The Phoenix Suns are the centerpiece of the biggest what-if in NBA history

Tying it All Together

If you have made it to this point of this marathon of a piece about one coin flip that occurred 51 years ago, I truly do commend and thank you.

I hope you have enjoyed it throughout and went down the alternate NBA universe wormhole with me by reading the links included as well.

If you have, that’s awesome. You probably love the NBA as much as I do and we should probably be friends.

If not, if you just got bored or impatient and scanned down to the end of the piece, I feel you. I have been there. It takes commitment to read something this long. I just want to let you know that I got you, homie, here is the payoff:

How the Phoenix Suns Winning the Coin Flip Would Have Changed the History of Basketball

1. If Kareem gets drafted by the Phoenix Suns they likely never trade Hall of Fame guard, Gail Goodrich, back to the Lakers in his prime in 1970.
2. With a core of Kareem-Goodrich-Hawkins-Van Arsdale-Silas, the Suns likely win multiple NBA titles and possibly become the 2nd great dynasty in NBA history after the Boston Celtics in the 1960s.
3. The Lakers team that won 33 straight games in the regular season and an NBA title in 1972 isn’t able to get over the hump without their leading scorer in Gail Goodrich (he averaged 25.9 points per game in 1971-72) and the 1972 NBA championship likely goes to the Phoenix Suns or New York Knicks. Jerry West is viewed as the ultimate example of the NBA superstar who could never win an NBA title and maybe never becomes the NBA logo? (That could be a stretch, not necessarily related).
4. If Gail Goodrich never returns to the Lakers they never acquire the rights to the No.1 pick in the 1979 NBA Draft and Magic Johnson never becomes a Laker. He instead becomes a member of the Jazz in their first season after relocating to Utah.
5. The “Showtime” Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s never exist. The 1980s are likely dominated by the Suns (still likely have Kareem) and Jazz (Magic and maybe Malone?) in the Western Conference and the Celtics (Bird) and 76ers in the Eastern Conference.
6. It was obvious that the Magic Johnson and Larry Bird rivalry likely had a huge role in saving the NBA from extinction in the 1980s coming out of a very rough decade in the 1970s. There is even a Broadway play about it. Would they have had the same effect without both playing in a major media market on both coasts in Los Angeles and Boston? Utah vs Boston doesn’t have the same power.
7. Knowing the way the NBA operated during these times and throughout much of their history (the superstars get preferential treatment from the refs and a few organizations “just happen” to get most of the breaks) would the Bulls have “won” the coin flip for the No.1 pick in the 1979 NBA Draft and the right to draft Magic Johnson? If so, Michael Jordan never ends up on the Bulls. If he never ends up on the Bulls and has Jerry Krause as his GM, he likely never gets Scottie Pippen as his partner in crime wherever he ends up. Without Pippen, does Jordan evolve beyond being anything more than the 90s version of Allen Iverson? A fan favorite who leads the league in scoring but is never truly a winner on a large scale or champion? Who then takes the mantle as the great player of the 1990s, Olajuwon? Barkley? Malone? (I just pissed off the army of aged 35-60 Jordan worshippers…uh oh). It likely becomes the decade of great parity in the NBA instead of the 1970s.
8. Back to the Lakers, if they don’t win an NBA title in the 1970s or 1980s, they are likely viewed as an average NBA franchise and there is a chance Kobe Bryant never bulldozes his way to being traded there on draft night. Instead, he may end up a member of the Boston Celtics (they had the No.6 pick that year and had a private workout with him before the draft) and re-invigorate their storied franchise. Instead of forming the most talented duo in NBA history, there is a chance that Shaq and Kobe battle for Eastern Conference and NBA supremacy in the late 90s and early to mid 2000s with Shaq staying in Orlando and Kobe in Boston. To be fair, Shaq still may have gone to the Lakers in 1996 because he wanted to be a successful rapper and movie star.
9. With the Lakers’ mediocrity combined with the futility of every other team the Suns had in their division throughout much of the 1980s, the Suns essentially become the San Antonio Spurs as a team that wins 50 plus games and a number of titles over a couple decades and are viewed as a blue blood franchise in professional sports, on par with the Celtics, Yankees, Cowboys and Steelers.
10. The Phoenix Suns never become the most cursed franchise in professional basketball and possibly have decades worth of insufferable fans like the Lakers do now. Sorry Lakers fans, couldn’t help myself.

So there you have it, almost 4,000 words later, I have gone down the wormhole (like MJ in Space Jam), the veritable “NBA Twilight Zone” and explained why the Phoenix Suns have a major role in the biggest “What if” in NBA history.