Lakers were a 39 win team that year so the Suns should’ve wrapped that series up sooner. They played 18 games before the finals whereas the Bulls played 14. Some of its East vs West but Barkley and KJ were both worn down in the finals.
Yup. We played one game short of the maximum in the first three rounds.
Also, side note… this team’s home playoff performance has been so bad during the AWA -> Talking Stick era. They went 0-3 at home in the Finals against Chicago. They went 1-2 the next year against Houston en route to a 7 game series loss. They went 2-2 the next year en route to another 7 game loss, punctuated by Game 7 loss at home. That’s a 3-7 record at home in the biggest series of the year, with HCA in 2 of 3 series.
The next time they were a contender, they went 0-3 at home against the Spurs in the 2005 WCF, letting the Spurs celebrate going to the Finals on our court. Then went 1-2 in the Western Conference Finals against Dallas in 2006 and watched Dallas celebrate on our court to go to the Finals. Then of course allowed the Lakers to celebrate a WCF title on our home floor in Game 6 in 2010.
Then of course, there was the most humiliating Game 7 of all time to end the CP3 title contending era Suns against Dallas after blowing a crucial Game 5 at home that swung the Finals to the Bucks when that series was tied 2-2. And the last two years, the Nuggets celebrated moving on our court after a 30 point stomping and the Wolves celebrated on our court after sweeping us.
Man… that sucks. For every era of title contention (or something somewhat close till this year) we’ve just watched so many teams celebrating series Ws in our house
