The Phoenix Suns fan base feels like a cracked glass held together by hope and duct tape. There’s a low buzz in the desert air, a kind of restrained curiosity as the 2025-26 season tiptoes closer. Excitement
feels dangerous now. We’ve been here before, standing in the same spot, hearts patched with the residue of unmet expectations and playoff hangovers.
Every fan’s confidence looks like it’s been through a few bar fights. We say we’re ready for another season, but deep down, everyone’s still nursing the bruises from the last one.
Last season felt like a long dental appointment that never ended. The energy was foul from tip to buzzer. Even when things went right, no one celebrated. It was businesslike, transactional, like watching someone fix a leaky pipe in your ceiling while you wait for the next one to burst. Wins came with a sigh instead of a roar.
The collective fan psyche has spent months trying to bury those memories somewhere between a good Kentucky bourbon and denial, but the ghost of last season won’t shut up.
Netflix made sure of that. Their new documentary, Starting 5, drops today, giving one final encore to the chaos.
Among its subjects is Kevin Durant, the team’s resident flamethrower and philosopher, the best scorer on the roster and maybe the most fascinating enigma in the league. The cameras followed him through the turbulence, and if there’s one thing guaranteed, it’s that Durant’s presence will make this thing worth watching. The show might pull the curtain back on the dysfunction, or it might remind everyone why this team keeps luring us back, no matter how bruised the ride gets.
I haven’t watched the documentary yet, obviously, because it dropped only a few hours ago, but you know I will. I have to brace for it, like a soldier stepping back onto a battlefield where the spirits still linger. I have to prepare to be hurt again. Prepare to relive the slow-motion car crash that was last season. Prepare to see the organization, maybe deservedly, dragged through the mud while the cameras replay the awkward, desperate attempt to ship Durant out of town last February.
Maybe watching it will help me purge some of that lingering pain. Maybe this will be the ritual goodbye to a season, and an era, that collapsed under its own weight. Maybe I’ll even learn something about Durant, the artist in the eye of the storm, the guy who somehow manages to be both the calm and the chaos. Maybe.
I have zero doubt Durant will come out of this thing looking like a misunderstood genius draped in wisdom and filtered lighting. These documentaries aren’t built to inform, they’re built to sell. They’re glossy, high-definition PR campaigns disguised as storytelling. Every frame is negotiated, every angle approved. No player signs off on something like Starting 5 without their handlers vetting every last syllable.
It’s one of the weird flaws of the modern sports documentary: the illusion of honesty wrapped in production value. The storylines are massaged, the villains are softened, and the truth gets airbrushed until it looks like brand synergy. So, as I gear up to watch it over the next few days, I’m preparing for that, too.
I keep wondering what they’ll actually show us. Will we see Durant in the gym, dripping sweat, chasing ghosts of greatness? Will we see him jawing with teammates, scheming with the coach, trying to keep the ship from sinking? Will they show that, less than an hour before he dropped his 35,000th career point, he was in my DMs calling my podcast trash and me a clown? That’s the Durant I know. The artist and the assassin, always online, always tuned in to the noise. I wonder if they’ll show him as a leader, as a friend, as a man trying to make sense of it all.
If you’re planning to watch Starting 5, do yourself a favor. Take it in, then seal it off. Don’t let it bleed into this season. File it away in the back corner of your Suns fandom, the one labeled “emotional residue.” Because there’s a new season coming, one that feels lighter. The payroll’s smaller, the expectations are reasonable, and the roster finally looks hungry again. A little younger, a little tougher, maybe even a little mean. Everything the Starting 5 version of this team probably won’t show, but everything the real Suns might finally become.
