1st Round: LAL with hobbled AD 2nd Round: DEN without Jamaal Murray 3rd Round: LAC without Kawhi Finals: Potentially no Giannis or even Trae Young! Want a ring for CP3 but no way they get past LAC with Kawhi or a healthy Lakers team. ALSO healthy BKN dominates everyone so this entire playoffs is an asterisk.
You play who's in front of you. Injuries are part of the game. Always has been. The suns absolutely earned the right to be in the NBA finals. That's damn good team with so many boxes checked in being a true contender The asterisk talk is for losers, always has been
Should we list all the broken point guards that Gold States went by on their way to their 1st championship in the end. . . no one cares Rocket River
they did…this is 1 of the most fortunate playoff runs I’ve ever seen a team have, and after all that injury blessing in the West, they could be playing the Hawks or Bucks without Giannis in the finals (he has no structural damage, but I haven’t seen it confirmed how long he’ll be out)
Every team that has ever won a title needed a certain amount of luck for it to happen. BUT, If Phoenix goes all the way they would probably rank pretty highly on the list of title teams who benefited from the most luck to win it.
The Suns had the second best record during the regular season, an equivalent of 59 wins. They won 12 out of 16 games in the WC playoffs. They beat a Clippers team in 6 games that defeated the #1 seed in games 5 and 6 of the previous round. Might the Clippers have won this series with Kawhi, rather than losing in 6 games? Yeah, maybe. Or maybe not, if CP3 was healthy all series as well. Arguing over hypotheticals is pointless, in any case. Injuries are part of the game and luck is part of the game. Pretty much every champion has won with some luck on their side.
Its simple. I don't hate the Suns enough to asterisk them. I hated the Warriors enough to asterisk them in 2015.
We looking salty.. The rockets didn’t play the bulls with MJ in finals.. so we got lucky right? doesn’t work like that. If they win, they earned it. Everyone needs luck on their side
All it takes is a little luck....everyone championship team in all sports experienced some "luck." ...shoot we were "lucky" Jordan was retired during our chip run
People don’t take care of themselves.. luck is 90% preparation 10% timing. He even played with torn ligaments and dropped 41 - 27 in the second half. F -Off!
The Suns got lucky Harden is a quitter who could not coexist with one of the best point guards of all time...
No one in this year's playoffs was lucky. Not like last year where the Lakers got all kinds of breaks while suffering no losses.
The same was said about Rockets when CP3 went down. What happened next year with healthy CP3 and Harden?! There is no certainty in NBA whether players are healthy or injured. Besides, CP3 was also out 2 games against LAC where the Suns won both. So your theory is moot.
You need to put an asterisk to the championship every year. And depth is part of being a good team. Not dropping off too much in the face of key injuries deserve to win.
Luck is part of it. I truly believe the 93-95' Rockets could beat the Bulls, but had they ran into those scheming illegal defense mofos from Seattle, they don't even get to the finals. That's the way it goes.
For starters, I doubt the Suns care that they're in the Finals. People can cry all they want, but the record books are going to show that the Suns made it to the Finals (at the very least). Secondly, I think you can argue that the Suns never had the best player on the floor in any of the 3 series that they won. LeBron, Jokic and PG are all individually better than CP3 or Booker or Ayton. It's not like the Suns cakewalked their way through 3 garbage teams on their way to the Finals. Aside from the Lakers series, the Suns always got the other teams' best effort. Sure, Murray and Kawhi were out, but Jokic and PG gave it their all, and the Suns beat them. LeBron basically folded when things didn't go his way. Asterisk it all you want. The Suns are in the Finals for the first time since 1993, and that's a fact.
