Heartbreak Hotel. Al McCoy coined the phrase, and the Phoenix Suns have certainly lived inside its walls. From a coin flip in ‘68 to Paxson’s dagger in ‘93, from Robert Horry’s hip check to Giannis’ alley-oop, it feels like the key to that hotel has been permanently stamped with a purple and orange logo.
But how far have you been pushed? How close have you come to quitting the team altogether?
Sports have a way of pulling at the deepest corners of who we are. We pour time, energy, and entire pieces
of our identity into these franchises, hoping for glory and bracing for heartbreak. The shared experience with fellow fans keeps us tethered, but sometimes, when the losses pile too high, when the gut punches land too often, you reach a breaking point. You look in the mirror, shake your head, and think: I can’t do this anymore. I’m done.
I know because I’ve been there. I quit a team once. And while I’ll always glance at them from a distance, like an old flame you still check on through mutual friends, I swore I’d never connect to them the same way again. That team? The Buffalo Bills.
My mom grew up in Buffalo, leaving for Phoenix in the 1950s, but my grandfather never left Buffalo behind. Grandpa Charlie was a butcher, a World War II vet, and a man who bled red, white, and blue for the Bills. Some of my earliest sports memories are Thanksgiving weekends spent sprawled on the floor of his Arizona townhouse, watching those games with him. The Bills weren’t just football. They were family.
And for a while, they were glorious. In the late 80s, early 90s, it felt like destiny was coming. But you know the story. 30 for 30 immortalized it in Four Falls of Buffalo. Super Bowl XXV. 1991. Scott Norwood lines up a 47-yarder, and the ball sails wide right. My heart cracked open. I shed tears as a young lad. But fans are masochists by nature. We tape ourselves back together, pour another beer, and say, “Next year.”
And next year came. Jim Kelly slinging to Andre Reed. Thurman Thomas crashing up the middle. Daryl Talley in those Spider-Man sleeves. The Bills stormed to 13-3. Super Bowl XXVI. Washington. I remember grabbing the Sunday paper after church, reading every article about the matchup, and convincing myself this was the year. And then the Redskins carved them apart, 37-24.
Still, I came back. That’s what you do. The next season, they gave me the Miracle. Down big to Houston in the Wild Card, I stayed glued to the TV. If the Bills were going down, I was going with them. And then Frank Reich authored the greatest comeback in playoff history. 41-38. I felt reborn. Only to die again, weeks later, against Dallas. The hated Cowboys. The “Cow pies,” as my mother so eloquently called them. Final score: 52-17.
And still, another year. Another run. Another Super Bowl. Dallas again. Another beating. Four straight Super Bowl losses. All to teams from the NFC East. The football gods weren’t cruel. They were sadistic.
That was it. I broke. I couldn’t keep feeding my soul to the meat grinder. I quit the Bills. Swore them off. And even though I was living in greater Los Angeles at the time, I turned toward home. I was born in Phoenix, after all. So I latched onto the Phoenix Cardinals, a local team with no track record of success, but at least one that hadn’t shattered me yet.
The Cardinals became my team, and they still are. To this day, I refuse to watch highlights of Super Bowl XLIII. Too much pain. Too many echoes of Buffalo.
Do I still keep an eye on the Bills? Sure. Josh Allen has made them fun again, and I smile when they win. But that deep emotional tether? Gone. The scar tissue is too thick. Because once a team breaks you like that, once they carve out that piece of your youth and leave it bleeding, you never love them the same way again.
Has it ever gotten that bad for me with the Suns? Have I ever really thought about quitting them, walking away for good? I can name three moments that tested me. Three moments where the weight of heartbreak and frustration pressed so heavy on my chest that I wondered if I could keep going. None of them broke me completely, but they came close.
The first came in the summer of 1995 with the infamous ‘Kiss of Death’.
Mario Elie buried that corner three and blew a mocking kiss to the crowd, and with it, he shattered my 13-year-old heart. I’d never felt that kind of sports violence before, not from a ball arcing through the air and snapping the net. I remember launching the remote across the room, full strength, into the concrete floor. Plastic shattered. Spirit shattered.
That was supposed to be our year. No Michael Jordan in the way. The Suns were built to storm through Houston and crash the Finals. Instead, it ended with a smirk and a kiss. I walked away. I don’t remember much of the next season, maybe because life got loud. My parents divorced. I discovered freedom and BMX bikes, alleyways and mischief. But part of it was that the Suns had carved me too deep, and I had nothing left to give.
The second time came in 2007. The Robert Horry hip check.
Steve Nash was thrown into the scorer’s table, with chaos exploding on the sidelines. Two steps off the bench kind of chaos. And then David Stern dropped the hammer, suspending Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for daring to care. The Suns had won that game, but the punishment swung the series.
It felt less like basketball and more like a setup, a vendetta. The kind of moment that makes you mutter, “Why are we even playing these games if it’s already rigged?” That despair seeped into me. The Suns weren’t just fighting opponents. They were fighting the league itself.
Still, I couldn’t quit. I came back the next season, bruised but faithful.
And the third? That one still stings. Two seasons ago, the Suns won a franchise-record 64 games. They looked invincible…until Game 7 against Dallas.
By the middle of the second quarter, you knew it was over. The collapse wasn’t gradual; it was an avalanche. As someone who had been writing, podcasting, and pouring hours into covering this team, I felt gutted. Hollowed out. That loss was cruel in its own right, but it carried an even deeper weight. Two months later, my father passed away. That blowout against Dallas was the last Suns game he ever saw. In a way, he quit where I never could. And I carried that loss with me, both of them intertwined. The end of a season and the end of an era in my life.
But here’s the thing about sports: you always recover. You don’t know how, but you do. The offseason heals.
Even this past year, when the season ended on April 13, I stood up at The Backyard at Desert Ridge, surrounded by Suns fans, and clapped. Clapped like a man baptized by exhaustion. Praise be to God, that cursed season was finally over. I swore then I wouldn’t let myself get excited again. But four months later, I can feel it. The tingling in the chest. The anticipation in the fingertips. The flicker of hope that refuses to die.
Maybe absence does make the heart grow fonder. Maybe it’s pure madness. But I know this: I can’t quit this team. I’ve tried, I’ve wanted to, I’ve walked right up to the edge. And still, the Suns pull me back. They always will.
How close have you come?
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