The Phoenix Suns have been wildly entertaining to watch this season. I am not sure if it is the brand of basketball they are playing or the lack of expectations coming in. My gut says it is both. While recent events have taken the wind out of the sails, it doesn’t take away from what we’ve experienced this season and how impactful this metamorphosis has been.
It feels like, as a fanbase, we’re coming out of a toxic relationship. The kind where emotional whiplash was the norm and mental anguish was the standard.
And that can mess with your perspective. When the next situation feels healthier, when effort and affection show up consistently, you start wondering if you are being fooled by it. You wonder if it is too good to be true.
I do not think that is what this is.
This team entered the season with no real expectations. I thought 35 wins was the ceiling. I accepted this as a transition year, not a transformational one. And yet, they have been a surprise, not only in the results but in the way they play. This team is built on defense. On effort. On waves of energy that keep coming. They look like they enjoy playing together. And while fan bases across the league are irritated by their teams, I find myself struggling to come up with much that frustrates me here. Outside of dead cap space, I am pretty content. Oh, and stupid fucking injuries.
I can honestly say this is one of the most enjoyable Suns teams I have watched in my 35+ years as a fan. I admire the effort. I love the identity. I love that opposing fans do not want to see Phoenix on the schedule because of the toughness, the relentlessness, the connectivity. You hear it constantly. Other fan bases are pointing out pieces of what the Suns do and wishing their team had the same edge.
Mix that with the absence of expectations and the emotional residue of the last two miserable seasons, and it puts this group in a very specific place in Suns history.
So I figured I would offer some weekend reading. Something personal. These are my favorite Suns teams. Not necessarily “the best” or “the greatest”. I’m not writing this to incite debate. Experiencing a team is personal. How you process the events surrounding a team depends on where you are in life when it happens. The memories attached to it matter as much as the wins. So this isn’t a list that is right or wrong. It is simply my favorite teams in Suns’ history.
So let’s begin.
Honorable Mention: 1992-93
I would be remiss if I did not include the 1992-93 Phoenix Suns, because they were truly transformational. That team arrived at the exact moment the franchise was reinventing itself. New arena. New logo. New uniforms. The Sunburst era. Everything about it felt like a statement. And the results changed a Valley.
They are not in my top five favorite teams to watch, and that has nothing to do with what they meant to the city. It has everything to do with where I was in my life.
I was ten years old when they made that run to the Finals. Everyone in Phoenix felt it. I did not. I was living in Simi Valley, California at the time. I admired them from a distance. I knew they were special, but I did not experience the day-to-day pull of that season the way Phoenicians did.
What I do know is this: that team was generational. They set the tone. They carried the franchise to a new place and planted the seed for my fandom.
When I moved back to Phoenix about a year and a half later, that run was still in the air. It was the foundation. And even from afar, it made an impression that never really went away.
#5: 2009-10
This team was special because it felt like the final breath of an era. By the time the 2009-10 season rolled around, it was clear the Seven Seconds or Less Suns had changed basketball forever, but they were also running on borrowed time. This was the death rattle, and it was an enjoyable one.
At that point in my life, I had taken on a supervisory role at a local resort and was neck deep in the world of recreational management. Life was busy. Managing people and processes can be depleting, and I spent many a night at home with a teeth-cracking cold beer. The Suns were still my escape.
And that team delivered. Grant Hill played the stabilizer. Steve Nash kept turning everyone around him into a better version of themselves. Jason Richardson gave them a high-flying release valve. The Suns were continuing to modernize the NBA with Channing Frye stretching the floor at the five.
What made that season hit was not perfection. It was a revival. After missing the playoffs the year before, it felt like the Suns were back where they belonged. We all knew it was nearing the end. Nash’s back was a ticking clock. But that made every moment louder. Beating Portland in the first round felt cathartic. Sweeping the Spurs in the Western Conference semifinals felt like an exorcism. I took my mom to Game 1 of that series, and I still have the shirt. That memory is burned in.
Losing in six games in the Western Conference finals hurt, but that team was a joy because of how connected they were. Every night, someone different stepped up. You never knew who the hero would be. You only knew there would be one.
#4: 1994-95
This team will always have a special place in my heart because it is the one that greeted me when I moved back to Phoenix in January of 1995. It was the first time I could watch the Suns locally on UPN, hear those iconic intros, and listen to a broadcaster whose voice rivaled my all-time favorite, Vin Scully. It was the first time in my life I got to hear Al McCoy on a regular basis, and like most Suns fans, I fell hard for the way he narrated the game. Thoughtful. Dramatic. Respectful of the moment. That voice wrapped itself around an era.
It also lined up with a massive shift in my own life. That was my first time attending public school. Before that, my upbringing was, to put it kindly, unconventional. Catholic school in the San Fernando Valley, then bouncing between second and fifth grade at a place called the DeMontfort Academy, a K through 12 school with about 30 students operating out of a house in Moorpark. Yes, it felt exactly as strange as it sounds. Catechism memorization. Then homeschooling. Then Canoga Park. And finally, Phoenix.
So my true baptism into the Valley of the Sun came at Creighton Middle School. Lunch hours on the blacktop. Talking hoops with classmates who were becoming friends in real time. I will never forget the first time I was called on in class. Conditioned by my previous school, I stood up to answer. Everyone laughed. What they did not laugh about was the Suns.
That team hooked us all. Wesley Person as the rookie. Elliott Perry and them socks. It’s funny how those role players became your favorites. It was a group that finished 59-23 and felt unstoppable.
And then came the gut punch. Losing in seven games to the Houston Rockets, a six seed, in a series that crushed expectations and broke hearts.
That was my initiation. The highs. The belief. The devastation. That season hardwired a lot of what Suns fandom means to me, and in many ways, it shaped how I experience this team to this day.
#3: 2021-22
That 64-win team was one of the most enjoyable Suns teams I have ever experienced, and a big part of that is how I watched it. By then, I was covering the team nightly. Doing a podcast after every single game. Living in the details. Watching them suffocate opponents and control games with a kind of quiet cruelty that I admired and talked about constantly.
I was more critical, sure. That comes with age. I was 39 during that season, not a kid anymore, and cynicism crept in when you have seen enough basketball to know how fragile it all is. But that season was pure joy. It was fun. It was validating. I was becoming more immersed as a writer at Bright Side. The podcast audience was growing after the Finals run the year before. Everything felt like it was building.
Being that close to the team made it hit differently. Every win felt earned. Every adjustment mattered. And that is why the ending hurt the way it did.
1995 broke my heart. 2022 ripped out my soul.
#2: 2004-05
I spent almost the entire calendar year of 2004 stationed at Camp Casey in South Korea in a tanking battalion. I was 22 years old, halfway across the world, and learning who I was whether I wanted to or not. It was my first time that far from home, and the emotional swings that come with that hit hard. Add in the fact that I was an Army cook, and I worked my ass off that year. We were undermanned, living and breathing all day action.
In a normal Army dining facility, you have shifts. Morning. Night. Sometimes a mid. Not in Korea. One shift. Every day. Up at four in the morning. Back to the barracks around seven at night if you were lucky. When you are in the field for two months, freezing your ass off in 10° weather, huddled around a mobile burner unit, you learn a lot about yourself. You learn whether you can take it. I learned that if I am going to be somewhere anyway, I might as well get the job done and have a good time doing it.
One of my good friends over there was a massive Pistons fan, and we talked basketball nonstop as Detroit marched toward a title. The 2003-04 season was his year. For me, that stretch changed how I looked at basketball. First, it became my anchor. My hope. The thing I looked forward to every day. Second, because of the time difference. Games were usually on during brunch our time. So after prepping lunch, I could sit down and watch basketball for an hour or two. That is where the 2004-05 season began for me.
I was in Korea until December 2004, so I caught the first two months of that season as the Suns started flipping the sport on its head. During my time there, they went 18-3. After a 29-53 season the year before, that run felt like oxygen. Everyone knew I was from Phoenix. I wore it on my hat. I am not subtle. And for once, I got to enjoy it without the jokes.
When I came back stateside, I was stationed at Fort Huachuca, a couple hours south of Phoenix. After being gone that long, it felt unreal. Weekends at home. Bars with friends. Watching this team together. Experiencing that season at that age, with that freedom, made it even better.
We all know how it ended. Joe Johnson’s orbital bone fracture still makes me wince, and Jerry Stackhouse will never be my guy. But what basketball meant to me in that moment of my life, what that team represented while I was figuring myself out halfway around the world, that is something I will never forget. That season was more than wins and losses. It was a lifeline.
#1: 2020-21
Recency bias, sure. Guilty as charged. But that Finals run was one of the most fun experiences of my life, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. It also lined up with a really specific moment for me personally. That was when I truly started covering the team, interacting with the fan base in a way I never had before. Watching games at bars in your twenties with friends is one thing. Living it nightly as a writer, podcaster, and content creator during a run like that is something else entirely.
You also have to remember the timing. We were crawling out of our respective holes after surviving the COVID quarantine. Life was opening back up. Games were back. People were back. Energy was back. It felt like the world was breathing again.
Doing live postgame podcasts with Dave King, Greg Esposito, and Saul Bookman at the Chupacabra in Mesa during the playoffs was unreal. Loud. Chaotic. Joyful. Then the Finals. Being in the building because my saint of a mother bought tickets for me, my brother, my brother-in-law, and my wife. Seeing Dave, seeing my friends Paul and Justin from Fanning the Flames, Greg, Saul, Flex from Jersey. It felt like we were all standing on the edge of something together.
I was at Game 2. The last win of that run. We know how it ended. That part still hurts. But you cannot take those memories away. The Valley jerseys debuted. Everything felt new. It felt like a rebirth, like 1993 all over again.
That team sits at the top of my list. Not only because they were successful, but because it was unexpected. Because of the people I met. Because many of them are now close friends. And because of those we have lost. I will always be grateful for the chance to have this platform, to write freely, honestly, and with care. Every time I hit publish, I am doing it with the intention of honoring the trust that was placed in me, and the foundation that made this space what it is.
The book is not written yet for the 2025-26 Suns. The chapters are unfinished. We do not know where this season lands, how it ends, or what it will mean to us a month from now or ten years down the road. All of that is still blank space.
What I do know is this team is moving toward breaking into this list. And it is not only because of what they are doing, but how they are doing it. It is the way they play. The way they compete. The way this community is experiencing it together. Go look around the league. Scroll through other boards. Nobody is happy. Everybody is miserable. Everybody is mad at their team.
But us. We are enjoying this. We are leaning into it. It feels earned. And nobody gets to take that away.
We will see what memories this season gives us in time. But I am thankful we are here, because there was a point not long ago where I did not know if I would ever feel this again. A season that makes you sit down while it is raining outside and write something that runs way too long, simply because it matters.
So now I ask you: what are your favorite Suns’ teams? And more importantly…why?
