(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Anybody else remember the 2018-19 Phoenix Suns? The team with 22-year-old Devin Booker leading the team in scoring with 27 points per game. The team with TJ Warren and De’Anthony Melton in the starting lineup. The team with Dragan Bender in his third year and Jimmer Fredette leading the team in free throw percentage at 100% (29/29). Just 5 seasons ago that was the state of the Phoenix Suns as they ended last in the West for the third straight year with a 19-63 record.
It seems like an eternity ago when the Suns were that bad and we had Charles Barkley talking about how the Suns were so abysmal they were replacing jalapenos with pickles on their nachos.
After this low point, the turnaround happened about as quickly as we’ve seen in recent memory. With Monty Williams’ arrival in 2019, followed by Chris Paul in 2020, Phoenix was starting to piece it together. The Sun's 2020 playoff run was their first birth into the postseason in 10 years. They cruised through the West and were met by a freight train in Giannis and the Bucks.
After that 2020 run, they have lost in the Conference Semifinals two years in a row. They came out extremely flat in their final game of the year twice now: in 2021 to Dallas and last year to Denver.
Could this season be the year for the Suns? I think this is exactly where they want to be. They are the sixth seed in the West at 27-20. They have gone 8-2 in their last 10 and you don’t hear too much about them. The Timberwolves and Thunder are the new kids on the block and the Clippers are the ‘new’ old kids on the block. Devin Booker is quietly having the best year of his career and Kevin Durant is averaging 28 points per game. Come playoff time, ‘the others’, such as Grayson Allen (13 ppg), Eric Gordon (13 ppg), and Jusuf Nurkic (12 ppg) are going to be counted on to make big time shots. They all have major playoff experience and bring new juice to this Suns team, who seem to have had a bad spell around them.
The X-Factor in Phoenix is going to be Bradley Beal. With any blockbuster trade creating, what captions call, a ‘super-team’, individual stats are going to go down. This is the fewest points per game Beal has averaged since 2015. After the all-star break and as we get closer to playoff time, you start to see the real identity of a team and what they do when they need a bucket; one would think that Beal becomes more of a scorer before playoff time.
Like with every championship run, the teams you face matter, barring a first or second-round matchup with Denver, the Phoenix Suns have everything they need to make some serious noise and win a Championship just 5 years removed from a 19-win season.
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