The Phoenix Suns are an American professional basketball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. The Suns compete in the National Basketball Association, as a member of the league’s Western Conference Pacific Division. The franchise began play in 1968 as an expansion team, and their early years were shrouded in mediocrity. In the 1970s, the Suns reached the 1976 NBA Finals, in what is considered to be one of the biggest upsets in NBA history.
About Phoenix Suns in brief
The Phoenix Suns are an American professional basketball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. The Suns compete in the National Basketball Association, as a member of the league’s Western Conference Pacific Division. The franchise began play in 1968 as an expansion team, and their early years were shrouded in mediocrity. In the 1970s, the Suns reached the 1976 NBA Finals, in what is considered to be one of the biggest upsets in NBA history. The team would rebuild around Walter Davis for a majority of the 1980s, until the acquisition of Kevin Johnson in 1988. Under Johnson, and after trading for perennial NBA All-Star Charles Barkley, they reached the playoffs for a franchise-record thirteen consecutive appearances. However, the team would again fail to win a championship, and entered into another period of mediocre until the early part of the 2000s. In 2004, they reacquired Steve Nash, and immediately returned into playoff contention. With Nash, Shawn Marion, and Amar’e Stoudemire, they became renowned worldwide for their quick, dynamic offense, which led them to tie a franchise record in wins in the 2004–05 season. They own the NBA’s seventh-best all-time winning percentage, and have the second highest winning percentage of any teams to have never won an NBA championship. 10 Hall of Famers have played for Phoenix, while two Suns, Barkley and Nash, have won the NBA Most Valuable Player award while playing for the team. They were the first major professional sports franchise in the Phoenix market and in the entire state of Arizona, and remained the only one for the better part of 20 years until the Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League relocated from St.
Louis in 1988 to Arizona. They are the only team in the state to use ‘Phoenix’ instead of ‘Arizona’ as its geographical identifier. Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks have always used the state as its identifier. The NBA Board of Governors granted franchises to Phoenix and Milwaukee on January 22, 1968 with an entry fee of USD 2 million. There were many critics, including then-NBA commissioner J. Walter Kennedy, who said that Phoenix was ‘too hot, too small, and too far away’ to be considered a successful NBA market. This was despite the fact that the Phoenix metropolitan area was growing rapidly, and the Suns would have built-in geographical foes in places like in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. The Suns played its first 24 seasons at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, called the \”Madhouse on McDowell\”, located slightly northwest of downtown Phoenix. The first Suns’ pickups were future Hall of Famer Gail Goodrich, Dick Van Arsdale, Jerry Colangelo, and future NBA Hall of Fame coach Mike D’Antoni. In the 1968 NBA Expansion Draft, they were disappointed with the results, with the team paying 5,000 to a local artist to design the team’s logo for a mere USD 200; this was after the team paid $2 million.
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