The Road to Redemption for the Phoenix Suns
Windows for championships in sports can be very fleeting. One good season culminating in being a game or two away from the NBA Finals can have fans and organization brass excited for what’s to come. But what if it’s all downhill after that season? This is the case of the 2009-10 Phoenix Suns. Anchored by franchise stars Steve Nash and Amar’e Stoudemire, the Suns went 54-28 showing glimpses of the Suns’ perennial contender teams led by offensive guru and former head coach Mike D’Antoni.
But next season would bring about many changes for Arizona’s first professional sports franchise. Steve Kerr, the general manager of the team since 2007, stepped down to join the broadcast booth for TNT. Amar’e Stoudemire opted out of the final year of his contract to become a free agent, joining Carmelo Anthony in Madison Square Garden.
The team who finished second in the West just a year prior would drop down to 10th place not even a full Earth rotation around the sun later. The rest of the decade saw four head coaches and three new general managers as the team finished amongst the bottom five teams in the Western Conference every year of the 2010s except for one - a ninth place finish in 2013-14.
Coming into the 2020s, Robert Sarver and company finally found the right combination. Matching former Hornets/Pelicans head coach Monty Williams with former player turned front office executive James Jones proved to be the culture shift needed to right the ship.
Unlike his predecessors from the decade Monty Williams’ trajectory, and team record, went upwards. Their 2019-20 record of 34-39 - with the season cut short due to COVID-19 - was the most wins the franchise had in five seasons. They further showed promise being the talk of the bubble, a one-site play-in tournament used to dictate the NBA playoffs for the 2019-20 season.
The Suns finished 8-0 just missing out on the threshold to challenge for the final seed of the Western Conference. This new phenomenon gave the team an opportunity to show their mettle, injecting confidence in the team that would resonate throughout the league. Fans could see that Phoenix were a piece or two away from making the proverbial jump to contender status, and thankfully for the Suns the right person to lead the charge was paying attention.
Hall of Fame-bound point guard Chris Paul has been the quintessential team leader throughout his storied career. Someone seen as demanding of excellence, the Wake Forest product has been close to championship pastures previously, just missing the mark multiple times. Being in the Western Conference for the entirety of his 16-year tenure, Paul would be the perfect person to attest to the rise of the Suns from conference doormat to serious challenger.
Having a history with Monty Williams from their New Orleans days and respecting the ceiling of rising star Devin Booker were apparently the selling points as Paul looked for a new home after leading a youthful Oklahoma City Thunder team to a fifth-place finish in 2019-20. Aiming to have an actual shot at a Larry O’Brien Trophy as his career reaches its end, Paul chose the Suns and Thunder GM Sam Presti made a move happen - within the conference nonetheless - as a token of appreciation to Paul. Fresh off an impressive end to the season and a new Big 3 in the Valley, the sky was the limit for the new-look Phoenix Suns.
No one expected a 51-21 finish, good for second place in 2020-21 though. This was evidenced as many expected the team to lose to the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers, relegated to the 7th seed after fighting through the new play-in process and a plethora of injuries to key pieces throughout the year.
Yet a 12-4 record, including a second-round sweep of the Denver Nuggets and 2020-21 MVP Nikola Jokic, finds the Suns - not only in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1993 - as -175 favorites according to Sports Betting Dime to win their franchise’s first NBA championship.
Many have lamented that this Finals lacks the punch and flair NBA fans have been accustomed to with this being the first Finals since 2006 not to feature the Los Angeles Lakers, Steph Curry, or LeBron James. Yet there exist many redemption stories for the Suns in particular outside of Chris Paul’s coronation.
For Monty Williams, a championship ring would be an emotional triumph getting a second opportunity at a head coaching gig after the New Orleans run and multiple assistant stops. Winning it all particularly after the tragic and untimely passing of his wife in 2016 just before his two-year stint as Vice President of Basketball Operations for the San Antonio Spurs seems straight out of a Disney-produced fairy tale.
James Jones would cap off his Executive of the Year title with another title - his first since retiring from the NBA in 2017. While Jones did not draft Devin Booker, he did draft DeAndre Ayton - the fastest top pick to reach an NBA Finals in over 20 years. He has also made key transactions to put a formidable team around the two-time All-Star that has Phoenix in excellent position to compete for multiple titles as Booker enters the prime of his career.
In an era of superstars coming together to form Big 3’s in big markets, the Phoenix Suns are a prime example of how to build a team the right way. For franchises that may not be free agent destinations, the teamwork between Jones and Williams has allowed a team to go from zero to hero virtually overnight. Regardless of the outcome of this week’s NBA Finals, after overcoming the second longest active postseason drought - the future looks bright in the Valley of the Sun.
