The Phoenix Suns must do one thing between now and the end of the season

The Phoenix Suns are on pace to miss the playoffs for the 10th consecutive year – an abysmal record. Here is something that must be done between now and then.

The Phoenix Suns are better than they have been in years, and yet they are still not good enough to make the playoffs.

One might argue that without injuries to key players for extended periods of time (Aron Baynes, Dario Saric, and Frank Kaminsky), or a 25-game suspension (plus seven additional missed games due to injury) to Deandre Ayton, that the team might actually not only be in the playoff race, but firmly ahead of the current eight-seed Memphis Grizzlies.

And yet, that didn’t happen, and the remaining roster wasn’t good enough to carry the missing load (or Monty Williams wasn’t savvy enough to adjust his rotations to play a super small ball ala the Houston Rockets to compensate), and here we are, witnessing another season in which the playoffs are nothing more than a dream.

That said though, the team must carry over some momentum from this season to next and end the year on a good note, playing as hard as possible, even when they are officially eliminated from the playoffs (the Phoenix Suns will enter the post-All Star Break with a Magic (Elimination) Number of 22 – the combined number of Grizzlies wins and Suns losses before Phoenix is officially eliminated from the playoffs)

To put it short and simple: they cannot freaking tank again.

While the team should  be in a still hot race for the playoffs, the likelihood of such a situation coming to fruition – especially considering that James Jones failed to make a big splash acquisition at the trade deadline – appears to be something that even Dr. Strange in a a Marvel-level alternate reality couldn’t find.

That shouldn’t change anything about the rotations though, and no one of importance should be shut down until after game 82 has been played.

For one, the NBA Draft does not appear to be anything special. If LaMelo Ball is really one of the top picks, then teams should be running away from playing for picks at all cost.

Of course, there is always an All-Star or two in every single draft, but especially in drafts such as this one where there is not only not a consensus number one pick, but there aren’t any players who jump out at scouts as a sure-fire star, the idea of losing for a couple of extra ping pong balls makes zero sense.

However, if Jones actually has a good scouting staff around him (and he takes the opinion of owner Robert Sarver with less than a grain of salt), then he can still find that star player regardless of where he is picking – something that his predecessor Ryan McDonough had zero skill at (I’ll give him his selection of Devin Booker, but all reports were that Booker was not even McDonough’s top pick).

Secondly, the draft lottery now selects four teams and not just three, and if you ever play the Tankathon lottery game, then you’ll know that even now the Phoenix Suns move up in the lottery quite often.

Should that be banked on in any way? Absolutely not.

But then again, that fourth selection does play in the league’s favor in preventing teams from tanking – something that this franchise should take heed.

Finally, while professional athletes rarely actually think about the fans (otherwise All-Star games would be competitive under the traditional rules), in this case, the Phoenix Suns need only  to be thinking of the fans as their season winds to a close.

Sure, high statistical nights are still fun to marvel at on an individual basis (even in a loss, Devin Booker’s 70 point game was still a spectacle that will be forever remembered), but fans want signs that the franchise is actually  moving in the right direction and that we don’t have to wait until the roster tinkering of the offseason to actually have hope that regular playoff participation is finally  around the corner.

Even if the team finishes with a losing record in the second half (although Baynes, Saric, and Kaminsky are absolutely no one to be counted on with any regularity, their injuries have depleted the roster tremendously), so long as Booker, Ayton, Ricky Rubio, and Kelly Oubre are out there every single game possible, leading the team to as many wins as they can muster, the fanbase will have been proud of the effort – and hope will have been given them, if even in the face of overall defeat.

Monty Williams cannot suddenly cut out veteran’s minutes in favor of un-seasoned younglings, and James Jones cannot mandate that anyone from the team’s primary four sit when healthy.

However many games they win, the Phoenix Suns need to play for the win, and tanking – for any reason – cannot happen.

The Phoenix Suns need to be done with tanking – forever. It is such an extended dark blotch on the franchise’s history that any reference to it should be treated like Anti-American foreign government propaganda.

Even as the team inches closer to being shut out of the playoffs once again, management and coaching should be strategizing and the players should be playing as if home court advantage was on the line – and maybe (hopefully)  next year, it finally will be.