Phoenix Suns: Which Disney animated film best represents the franchise?
By Ryan Bawek
With Disney World set to be the bubble site for an NBA return, we thought it would be fun to compare the Phoenix Suns to a Disney animated film.
All the momentum seems to point to Disney World being the bubble site for the NBA’s return to play, so in the spirit of Mickey, we here at Valley of the Suns thought it would be fun to compare the Phoenix Suns franchise to an animated Disney film.
For starters, comparing the Phoenix Suns franchise to a Disney film is tougher than you might think. However, after long consideration, The Princess and the Frog seems most fitting. Stay with me.
Even though many Disney films, especially the earlier ones, have darker aspects to them (if you don’t believe me watch the original ‘Pinocchio’ from 1941, it is essentially an hour and a half of child trafficking, sinister experiments, and terror), the general premise of the classic Disney animated film is “all’s well that ends well” as the main characters get their happy ending.
The Phoenix Suns franchise (as painful as this is to type) has never gotten its fairytale ending, i.e. winning an NBA title.
As it stands, the Suns are one of the two NBA franchises in league history that have a top 10 winning percentage and no NBA titles. The other is the Utah Jazz.
For as consistently good as the Jazz have been (especially when compared to the Suns in the 2010s), there are really only two seasons in their history where they were championship-level good, 1997, and 1998.
They had a healthy roster and a fair chance to dethrone Michael Jordan on the last leg of his NBA domination, and if we are being honest, they might not have really even been championship-caliber then. The same Jazz team that couldn’t get past the 2nd round of the Western Conference playoffs when John Stockton and Karl Malone were in their early 30s because of Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets, Charles Barkley and the Suns, Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp of the Sonics, and David Robinson of the Spurs, were able to take advantage of a down Western Conference in the late 90s and make their first NBA Finals appearance in their mid to late 30s.
Hakeem was past his peak as was Barkley, Robinson was past his prime, Kemp was in Cleveland and starting to let himself go and Duncan, Shaq and Kobe hadn’t hit their stride yet.
Back to the Phoenix Suns…