However these playoffs end, I’d probably do it again

As I write this, the Phoenix Suns seem to be an extended shot to win the NBA Championship in 2024.

The sequence with the Minnesota Timberwolves isn’t over, however the Suns look outdated, sluggish, and disorganized. And even within the occasion of a comeback, it appears arduous to ascertain this Suns workforce beating any of the opposite elite groups, together with the Denver Nuggets.

Naturally, many followers are trying not ahead, however again. Again on the street not taken. The alternate actuality. The one by which the Suns didn’t execute a blockbuster commerce on Feb. 2023, sending the beloved Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson to the Brooklyn Nets for Kevin Durant.

And even perhaps a world by which the Suns didn’t half methods with Deandre Ayton, the franchise’s solely #1 total choose in historical past, after they packed him off to the Portland Trailblazers in September of final yr in a deal that largely landed them Grayson Allen and Jusuf Nurkic.

It’s arduous in charge a fan for being a revisionist underneath these circumstances. The long run appeared shiny earlier than the KD deal, didn’t it? In any case, that was a core that had come near successful an NBA title not way back. And now the longer term appears to be like restricted, given Durant’s advancing age.

However I’ll say what might shock some: I might most likely take the identical path once more. Why? That sounds silly, doesn’t it?

Effectively, actually, I’ll grant it could. However I’m personally loving (most) of the daring actions taken since Robert Sarver gave method as proprietor to Mat Ishbia. Now not is that this the do-nothing franchise, the workforce afraid to take an actual large cash threat, the workforce that merely accepts its standing as a mid-market additionally ran and hopes to have the ability to contend each few years.

No. This can be a bolder Suns that was keen to roll the cube on a high-risk/high-reward sequence of strikes it knew wouldn’t be common with a large chunk of followers. That noticed an opportunity to deliver an all-time prime scorer to Phoenix and jumped regardless of the price.

It could be true that standing pat, operating it again, making an attempt to develop the “core” Suns into one thing past what they’d been was the protected selection. An untestable speculation is that it could have been the proper selection.

I hope this isn’t the top for the 2024 Suns. I hope they will discover one other gear and make a deep playoff run. I actually do.

However even when not, I gained’t want they’d performed it protected. Fortune will favor the daring. Finally. I’ve to imagine that.