Everyone loves lists, right? Here’s one that will make you even stronger in your Phoenix Suns fandom.
On Bill Simmons’s podcast 544, he and Zach Lowe agreed that the Phoenix Suns are the dumbest and worst franchise/team in the NBA.
Bill mentioned that he was once, somewhat, in the shoes of Sun’s fans.
He wrote a piece called, “How to Annoy a Fan Base in 60 Easy Steps,” and he wrote about his team, the Golden State Warriors, obviously before the dynasty.
In his podcast he discussed how he should write a second one about the Suns, and while that is very nice of you Bill, I might have beat you to it.
The Phoenix Suns have been the laughing-stock of the NBA for the past nine years. What if I told you that the team you watch on TV and laugh at on social media used to be a powerhouse in the West not once but but over the course of multiple eras.
Also, what if I told you the Phoenix Suns were a coin flip away from getting one of the best players ever and winning at least one championships on top of many championships down the road.
However, none of what transpired, and while the franchise has pronounced many fun teams and brought legions of life-long fans to the Valley, more often than not, we have been left wondering what could have been, rather than what was.
And now that the franchise has been so bad for so long, what is happening to those fans now in 2019?
They are suffering, being mocked by the rest of fans around the league for their team’s irrelevancy, and publicly ridiculed by talking-heads like Simmons.
It hit rock bottom for me when I attended the Phoenix Suns vs San Antonio Spurs on February 7, 2018 – and the Suns lost by 48 points.
At the end of the game the Spurs fans we chanting “Let’s go Spurs” and it was drowning out the arena. I left that game with a loss of pride.
But how did it come to that? what lead the organization to that point?
Let me tell you the 60 reasons why.
- In 1968, 10 Arizonan businessmen proposed the likes of a professional basketball team to Commissioner, J. Walter Kennedy. Kennedy came back saying the Phoenix was too small, too hot, and too far away from the rest of the league. But thanks to the NBA Board of Governors the city was still granted a franchise. The next year 1969, following the first season of the in operation, the losing continued…
- On March 19, 1969 we (the fans) choose heads, therefore receiving the 2nd overall pick, and eventually the right to draft Neal Walk. Unfortunately the 1st overall pick was Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) who was paired up with Oscar Robertson.
- The next year, the Phoenix Suns won 48 games finishing 3rd in the West, while the Bucks with Lew won 66 games. Lew won Rookie of the Year and only lost two playoff games while winning the championship.
- The lost coin-flip did more than deny Phoenix of one of the greatest ever in Kareem, it brought a long time effect of trying to fill his gap. Gail Goodrich, was one of the “Original Suns” and is a Hall of Famer (and played with Lew in college at UCLA and wanted to play with him in Phoenix), and Dick Van Arsdale is in the Ring of Honor. However, that weight of not having a top center, soon caused the Suns to trade Gail, who had averaged 22 points, 4 rebounds, and 7 assists the season before for a center by the name of Mel Counts. Mel lasted two years in Phoenix averaging 8 points and 5 rebounds. Meanwhile, Goodrich became a five-time All-Star and two-time NBA Champion – with the L.A. Lakers…
- The 1st of two championship appearances came in 1976 way before I was born, but it does not take being alive to understand that that one probably hurt. With the series tied 2-2 against the dominant Boston Celtics and Jo Jo White, Phoenix lost by two in triple overtime (widely considered the greatest game in NBA history) 128-126, and Jo Jo had 33/9/6. Boston won game 6 as well while Jo Jo won Finals MVP. It was then that the core from the first good Phoenix Suns team started to dissipate. And the franchise would not make it back to the Finals for 17 years.
- The Gorilla. For the first 11 years the Suns did not have a mascot. Hilariously, in 1980 they attempted to have a sunflower be the mascot – thank God that didn’t happen. However, soon after, a man by the name of Henry Rojas working for the showed up to a game as a dancing telegram in a Gorilla costume and some security guards invited him down to dance and entertain during time-outs and breaks. For some reason the fans took to loving this, and he kept coming back until he was named the official mascot of the The Phoenix Suns.
- So I have a question for the security guards, if Henry Rojas were to have shown up in a clown costume, or a pirate costume would our mascot today still be a clown or pirate? Just think about it.
- This situation is one I am sure every team has, but since this a Phoenix Suns article, this one’s for you, William Bedford, who was the 6th overall draft pick in 1986 and was later kicked out of the league for drug abuse and is now serving a 10 year prison sentence for drug-related issues.
- And…. We are back! 1993 NBA Finals game 6, the Bulls hadn’t scored a point in the first 6 minutes of the fourth quarter in PHOENIX! Eventually Michael Jordan would end the drought. With 14.1 seconds left up 2, Jim Paxson would hit the three and MJ said he knew it was going in after the game and the Bulls won again.