If the Suns win out, is this the most impressive regular season by a team ever?

[wagexslave]

IF the Suns manage to win out, is this the greatest regular season by any team ever? Serious question. If you actually pay attention and look at what they've done this season, acknowledging the adversity it took fighting through to rack up these wins, then they probably have a stronger case for #1 than you might think.

Of course, I'm aware that winning out wouldn't even give them a top 3 record of all time. It would only give them 68 wins which would be a tie for the 5th best record of all time. But as far as I'm aware, none of the other teams who had more wins in a season had to go through even CLOSE to the same level of BS and adversity the Suns have had to put up with this season. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me. But I don't recall anything remotely like this year's Suns.

But right off the rip, the Suns(and ofc Bucks too) came into this season experiencing the 2nd shortest offseason in NBA history. Only the bubble Lakers/Heat had a shorter offseason. But at least those 2 teams had already gotten a fat break from the COVID season cancellation. And let's not forget that last year's regular season and even playoffs were condensed af compared to usual, playing so many more b2b's and less rest every week, so these players have been on the f*cking GRIND.

On top of that, Booker and McGee spent most of that offseason in Tokyo competing for a gold medal. Those 2 dudes have gotten damn near 0 free time to rest and enjoy life, family, vacation, etc ever since last season. The team in general did not look like they were ready for the short af offseason to end. And it showed in their play the first handful of games. They looked like a shell of their former(and current) selves, dropping to 1-3. Which is kind of crazy when you think about it... 3 of their 14 losses were in the first 4 games and easily could have been attributed to the burnout that this weird ass grindy couple of seasons have caused.

Then you gotta take into account all of the injuries and COVID bs the Suns had to deal with this season. According to Man-Games Lost (https://www.mangameslost.com/category/nba/), as of March 18th this is how their leaguewide chart stands:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOKHMlKXsAQZSPP?format=png

With the Suns never-ending list of quality starters, rotation players, even MVP candidates etc constantly missing games due to injury, the fact that the Suns have managed to keep any semblance of consistency should be considered a miracle. In terms of flat out players missing games, the Suns were/are 6th in the league. And in terms of the actual value that those players contribute on the court over the value their backup replacements provide(aka their VORP stat), the Suns are 3rd in the league in missed talent on average this season according to these calculations.

Which makes sense, because damn near EVERYONE on the entire team(aside from Mikal Bridges who's still never missed a game in his career, god bless his soul) has missed decent chunks of time due to either injuries or COVID. Even Coach Monty and various other members of the coaching staff have been out at times. We just barely got Chris Paul back yesterday from that torn thumb ligament, he'd been out about a month and a half. Our 6MOTY/MIP candidate, aka arguably best 3pt shooter in the league this year, Cam Johnson is still out ever since he had that insane 38 point game with no Booker or CP3 playing, where he hit that Buzzer Beater 3pt game winner... like of course he has an amazing career game yet gets injured in the same game. Kaminsky was finally looking like he was having a breakout season and ofc he got injured early-on in the season and is still out. Saric has been dead cap since last season's NBA Finals where he tore his ACL. I can keep going... Payne, Crowder, Book, Ayton, Etc all missed significant stretches...

... Anyways you get the picture. I still don't understand how we've managed to rack up THIS many wins with all of the adversity this year. I've never seen anything quite like it. If anyone can think of another team that won 68 games or close with that many injuries and BS, let me know so I can give them the credit they deserve.

Feel free to dive into the team stats if you want to argue against/for them.. Best offensive team, 3rd best defensive team, best team in the 4th quarter/clutch, etc etc. Also feel free to make some comparisons to other past teams and lmk who you think they're the most similar to. Obviously they haven't won out yet, there's no guarantee they finish with a top 10 or even top 15 record.

And of course championship aspirations are the main goal for this team by far... but regular season or not, when this team has a chance to reach a historic amount of wins despite sub-optimal circumstances, I'd say that's worth discussing.

[warriorfan]

Fuming

[post]

72 lakers won 69 with elgin baylor missing 73 games but he was kind of cooked by that point

https://c.tenor.com/-oskncPea-kAAAAC/69-billy.gif

[SouBeachTalents]

Definitely not. Virtually all of the Western contenders have faced more significant injuries this year

Morant will miss 25 games
Klay & Dray have each missed half the season, Curry will miss nearly 20 games as well
Murray & Porter Jr. have missed basically the entire season
Kawhi's missed the entire season, PG's been out most of the year too
AD's missed half the season

The 2015 & '16 Warriors seasons were more impressive.

[TAZORAC]

Those loaded Golden State Warrior teams had the most impressive regular

[post]

72 lakers won 69 with elgin baylor missing 73 games but he was kind of cooked by that point

https://c.tenor.com/-oskncPea-kAAAAC/69-billy.gif

keith erickson missed 67 games so that's 140 between those 2

[post]

keith erickson missed 67 games so that's 140 between those 2

so lakers 6th and 7th guys in mpg missed 104 more games than suns 6th and 7th guys

suns starters missed 50 more games than lakers starters

saric and kaminsky are 9th and 10th guys off the bench so in some sense don't matter as much

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/35/9c/2b/359c2bb01dfb0435c0b26d8d8f8e9323.gif

[wagexslave]

saric and kaminsky are 9th and 10th guys off the bench so in some sense don't matter as much


Yeah Saric was never quite the same ever since he came back from COVID last season. He was pretty much our 6th man early that season, then he got that bad case of COVID, took quite a while to recover, then played like a shell of himself when he got back. Idk what COVID did to that man's body, but it must not have been fun. Then when he was finally starting to show some flashes of getting back to his old self, but then immediately he tore his ACL in game 1 of the NBA Finals. Felt bad that I had already been giving up.

But by far the worst part about his ACL tear was the timing of it... we went from not needing what he brought to the table all playoffs up to that point, then suddenly having to face the Bucks. Became obvious quick that we desperately missed at times. Would have matched up way better with him coming off the bench for Ayton in that Finals series... resorting to laying small ball SF centers against the Bucks was a recipe for disaster. Every time Ayton sat out we had 0 rebounding or defense in the paint. Kaminsky the traffic cone lacked the defensive IQ, rebounding, and footwork necessary against the Bucks to not get decimated.

Who would have thouht that there would actually be a series where even a post-COVID Saric might have actually been enough to help, if at the very least to let Ayton rest a bit longer, grab a few boards where we couldn't get any, get a stop or 2 and make just enough of a difference to swing a very close game into our favor in comparison... And of course we ended up losing multiple extremely close games in that series where our biggest hole was getting decimated in the paint/boards badly every time Ayton sat. lol Welp. Really wish James Jones traded for McGee a year earlier, instead McGee wasted away getting no mins on Denver's bench. :cry:


Really felt bad for Kaminsky this season though, dude must be cursed... we re-signed him for a minimum deal with lower expectations for him than ever since McGee was there now. Ayton ended up going out early in the season and Frank got an unexpected chance to play.... and he actually played damn good! Dude was dropping multiple career highs, like some Franksanity shit 25 points here, 28 there, 31 here. Shooting way better percentage, playing a bit more like a real big, and even doing all types of smooth post moves and stuff I've never seen him do in my life. There was even articles written about how he was going to be a most improved player finalist (https://valleyofthesuns.com/2021/11/11/phoenix-suns-frank-kaminsky-improved-player-finalist/)... and of course he gets injured right after that and has been out since. :facepalm Sad.

[wagexslave]

Those loaded Golden State Warrior teams had the most impressive regular

Ye even if my Suns win out, which probably isn't very likely, I'll still most likely still consider the 73 win GSW season the most impressive reg season, regardless of the fact they lost in the Playoffs. They had some insane win streaks, and just seeing single digit losses on an entire season still looks ridiculous.

[meat]

72 lakers won 69 with elgin baylor missing 73 games but he was kind of cooked by that point

https://c.tenor.com/-oskncPea-kAAAAC/69-billy.gif

Elgin Baylor didn't miss games. He retired 9 games into the season.

[Shogon]

IF the Suns manage to win out, is this the greatest regular season by any team ever? Serious question. If you actually pay attention and look at what they've done this season, acknowledging the adversity it took fighting through to rack up these wins, then they probably have a stronger case for #1 than you might think.

Of course, I'm aware that winning out wouldn't even give them a top 3 record of all time. It would only give them 68 wins which would be a tie for the 5th best record of all time. But as far as I'm aware, none of the other teams who had more wins in a season had to go through even CLOSE to the same level of BS and adversity the Suns have had to put up with this season. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me. But I don't recall anything remotely like this year's Suns.

But right off the rip, the Suns(and ofc Bucks too) came into this season experiencing the 2nd shortest offseason in NBA history. Only the bubble Lakers/Heat had a shorter offseason. But at least those 2 teams had already gotten a fat break from the COVID season cancellation. And let's not forget that last year's regular season and even playoffs were condensed af compared to usual, playing so many more b2b's and less rest every week, so these players have been on the f*cking GRIND.

On top of that, Booker and McGee spent most of that offseason in Tokyo competing for a gold medal. Those 2 dudes have gotten damn near 0 free time to rest and enjoy life, family, vacation, etc ever since last season. The team in general did not look like they were ready for the short af offseason to end. And it showed in their play the first handful of games. They looked like a shell of their former(and current) selves, dropping to 1-3. Which is kind of crazy when you think about it... 3 of their 14 losses were in the first 4 games and easily could have been attributed to the burnout that this weird ass grindy couple of seasons have caused.

Then you gotta take into account all of the injuries and COVID bs the Suns had to deal with this season. According to Man-Games Lost (https://www.mangameslost.com/category/nba/), as of March 18th this is how their leaguewide chart stands:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOKHMlKXsAQZSPP?format=png

With the Suns never-ending list of quality starters, rotation players, even MVP candidates etc constantly missing games due to injury, the fact that the Suns have managed to keep any semblance of consistency should be considered a miracle. In terms of flat out players missing games, the Suns were/are 6th in the league. And in terms of the actual value that those players contribute on the court over the value their backup replacements provide(aka their VORP stat), the Suns are 3rd in the league in missed talent on average this season according to these calculations.

Which makes sense, because damn near EVERYONE on the entire team(aside from Mikal Bridges who's still never missed a game in his career, god bless his soul) has missed decent chunks of time due to either injuries or COVID. Even Coach Monty and various other members of the coaching staff have been out at times. We just barely got Chris Paul back yesterday from that torn thumb ligament, he'd been out about a month and a half. Our 6MOTY/MIP candidate, aka arguably best 3pt shooter in the league this year, Cam Johnson is still out ever since he had that insane 38 point game with no Booker or CP3 playing, where he hit that Buzzer Beater 3pt game winner... like of course he has an amazing career game yet gets injured in the same game. Kaminsky was finally looking like he was having a breakout season and ofc he got injured early-on in the season and is still out. Saric has been dead cap since last season's NBA Finals where he tore his ACL. I can keep going... Payne, Crowder, Book, Ayton, Etc all missed significant stretches...

... Anyways you get the picture. I still don't understand how we've managed to rack up THIS many wins with all of the adversity this year. I've never seen anything quite like it. If anyone can think of another team that won 68 games or close with that many injuries and BS, let me know so I can give them the credit they deserve.

Feel free to dive into the team stats if you want to argue against/for them.. Best offensive team, 3rd best defensive team, best team in the 4th quarter/clutch, etc etc. Also feel free to make some comparisons to other past teams and lmk who you think they're the most similar to. Obviously they haven't won out yet, there's no guarantee they finish with a top 10 or even top 15 record.

And of course championship aspirations are the main goal for this team by far... but regular season or not, when this team has a chance to reach a historic amount of wins despite sub-optimal circumstances, I'd say that's worth discussing.

https://i.postimg.cc/SspzJm2n/lol.jpg

[GimmeThat]

no, but it's great for the popularity and the health of the sport. they're like the Wendy's of fast food franchises.

[FireDavidKahn]

73 win Warriors were the greatest regular season team ever.

[Bronbron23]

IF the Suns manage to win out, is this the greatest regular season by any team ever? Serious question. If you actually pay attention and look at what they've done this season, acknowledging the adversity it took fighting through to rack up these wins, then they probably have a stronger case for #1 than you might think.

Of course, I'm aware that winning out wouldn't even give them a top 3 record of all time. It would only give them 68 wins which would be a tie for the 5th best record of all time. But as far as I'm aware, none of the other teams who had more wins in a season had to go through even CLOSE to the same level of BS and adversity the Suns have had to put up with this season. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me. But I don't recall anything remotely like this year's Suns.

But right off the rip, the Suns(and ofc Bucks too) came into this season experiencing the 2nd shortest offseason in NBA history. Only the bubble Lakers/Heat had a shorter offseason. But at least those 2 teams had already gotten a fat break from the COVID season cancellation. And let's not forget that last year's regular season and even playoffs were condensed af compared to usual, playing so many more b2b's and less rest every week, so these players have been on the f*cking GRIND.

On top of that, Booker and McGee spent most of that offseason in Tokyo competing for a gold medal. Those 2 dudes have gotten damn near 0 free time to rest and enjoy life, family, vacation, etc ever since last season. The team in general did not look like they were ready for the short af offseason to end. And it showed in their play the first handful of games. They looked like a shell of their former(and current) selves, dropping to 1-3. Which is kind of crazy when you think about it... 3 of their 14 losses were in the first 4 games and easily could have been attributed to the burnout that this weird ass grindy couple of seasons have caused.

Then you gotta take into account all of the injuries and COVID bs the Suns had to deal with this season. According to Man-Games Lost (https://www.mangameslost.com/category/nba/), as of March 18th this is how their leaguewide chart stands:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOKHMlKXsAQZSPP?format=png

With the Suns never-ending list of quality starters, rotation players, even MVP candidates etc constantly missing games due to injury, the fact that the Suns have managed to keep any semblance of consistency should be considered a miracle. In terms of flat out players missing games, the Suns were/are 6th in the league. And in terms of the actual value that those players contribute on the court over the value their backup replacements provide(aka their VORP stat), the Suns are 3rd in the league in missed talent on average this season according to these calculations.

Which makes sense, because damn near EVERYONE on the entire team(aside from Mikal Bridges who's still never missed a game in his career, god bless his soul) has missed decent chunks of time due to either injuries or COVID. Even Coach Monty and various other members of the coaching staff have been out at times. We just barely got Chris Paul back yesterday from that torn thumb ligament, he'd been out about a month and a half. Our 6MOTY/MIP candidate, aka arguably best 3pt shooter in the league this year, Cam Johnson is still out ever since he had that insane 38 point game with no Booker or CP3 playing, where he hit that Buzzer Beater 3pt game winner... like of course he has an amazing career game yet gets injured in the same game. Kaminsky was finally looking like he was having a breakout season and ofc he got injured early-on in the season and is still out. Saric has been dead cap since last season's NBA Finals where he tore his ACL. I can keep going... Payne, Crowder, Book, Ayton, Etc all missed significant stretches...

... Anyways you get the picture. I still don't understand how we've managed to rack up THIS many wins with all of the adversity this year. I've never seen anything quite like it. If anyone can think of another team that won 68 games or close with that many injuries and BS, let me know so I can give them the credit they deserve.

Feel free to dive into the team stats if you want to argue against/for them.. Best offensive team, 3rd best defensive team, best team in the 4th quarter/clutch, etc etc. Also feel free to make some comparisons to other past teams and lmk who you think they're the most similar to. Obviously they haven't won out yet, there's no guarantee they finish with a top 10 or even top 15 record.

And of course championship aspirations are the main goal for this team by far... but regular season or not, when this team has a chance to reach a historic amount of wins despite sub-optimal circumstances, I'd say that's worth discussing.

Definitely not. There were alot of injuries to key players on other teams. Who is the competition exactly in the west? Due to injuries this is probably the weakest the west has ever been. Lakers missing their 1b, clips missing their 1a and 1b, denver missing their 2nd best player. Warriors missed their 2nd best player for most of the season and he's still working his way back and jazz are overrated. The west sucks dude.

[guy]

It’s hard to say any regular season by a team in the past 10-15 years could be the most impressive since the regular season isn’t taken nearly as seriously anymore by teams in general. Teams care about getting into the playoffs but they don’t really care about seeding/home court advantage nearly as much anymore - some not at all. They care way more about fresh legs to the point that they also aren’t practicing as much anymore.

[ArbitraryWater]

It’s hard to say any regular season by a team in the past 10-15 years could be the most impressive since the regular season isn’t taken nearly as seriously anymore by teams in general. Teams care about getting into the playoffs but they don’t really care about seeding/home court advantage nearly as much anymore - some not at all. They care way more about fresh legs to the point that they also aren’t practicing as much anymore.

how long have you not been on ish? or posted?

[iamgine]

I think this is possible because Phoenix is a very deep team. One might be forgiven for thinking they're a top heavy team but in reality they shouldn't be considered top heavy at all. For example, one might think, if Booker gets sidelined along with his 30 points, Phoenix is in trouble. In reality, they are able to replace those points quite easily. Or when Ayton gets injured, they are able to replace what he brings quite easily.

This is unlike, say, Milwaukee. What Giannis brings, they have not been able to replace quite as easily.

[warriorfan]

https://i.postimg.cc/SspzJm2n/lol.jpg

:roll: :roll: :roll:

[SouBeachTalents]

It’s hard to say any regular season by a team in the past 10-15 years could be the most impressive since the regular season isn’t taken nearly as seriously anymore by teams in general. Teams care about getting into the playoffs but they don’t really care about seeding/home court advantage nearly as much anymore - some not at all. They care way more about fresh legs to the point that they also aren’t practicing as much anymore.
10-15 years? You think teams were doing the load managing you see today back in the late 2000's? You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about :oldlol:

[paksat]

Definitely not. There were alot of injuries to key players on other teams. Who is the competition exactly in the west? Due to injuries this is probably the weakest the west has ever been. Lakers missing their 1b, clips missing their 1a and 1b, denver missing their 2nd best player. Warriors missed their 2nd best player for most of the season and he's still working his way back and jazz are overrated. The west sucks dude.

lmao and lebronze still can't even make the playoffs

[guy]

10-15 years? You think teams were doing the load managing you see today back in the late 2000's? You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about :oldlol:

Ummm Shaq? The Spurs? They were doing this back then too. But thats why I gave it a range cause it wasn’t as common of a practice.

Either way, I wasn’t just referring to load management. Teams/players in general over the years have increasingly cared less and less about the regular season. Yes even in the 2000s. I dont know how anyone who has been watching for a long time could disagree with that. Not saying its the wrong approach, but that is the case.

And I didn’t even mention how much more open teams are to tanking and not trying to be better.

[wagexslave]

Definitely not. There were alot of injuries to key players on other teams. Who is the competition exactly in the west? Due to injuries this is probably the weakest the west has ever been. Lakers missing their 1b, clips missing their 1a and 1b, denver missing their 2nd best player. Warriors missed their 2nd best player for most of the season and he's still working his way back and jazz are overrated. The west sucks dude.

That is true. But what does it say about those teams if the Suns have, on average, been missing just as much if not more talent from their roster than a lot of those teams(except obviously the Clippers) yet have been able to do what they're doing? You can look at it both ways.

Overall I agree with your point though. It does hurt the Suns case.

I will say, I think if the Clips were healthy they'd be the Suns biggest nemesis this season. That is the biggest knock on this season in the West, the Clippers fans really have been robbed of what would probably be their greatest season/team ever. I would not be surprised if they were above the Grizzlies and within 5 games of the Suns actually giving us some competition for the #1 seed.

[wagexslave]

:roll: :roll: :roll:

Is this supposed to be funny? I don't get it. People on ISH used to rep their city in the location tag way more back in the day, is it considered goofy or some shit now? Like who tf cares lol

[wagexslave]

73 win Warriors were the greatest regular season team ever.

I agree. I think the Suns would have had to win a minimum of 70 games for the injury/adversity context to potentially make up the difference in total wins. It's been a good season for the Suns and if they win out, great. It would at least put them on the list which would be cool.

But it's going to be very difficult for any team to be considered better than the Warriors especially with less than 70 wins. And any argument in their favor would have to be a very strong argument in order to tip the scales against good old "Single digits in the loss column for the entire season"

It's going to be very tough for the Suns to win out anyways. I didn't realize they still have Philly, Memphis, Utah, and Golden State left on their schedule. And the Suns might want to start resting players a bit already, with the #1 seed locked in already. So we'll see if they start dropping some games or not.

[HylianNightmare]

No

[Kawhi_Why_Not]

2016 spurs only lost 1 game at home all season, 67 wins and a godlike net rating of +11.3 (suns are at 8.4 right now).

This was with Duncan missing over 20 games and averaging 8 points like an old grandpa bitch

Manu also missed 22 games and didn't even play 20 minutes a game

[Round Mound]

I wish the Suns would win the title especially for Chris Paul. Probably the last classical short PG.

[Kawhi_Why_Not]

Devin Booker has been underrated these past few years. Been playing like one of the greatest offensive players ever. 119 offensive rating with him on court this season even with offense being kind of down around the league this year.

But when your running mate is cp0rings, it's hard to cheer for you. Even jeff green was trying to fight chris Paul after the game earlier this week and had to be restrained from suns locker room.

You know you're a piece of shit when Jeff green hates you. Green is like the nicest guy I've ever seen

[post]

Yeah Saric was never quite the same ever since he came back from COVID last season. He was pretty much our 6th man early that season, then he got that bad case of COVID, took quite a while to recover, then played like a shell of himself when he got back. Idk what COVID did to that man's body, but it must not have been fun. Then when he was finally starting to show some flashes of getting back to his old self, but then immediately he tore his ACL in game 1 of the NBA Finals. Felt bad that I had already been giving up.

But by far the worst part about his ACL tear was the timing of it... we went from not needing what he brought to the table all playoffs up to that point, then suddenly having to face the Bucks. Became obvious quick that we desperately missed at times. Would have matched up way better with him coming off the bench for Ayton in that Finals series... resorting to laying small ball SF centers against the Bucks was a recipe for disaster. Every time Ayton sat out we had 0 rebounding or defense in the paint. Kaminsky the traffic cone lacked the defensive IQ, rebounding, and footwork necessary against the Bucks to not get decimated.

Who would have thouht that there would actually be a series where even a post-COVID Saric might have actually been enough to help, if at the very least to let Ayton rest a bit longer, grab a few boards where we couldn't get any, get a stop or 2 and make just enough of a difference to swing a very close game into our favor in comparison... And of course we ended up losing multiple extremely close games in that series where our biggest hole was getting decimated in the paint/boards badly every time Ayton sat. lol Welp. Really wish James Jones traded for McGee a year earlier, instead McGee wasted away getting no mins on Denver's bench. :cry:


Really felt bad for Kaminsky this season though, dude must be cursed... we re-signed him for a minimum deal with lower expectations for him than ever since McGee was there now. Ayton ended up going out early in the season and Frank got an unexpected chance to play.... and he actually played damn good! Dude was dropping multiple career highs, like some Franksanity shit 25 points here, 28 there, 31 here. Shooting way better percentage, playing a bit more like a real big, and even doing all types of smooth post moves and stuff I've never seen him do in my life. There was even articles written about how he was going to be a most improved player finalist (https://valleyofthesuns.com/2021/11/11/phoenix-suns-frank-kaminsky-improved-player-finalist/)... and of course he gets injured right after that and has been out since. :facepalm Sad.

suns lost game 4 by 6...turned it over 12 more times than bucks...kaminsky didn't play...saric probably not winning them that game

suns lost game 5 by 4...bucks were on fire shooting...no kaminsky...saric probably not winning them that game either

game 6 suns lost by 7...giannis in beast mode...kaminsky played...saric likely non factor again

[post]

Elgin Baylor didn't miss games. He retired 9 games into the season.

i know but he was playing injured and the coach wanted him to come off the bench and he refused so he quit

so they missed 73 games from their 6th man