Since becoming a professional team back in 1968, the Phoenix Suns have won 2,212 games in the regular season and made the NBA playoffs a total of 29 times.
However, the Suns are one of the few NBA franchises which don't have an NBA championship on its resume. Phoenix has played in two Finals, losing on both occasions.
Despite the Suns' struggles to win the big game, the franchise has had the luxury of relying on some stellar coaches to lead the team. Talented players are essential to winning games in the NBA, but a team with a smart, savvy coach can come out on top more often than not even if it doesn't have superstar talent.
For this piece, we ranked the four best Suns coaches in franchise history, starting off with a guy who was with the franchise for eight years.
4. Cotton Fitzsimmons
Cotton won 341 games with the Suns during the regular season, tallying the second-most wins in franchise history. During his eight seasons with the team, Fitzsimmons led the team to the playoffs five times and won 22 games and lost 22.
Fitzsimmons first coached the Suns from 1970-72. He then came back to the organization in 1988 and racked up all those wins. The most games Cotton won during a regular season was 55, and he did it two times with Phoenix.
3. Mike D'Antoni
D'Antoni and Steve Nash made the Suns must-see TV from 2004 to 2008. Phoenix won 253 games during the regular season in the D'Antoni era and 26 in the playoffs. He's third in regular-season wins and second in playoff wins in franchise history.
Mike won the 2004-05 Coach of the Year Award with Phoenix after guiding the team to 62 wins. That club wound up getting all the way to the Western Conference Finals.
Unfortunately, the Suns fell to Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs in five games.
D'Antoni has the second-highest winning percentage for a Phoenix coach during the regular season and the third-highest during the playoffs.
2. Paul Westphal
Westphal won 191 games in the regular season and 25 in the playoffs with the Suns. He coached Phoenix for four years.
In his first year as head coach, Westphal led the organization to the NBA Finals behind MVP Charles Barkley. Phoenix won 62 games that season, with Barkley averaging 25.6 points, 12.2 rebounds and 5.1 assists.
For what it's worth, it was also Chuck's first season with the team.
If it wasn't for Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls just being too good, the Suns would have probably won the 1993 title. Jordan averaged a whopping 41.0 points per game in the Finals series as the Bulls defeated Barkley and the Suns in six games.
Chicago guard John Paxson hit the game-winning shot in Game 6. Westphal and the Suns never got back to the Finals again after that, although the brilliant tactician ended up with the fourth-most wins in franchise history for a head coach.
1. John MacLeod
Like Westphal, MacLeod also led the Suns to a Finals berth but wasn't able to win it all. The 1975-76 Suns lost to the Boston Celtics in six games.
However, MacLeod had a helluva run with Phoenix. He won a franchise-record 579 games in the regular season and 37 contests in the playoffs. Phoenix made the postseason nine times in MacLeod's 14 years with the franchise.
MacLeod passed away at the age of 81 in 2019. It's going to take a while for a Suns coach to catch MacLeod's record. After all, the team has been in a poor state in the 2010s — failing to make the playoffs in the past decade.
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