Miles Dana just smiled and went with the flow.
He watched his mom and dad, Jeremy and Stacie, come to an agreement during last week’s fan fest that the 1992-93 Phoenix Suns were the best team in franchise history.
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“The 90s,” the mom said.
The dad then rattled off the familiar faces from that team featuring NBA MVP Charles Barkley, Kevin Johnson and Dan Majerle that bolstered the NBA’s best record that season but lost to Michael Jordan and the three-peat Chicago Bulls in the NBA Finals.
The son just smiled and agreed, perhaps hardly knowing anything about that team.
“You weren’t alive,” his mom said.
Young Miles is in the majority, though.
The Arizona Republic ran a poll asking readers to vote for the greatest Suns team of all time.
The 1992-93 team received 63.25% of the vote. Fans had four choices.
The 1975-76 team. Lost to the Boston Celtics in the 1976 finals.
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The 1992-93 team. Lost all three home games they played against the Bulls in the finals.
The 2006-07 squad. Eventual NBA champion San Antonio Spurs eliminated the two-time MVP Steve Nash and Suns in a controversial Western Conference semifinals series.
The 2020-21 team. Took a 2-0 series lead in the finals with Devin Booker and Chris Paul leading the way before losing four straight games and the series to Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks.
Giannis Antetokounmpo #34 of the Milwaukee Bucks celebrates defeating the Phoenix Suns in Game Six to win the 2021 NBA Finals at Fiserv Forum on July 20, 2021, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The 2006-07 team finished second with 23.54% of the votes. The 1975-76 team garnered 7.61% of the vote followed by the 2020-21 team at 5.31%.
The 2020-21 Suns finishing that far back from the 1992-93 team seems strange, but fans who emailed in their comments to The Republic raved about the 2006-07 squad.
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“The 2006-2007 Suns would have won the NBA championship if they would have had their full team against the Spurs,” Mel Nuss of northeast Phoenix wrote. “The ’92-93 team may have been more talented except they ran up against a great Bulls team.”
Nuss was referring to Amar’e Stoudemire and Boris Diaw leaving the bench in the 2007 playoffs after Robert Horry hip checked Nash late in a Game 4 win for Phoenix to even the series. Stoudemire and Diaw were suspended for Game 5. Phoenix lost the series in six.
Amare Stoudemire (left to right), Steve Nash and Shawn Marion are among the best first-round picks in Suns history.
“That fateful decision by (then NBA commissioner) David Stern changed everything,” Suns fan Terri Smith of Peoria wrote. “Earlier in that same game, Tim Duncan had gone as far as to have both feet in play when he disagreed with a call, but ‘you-can’t-touch-me-Tim’ suffered no such banishment. That Suns’ team was undoubtedly the odds-on favorite to win it, until David Stern manually changed the course of the playoffs. Having had the opportunity to watch Steve Nash control the court for all of those years makes me feel very lucky.”
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Smith recalled then-Suns team owner Jerry Colangelo meeting with season ticket owners, forecasting a brighter future for the franchise.
“The 2006-07 Suns were like an elixir,” Smith wrote. “Just a couple of seasons prior, Jerry Colangelo had met with season ticket holders to explain why trading away (Penny) Hardaway and (Stephon) Marbury would give us a chance to get better. In true JC-style, that led to the signing (re-signing) of Steve Nash. By the 2005-06 season, we knew we had magic in a bottle. Nash made the game look so easy, with Amar’e rolling to the hoop and Shawn Marion beginning to show the kind of player he ultimately would become.”
Have opinions about the current state of the Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at dmrankin@gannett.com or contact him at 480-810-5518. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @DuaneRankin.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Was Barkley’s 1992-93 Suns best ever? What about Steve Nash’s team?