Don’t Call It a Comeback: The Suns Are Fighting For the NBA’s Future

Since 2004, you’d be hard pressed to find a team that has performed better than the Phoenix Suns.

That’s the year they signed Steve Nash, of course. The year they transformed themselves from a 29-win doormat into a 62-win juggernaut. The year all of this run-and-gun, seven seconds or less business began. The year we thought they would transform the face of basketball as we knew it.

It’s hard to blame us for thinking that, really. These Suns were like nothing we’d ever seen. The previous decade was dictated by slow, grinding, defense-oriented basketball, especially in the playoffs. Scores in the low 80s were commonplace. And then this offensive juggernaut bursts on to the scene and averages – averages! – over 110 points per game. We loved these Suns. We wanted them to succeed. But deep in our heart of hearts, we worried that they weren’t cut out for postseason play. Defense wins championships, or at least, so goes the saying.

Our fears were only confirmed when they ran into a rising dynasty in the conference finals. The San Antonio Spurs were everything the Suns were not. Where the Suns were built on offense, the Spurs were built on defense. The Suns loved to run and shoot, while the Spurs were restrained and disciplined. And above all, the Suns were wild and entertaining, and the Spurs were… well, boring.

I don’t mean to overgeneralize here, but that’s the perception we have of the Spurs. They aren’t the kind of guys you picture jumping out of helicopters. They’re more the kind of guys you picture playing cribbage or reading Chaucer. That’s how we see them.

So when the Spurs bulldozed the Suns in 2005, we assumed it was because defense will always trump offense in the playoffs. And when we saw similar results in 2007 and 2008, it only reinforced things. The Suns just aren’t built for playoff success, we thought. When they have a solid, defensively-minded center, then we’ll take them seriously.

Which they did, in 2008, when they traded for Shaquille O’Neal and replaced Mike D’Antoni with Terry Porter. And as you may remember, they didn’t make it out of the first round. So they decided to return to their old form for 2010, and we all wrote them off. Except somehow, they put everything back together and got back to the playoffs. And somehow, they annihilated a defense-first Blazers squad in six games. And somehow, defying all odds, they’re up three games to none against the Spurs, the team that symbolized their failure more than any other.

With one more win, the last several decades of basketball orthodoxy could go right out the window.

We’ve always assumed that shoot-first, offense-oriented teams are doomed to failure in the playoffs, and the Suns have been the perfect example of that. Sure, they look great during the regular season, but when they square off against a team with a tough defense, everything falls apart. Three playoff series losses to the Spurs showed us that. And so we saw teams move away from the Phoenix model and shift toward the Spurs’ method. They built their teams around defense. We praised teams that could grind out wins in the postseason.

Don’t believe me? The four non-Spurs champions since 2003 all fit this mold. Detroit was defense first, led by Ben Wallace and Tayshaun Prince. The 2006 Heat played their fair share of defense, although we’ll always remember that championship for Dwyane Wade attempting more free throws than the entire Mavericks team. The 2008 Celtics team had one of the greatest defenses of all time, and the 2009 Lakers only won their title after they focused more on defense.

But just because most recent champions won their titles with defense doesn’t mean that’s the only way they can be won. In fact, there’s an excellent chance the Suns would have at least one title if they hadn’t encountered more than their share of horrific playoff luck. In 2005, they were cruising through the postseason until Joe Johnson fractured his eye socket, ending his season. In 2007, the Suns were on track to knock off the Spurs, until Robert Horry famously hip-checked Nash into the scorers’ table, resulting in key suspensions that turned the series. And Tim Duncan’s miracle 3 in 2008 destroyed the Suns’ will to live before the series even really got started.

And now, the Suns stand on the verge of sweeping the Spurs out of the playoffs, and with them, our misconceptions of how playoff basketball has to be played. A Suns title would mean teams like the Warriors, the Nuggets, and the Knicks are suddenly viable. Maybe you can win a championship on offense. And if more teams start trying the offense-first model, we could be in for a decade or more of supremely entertaining basketball.

Am I getting ahead of myself? I don’t think so. If the Suns advance to the conference finals, I think they have the chops to beat the Lakers. I’m going to go out on a limb and say they could probably beat the Cavs or Magic, too. The Suns are that good. And, to borrow a phrase from LL Cool J, they’ve been here for years. It’s time we took notice of that.

Don’t call it a comeback. Call it the future of the NBA.