The Valley suffers from an acute case of PTSD.
Post-traumatic Suns Disorder.
It is a condition born from heartbreak, dysfunction and a persecution complex. It’s what happens when a fan base buys into the lie that our hopes are hopeless. That we are victims of a conspiracy theory where everyone in power is scheming against us, starting with crooked referees.
It’s the damaging psychological effects on a booming sports market that has endured 58 years without a championship with the team it loves the most.
In sports, a city always cares more about homegrown teams and players over those that come with previous history and baggage from elsewhere. The Suns are no different. They are Arizona’s favorite franchise by a country mile. They possess the longest championship drought in the NBA among teams that have never relocated. They rank atop the longest droughts of any major sports franchise that has never won a title of any kind since its inception. On a national scale, our collective pain is largely ignored and highly underrated.
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The current Suns represent something different. They play the Nuggets in a Tuesday showdown at Mortgage Matchup Center, and if they lose, they will seem destined for a berth in the play-in tournament, tap-dancing through a landmine where they could be eliminated in the span of two consecutive losses.
With that in mind, let’s all come together and preserve whatever is left of our mental health and collective sanity:
Let’s all agree the Suns are playing with house money. They have 40 wins with 10 games remaining, far better than anyone expected. They are two victories removed from finishing with a winning record, something nobody expected from the current group. With a few exceptions, they’ve delivered exactly what they promised over the summer:
They are an overachieving team that fights to the bitter end, instilling a sense of community pride that transcends the final score. And it gets better.
Their new and inexperienced general manager, Brian Gregory, seems to have a good feel for players who translate to the NBA (Rasheer Fleming, Collin Gillespie, Haywood Highsmith). Jordan Ott is a newfound gem, a head coach who can pull off the X’s and O’s while excelling in the relationship-centric arena of today’s NBA. And we all know the owner is willing to spend whatever he has, whatever it takes, moving forward.
That combination should fortify, unite and excite Suns fans through whatever lies ahead in the postseason. Including adversity and defeat. Make sure their unexpected uprising — like a boxer taking a series of knockout blows and peeling himself off the canvass — is enough to nourish you going forward.
The Suns are a franchise that might’ve been robbed of a championship in 1976; a franchise that should’ve won multiple titles after Michael Jordan first retired in 1993; a franchise that still features one of the greatest teams to never win a title (the Steve Nash Era); and a franchise that held a 2-0 lead in the 2021 NBA Finals against the Bucks, when the parade never seemed closer.
The current Suns might not prevail in the games you want the most between now and the end of the season. But they should never, ever be considered a disappointment.
To the contrary, they’ve given the Valley something far more important than a postseason berth in a year that was supposed to be a dystopian wasteland. They’ve given us real hope. They’ve given us a real future.
Reach Bickley at dbickley@arizonasports.com. Listen to Bickley & Marotta weekdays from 6 a.m. – 10 a.m. on Arizona Sports 98.7.
Follow @danbickley
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