are changing, and there are reasons to believe that the Phoenix Suns will be able to rise to the top and be the next NBA team to win it’s first championship.