On this, the 3rd day of the Phoenix Suns’ 12 Days of pre-Christmas, the franchise should give to their fans: a three-game win streak.
While the three-game win-streak is nothing to really get all that excited about, the Phoenix Suns have not had many of them in the recent past, and if they could at least get one going, depending on when in the schedule it occurs, they could potentially string together a fourth win, then maybe a fifth, and start to separate themselves from the low-end of the Western Conference pack.
This is the third wish of the Phoenix Suns’ pre-12 Days of Christmas, a three-game win streak – although hopefully more than just one.
Sitting at 2-2 to open this season, the Suns went on a nice little three-game run, defeating the Golden State Warriors, Memphis Grizzlies, and Miami Heat, moving to 5-2, the best start through seven games since the same start in 2013-14 (they went on to win 48 games that year but finish ninth in the Conference).
They have since gone 6-12, and now sit a tie-breaker with the Oklahoma City Thunder out of the playoffs at 11-14.
Every team in the league will have a stretch where things line up in their favor and they can go on a little run. Conceivably, three wins in a row several times a year should not be a streak too long to be able to pull off when you’re at least an average NBA team.
In the resent past though, the Phoenix Suns as a franchise have found it extremely difficult to pull off:
2018-19: 2, including a surprising four-game streak in mid-December before losing 26 of their next 29.
2017-18: 0
2016-17: 1
2015-16: 1
2014-15: 5, including four four-game win streaks and a six-game streak
This current team (especially when healthy) is more than capable of pulling off a few three-game win streaks, and even stretching them a bit longer in the right situations.
With the re-addition of Deandre Ayton, his presence may be the boost that the team needs to end the season with a winning record.
Having lost by double-digits four times out of their 14 losses thus far this season (and having lost by less than five points five times), Ayton should make a pretty sizable difference once he and his teammates before fully re-acclimated.
If this is the case, than a number of the games that otherwise could have been close losses may be pulled out, and a few win-streaks of at least three games can begin to pile up.
Granted, the addition of a legitimate scoring power forward and a veteran backup point guard would be huge for the team as well (see the link just below this paragraph), but Ayton alone may make all the difference in the world for a team who is just barely on the outside of the playoffs looking in at the end of the season, or one who is playing beyond the end of the regular season, potentially into early May.
Three-games win-streaks should not need to be thought of as a Christmas Wish, but for the pre-12 Days of Christmas, the Phoenix Suns should gift their fans a few of them and build from there.