The Basketball Fans

Phoenix Suns

Published April 18, 2026 · Updated April 23, 2026 · By The Basketball Fans Editors

Editorial tile: Phoenix Suns
Photo via Unsplash. Unsplash License.

The Phoenix Suns have never won an NBA championship. They have reached the NBA Finals three times (1976, 1993, 2021) and lost all three. The franchise has had four distinct competitive windows: the 1976 “Sunderella” team (a seventh seed that reached the Finals), the 1989–1995 Kevin Johnson / Tom Chambers era culminating in the 1993 Charles Barkley MVP and Finals loss, the 2004–2010 “Seven Seconds or Less” Steve Nash era under Mike D’Antoni, and the 2020–2023 Chris Paul / Devin Booker window that reached the 2021 Finals. The Kevin Durant trade in February 2023 and subsequent June 2025 Durant departure have shaped the current rebuild. Current ownership is Mat Ishbia, the CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage, who purchased the franchise in February 2023 after a forced NBA sale by previous owner Robert Sarver.

PHX Arena in Phoenix
PHX Arena (formerly Talking Stick Resort Arena, Footprint Center, and America West Arena) in downtown Phoenix, the Suns' home since 1992. Capacity approximately 17,071. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The 1968 founding

The Phoenix Suns were founded in 1968 as an NBA expansion franchise, paired with the Milwaukee Bucks in that expansion class. Phoenix lost the 1969 NBA Draft coin flip with Milwaukee for the rights to Lew Alcindor; the Suns used their second-overall pick on Neal Walk. The first head coach was Johnny “Red” Kerr. The 1968–69 Suns went 16–66.

The early-1970s Suns, coached by Cotton Fitzsimmons and then John MacLeod, made the playoffs twice without advancing past the first round.

The 1976 “Sunderella” Finals run

The 1975–76 Phoenix Suns, coached by John MacLeod, went 42–40 and entered the playoffs as the seventh seed in the Western Conference. They beat Seattle in the first round, upset Golden State (the defending champion) in the conference semifinals, and beat the Lakers in the conference finals. They reached the Finals against the Boston Celtics.

Game 5 of the 1976 Finals, played at Boston Garden on June 4, 1976, is still one of the most-cited single games in NBA history. The game went three overtimes. Boston led 95–94 at the end of regulation. Paul Silas’s attempted timeout call was disallowed in the first overtime. Gar Heard hit a buzzer-beating turnaround jumper to force the third overtime (the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” a pun on Heard’s name). Boston won 128–126. The Celtics closed the series out in Game 6 in Phoenix. The 1976 “Sunderella” Finals, given the Suns’ 42–40 regular-season record and seventh-seed entry, is the basketball equivalent of an N.L. sixth-place playoff run.

The 1989–1995 Kevin Johnson era

The late-1980s and early-1990s Suns, with Kevin Johnson (acquired from Cleveland in February 1988), Tom Chambers (signed as a free agent in 1988), Dan Majerle (drafted 14th in 1988), and Jeff Hornacek (drafted 46th in 1986), made the playoffs seven consecutive years (1988–89 through 1994–95). They reached the Western Conference Finals in 1990 and 1993. Johnson was a three-time All-Star.

The 1993 Charles Barkley MVP

Charles Barkley was acquired from Philadelphia in June 1992 for Jeff Hornacek, Andrew Lang, and Tim Perry. Full Barkley story here. The 1992–93 Suns, coached by Paul Westphal, went 62–20, the franchise’s best regular season at the time. Barkley won the 1993 NBA MVP.

The 1993 NBA Finals against the Chicago Bulls went six games. Chicago won 4–2. Game 6 ended on John Paxson’s three-pointer with 3.9 seconds remaining. Barkley averaged 27.3 points and 13.0 rebounds across the series. Michael Jordan averaged 41.0. The series is widely considered one of the best individual performances across a Finals in NBA history (Jordan’s).

The Seven Seconds or Less era (2004–2008)

Steve Nash signed with the Phoenix Suns in July 2004 as a free agent. Nash had been drafted by Phoenix in 1996 (15th overall) and traded to Dallas in 1998. The 2004 free-agency signing was widely considered a reach at the time; Nash had been a Dallas All-Star but had not been an MVP candidate.

Head coach Mike D’Antoni, hired in December 2003 after Frank Johnson’s firing, installed an up-tempo offense built around Nash’s ball-handling and quick decision-making. The style was informally labeled “Seven Seconds or Less,” a reference to D’Antoni’s preference for shots within seven seconds of the shot-clock start. Nash won back-to-back regular-season MVPs in 2004–05 and 2005–06, the first Canadian-born MVP in NBA history and the first point guard MVP since Magic Johnson in 1990.

The Nash-era Suns lost three Western Conference Finals (2005, 2006, 2010). The 2010 loss to the Lakers is the one most-analyzed: Nash played through a broken nose after a Derek Fisher elbow in Game 1. Phoenix traded Nash to the Lakers in July 2012. The 2004–2012 Suns, despite their competitive success, never reached the Finals. The best inside account of what that offense actually looked like from the bench is Jack McCallum’s Seven Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin’ and Gunnin’ Phoenix Suns (Touchstone, 2006).

The Chris Paul era (2020–2023) and the 2021 Finals

The Suns acquired Chris Paul from the Oklahoma City Thunder on November 16, 2020. The 2020–21 Suns, coached by Monty Williams with Paul (age 35), Devin Booker (24), Deandre Ayton, Mikal Bridges, Jae Crowder, and Cameron Payne, went 51–21. They beat the defending-champion Lakers 4–2, swept Denver 4–0, beat the Clippers 4–2, and reached the 2021 NBA Finals against the Milwaukee Bucks. They won Games 1 and 2 at Footprint Center. Milwaukee won the next four games. Giannis Antetokounmpo’s 50-point Game 6 clinched the series. Giannis’s full Finals story here.

The Kevin Durant trade and the 2025 rebuild

On February 9, 2023, the Suns acquired Kevin Durant from the Brooklyn Nets for Mikal Bridges, Cameron Johnson, Jae Crowder, four first-round picks, and a first-round pick swap. The Durant trade was the most-expensive single-player acquisition in terms of draft-capital cost in NBA history to that point.

The Durant-Booker Suns reached the 2023 conference semifinals (lost to Denver 4–2), the 2024 first round (lost to Minnesota 4–0), and missed the 2025 playoffs. On June 22, 2025, the Suns traded Durant to the Houston Rockets as part of a seven-team record-setting deal. The move closed the Durant era at two and a half seasons and zero Finals appearances.

Current ownership

Mat Ishbia purchased the Phoenix Suns and the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury on February 7, 2023 for approximately $4 billion, the then-highest price paid for an NBA franchise. Ishbia is the CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage, the largest wholesale mortgage lender in the United States. His brother Justin Ishbia is a minority owner. Ishbia’s 2025 Forbes net worth was approximately $8.8 billion. The franchise’s 2025 Forbes valuation was approximately $4.1 billion.

Ishbia replaced Robert Sarver, who had owned the franchise from April 2004 to February 2023. Sarver’s sale was forced by the NBA after a 2022 league investigation (conducted by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz) found that Sarver had, across his ownership, used racist language on at least five occasions and presided over a workplace that included multiple instances of gender-based harassment. The league suspended Sarver for one year and fined him $10 million. He announced the sale on September 21, 2022.

Retired numbers

Ten jersey numbers have been retired:

Devin Booker (1) is a presumed future retirement.

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