When you look at any all-time NBA player list, you will find the same collection of 15-to-20 names. Players like Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, and more fill up the top of the list and have achieved unparalleled success.
Many of those players played for one, maybe two teams in their careers. They won championships, earned MVPs and Finals MVPs, and were named to All-NBA and All-Star teams for over a decade. Two players on that list will stand out, not because of what they did…but because of what they did not do…
Kevin Durant and Shaquille O’Neal
Photo by Michael J. LeBrecht II/NBAE via Getty Images
Two of the most talented players to ever don an NBA jersey and two players the Phoenix Suns swung and missed on at the latter end of their careers.
If you look at their journeys, it is remarkable how parallel their paths have been. Both started their careers with new NBA franchises in Oklahoma City and Orlando. They both captured early success by making at least one NBA Finals in the first few years of their careers. They left those homes to start something new and build a superteam with other young stars in California, where they experienced the highest levels of success.
O’Neal won three rings, and if not for an Achilles injury, Durant would have won his third ring with Golden State. But despite the personal and team success, both players became unhappy and moved on. O’Neal found lightning in a bottle in Miami and gained a fourth ring, Durant orchestrated a move to Brooklyn and assembled potentially the greatest offensive team ever assembled. Unfortunately for Durant, injuries, vaccines, and ego broke up the James Harden, Kyrie Irving, and Durant big three before they won a championship.
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Now, at 35 years old, both O’Neal and Durant found themselves traded to Phoenix to chase another championship. Both were sold to us fans as the missing piece to finally get the valley its first NBA championship that had eluded us for so long. Fan favorites were traded for these talents to win, but instead, it had the opposite effect. The O’Neal and Durant era Suns ended in flames. At the end, the only way to extinguish the flames was to send two of the game’s greats packing without a second thought.
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Things could have gone differently for the Suns. In 2008, if Phoenix pulled out a double overtime victory in game one against San Antonio, they could have won the series, and who knows what could have happened after that. If Chris Paul does not get hurt in Game 2 against the Nuggets in 2023, the Suns could have won that series and been the odds-on favorite to win the championship. Both were totally outside the control of O’Neal and Durant, but still, it is their legacy that takes the hit.
Just like O’Neal, Durant will go on to at least one, possibly two, and maybe even three more teams to chase rings. Durant could go on to win a ring with either San Antonio, Houston, Minnesota, or even Miami, but it will not undo the misery of championship expectations followed up by uninspiring and apathetic basketball that Phoenix Suns fans had to endure during their time wearing the purple and orange.
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At the end of Durant’s Hall of Fame career, he will join O’Neal, where, as Suns fans, we look at what they did not accomplish, rather than focus on everything they did accomplish.
For Phoenix, the possibility of pivoting and reloading is more daunting than when it traded O’Neal in 2009. The Suns made the Conference Finals the following season before losing to the Lakers. Now it will take a sequence of perfectly executed front office draft picks, trades, and minimum signings to get the Suns even close to playoff contention. The short-term future looks bleak, but as Arizona sports fans, we know that we will be back to contending for championships again. It’s only a matter of time before our hearts are broken again.
Hopefully next time, we do not have to place our hope in a 35-year-old superstar to bring home a title.
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