History and the NBA

The Phoenix Suns franchise does not yet have an NBA Championship to its name. For some reason, fans of other NBA franchises that do have past championships feel it necessary to bring up this fact in debates about the current NBA season--usually when they have no valid argument as to why they think the Suns will not win the 2007 NBA Championship.

How does a past championship from 10, 5 or even 2 years ago make a team more likely to be the 2007 champs? It doesn't make any sense.

I follow the Suns in the news, and often converse online with other NBA fans. During the Suns' recent series against the Los Angeles Lakers, I encountered many Lakers fans in an online message board. When confronted with the fact that the Suns were clearly superior and would win the series, many of them resorted to touting how many championships the Lakers franchise had accumulated over the years, making a point to say the Suns have yet to hoist the Larry O'Brien trophy.

How is that supposed to make the Lakers better than the Suns in 2007? The composition of teams in the NBA is never the same from year to year. The Lakers team that won the championship in 2002 was a completely different team than it is today (Kobe misses Shaq, now). Likewise, the Suns are not the same team they were last year, or the year before. It is absurd to imply that any team is more likely to beat another because of the amount of past championships their franchise has won.

Were the Seattle Supersonics more likely to win the championship this year than the Suns because they won the title in 1979? What about the defending champions, the Miami Heat? They were swept in the first round of the playoffs! What about the team they played in the 2006 finals, the Dallas Mavericks?

The Mavericks are a prime example of how, in the playoffs, anything can happen. The mighty Dallas Mavericks, who accumulated 67 wins during the regular season and had a front-runner MVP candidate in Dirk Nowitzki, were defeated in the first round by the 8th seeded Golden State Warriors, who had to go on a 9-1 run just to make it into the playoffs for the first time in 13 years! It was the biggest upset in NBA history. And for me, it was extremely gratifying to watch a one-legged Baron Davis will his scrappy team to an improbable (but obviously not impossible) victory over the Mavs.

The Suns proved in last year's Lakers series, that as long as there is one game left to play, there is ALWAYS a chance, past championships or not.

I expect the series between the Phoenix Suns and the San Antonio Spurs to be hard fought. And I predict the Phoenix Suns will emerge victorious in 6 games. The Spurs have past championships to tout, but they are irrelevant.

This is 2007. And the Suns will prove that they are the future of NBA basketball.