The Phoenix Suns have not yet won an NBA championship. The stories of their near-misses naturally represent some of the most heartbreaking moments in their 52-year existence, but don't forget a coin clip which set the tone for a miserable half-century in the Valley of the Sun.
5. The Lost Coin Flip
The Phoenix Suns were one year old when the 1969 NBA Draft occurred. The Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks needed to have a coin flip (there was no draft lottery) to determine which team would get the No. 1 pick in the draft. The only choice was Lew Alcindor, who would change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar two years later in 1971.
The Bucks won the coin flip. The Suns had to settle for Neal Walk, who was never going to measure up to Kareem but had a perfectly good NBA career: 12.6 points, 7.7 rebounds, and 2.1 assists per game in eight productive seasons. Walk averaged 20 points and 12 rebounds in one of those eight seasons. Only Charles Barkley did the same as a member of the Suns.
The problem for the Suns wasn't getting Neal Walk; he was a quality player. The problem was missing out on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, widely regarded as one of the five greatest players of all time. The Milwaukee Bucks won their only NBA title with Kareem in 1971 before he left for Los Angeles and forged a dynasty with Magic Johnson of the Lakers… with the Suns paying the price in numerous Western Conference playoff series in the 1980s.
Kareem tormented the Suns for 20 of their 52 years; it all began with one lousy coin flip.
4. The 2007 Western Conference Semifinals
The 2007 Suns-Spurs West semifinal series isn't higher on the list because this instance of heartbreak was mixed with anger and fury.
It's not as though the Suns did everything right in this series, but they were robbed by forces beyond their control. The NBA used the letter of the law — and no contextual judgment — when it suspended Amare Stoudemire for Game 5 of a 2-2 series (in Phoenix) for merely leaving the bench after San Antonio's Robert Horry hip-checked Phoenix's Steve Nash into the boards in Game 4.
Horry was suspended for the rest of the series, but he was a role player. Stoudemire was Phoenix's second-most important player behind Nash; not having him in Game 5 tipped the balance of the series to the Spurs, who won in six games and eventually claimed the NBA title.
If Phoenix had lost without controversy, this series would rate higher on the list. It wasn't devastating so much as it was infuriating for Suns fans, who rightly never forgave Horry or the NBA for what happened.
3. The 1994 Western Conference Semifinals
The 1995 West semifinal loss to the Houston Rockets was a more spectacular and improbable loss, given that the Suns led 3-1 and had two games (5 and 7) at home. If you want to say that 1995 was a more painful loss, that's perfectly reasonable.
However, in 1994, the top-seeded Seattle SuperSonics were shocked in the first round by the eighth-seeded Denver Nuggets. The 1994 Phoenix-Houston winner was going to have home-court advantage in the West Finals against the Utah Jazz, who were not at the height of their powers.
In 1995, the Phoenix-Houston winner had to face the top-seeded San Antonio Spurs. The Suns might not have won that West Finals series had they advanced past the Rockets. In 1994, Phoenix was very likely to return to the NBA Finals if it had beaten Houston.
When the 1994 Suns blew a 2-0 series lead — losing Games 3 and 4 at home in Phoenix — and fell to the Rockets in seven games, they missed their best chance to bounce back from the heartache of losing the 1993 NBA Finals to the Chicago Bulls. 1994, more than 1995, crushed Charles Barkley's dreams of getting past the 1993 failure and winning a first NBA title.
2. The 1979 Western Conference Finals
Today's NBA fans remember the 2005 and 2007 Steve Nash-Mike D'Antoni Suns, plus the 1990s Charles Barkley Suns, as the teams which came agonizingly close to winning an NBA title but fell short.
This is the one team from another era of Suns history which had a golden chance to win an elusive NBA crown but couldn't finish the job.
The Suns had a lot of very solid teams under coach John MacLeod in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This was Phoenix's huge chance to finally break through.
The Suns led the Seattle SuperSonics, 3-2, in the West Finals, with Game 6 at home in the desert.
Instead, Phoenix lost that Game 6. It then lost Game 7 in Seattle. The Sonics wound up winning their only title in franchise history before the Lakers began to rule the Western Conference with eight Finals appearances in the 1980s.
It could have been the Suns, not the Sonics, who made history in 1979.
1. The 1993 NBA Finals
The Suns led the Chicago Bulls, 98-94, in the final minute of Game 6 of the 1993 NBA Finals. They were moments away from earning Game 7 on their home floor, putting Michael Jordan in danger of losing the NBA Finals for the first time.
Then it happened.
Suns miss. Jordan basket. Suns miss. John Paxson 3-pointer.
In four possessions and under 50 seconds, a series went from Game 7 to the Bulls' third straight title.
Charles Barkley and the Suns had never previously come so close to winning the NBA title without finishing the job.
The Suns still haven't come as close as the 1993 team did.
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