I casually followed the score until the start of the fourth quarter, when I turned on the television, so I saw the same meltdown everyone else did. It's just sad.
I had a thought, which I suppose is obvious, but for what it's worth: Since Booker is the only player who's been on the team for more than a year, he's the only one with any connection to the Suns' history. It isn't just that he's the only one who played in the 2021 Finals or suffered the Game 7 Mavericks blowout, but that he's the only one with any reason to care. For all the rest of these guys, the Suns were just another team that didn't win the last few years.
So you put them all together, and where is their passion supposed to come from? They aren't joining the "team" that had that recent history, because that team no longer exists. New coaching staff, new owner, only one returning player -- heck, even Al McCoy is gone. This roster is the "Phoenix Suns" because that's who's paying them, but there's nothing for them to have joined. It's just a random collection of players who have nothing to do with Phoenix or with one another.
The fans feel the connection, because nearly all of us were here for 2021 and 2022, and it doesn't feel that long ago. It was only 20 months ago that the Suns were the reigning Western Conference Champions and had the best record in the league by eight games. The expectations for this season were based as much on that history as they were on the roster. For us, it feels like yesterday, an opportunity that we weren't quite able to seize, but one that still has to be in reach -- doesn't it? But that history is irrelevant when there's only a single person in uniform who experienced it.
Basically you have Booker and a bunch of strangers trying to build a brand new Phoenix Suns team that, by dumb luck, is better than the last one. It wasn't an impossible dream, but expecting the players to believe in the quest was naive. For the most part, they don't know Booker, they don't know each other, and only a few of them have ever been relevant contributors to a contender. It's almost like an expansion franchise.
