The possibility that the such a badly run franchise could rise from self-imposed irrelevance based entirely on blindfire luck is deeply upsettingIn an NBA season that has already seen several ascending young players sidelined by drug suspensions, a finals team all but wiped off the map by injuries, and the entire lower half of the Eastern Conference crumble and fall away, perhaps the single most disturbing development has been the sudden rise of the Phoenix Suns, the perennial Western Conference doormat that for the first time in years resembles a competent basketball operation. Itīs worse even than that: the Suns appear to have skipped past competence and arrived, quite unwelcome, at playoff contention. Awful.This is a franchise that, following a pattern of brutal, self-defeating mismanagement, has not made the postseason in any of the last nine seasons. Itīs possible, in the loaded West, to be a well-run organization and still not make the playoffs, just as it is possible, in the sorry East, to be a poorly run organization and capture the fourth seed. The Suns, under smarming owner and incorrigible meddler Robert Sarver, are as far from well-run as an NBA franchise can get without literally being the Knicks; that they play in the West has mostly provided a rhetorical shield against the kind of contempt rightly heaped upon Knicks owner James Dolan. That, plus the fact that Suns fans long ago abandoned the delusional optimism that animates die-hard Knicks fans. Better to go wandering in the scorching desert than invest hope in Sarverīs ridiculous operation. Continue reading...
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