National analysts are torching the Suns and they’ve earned every bit of it

The NBA world is turning on the Suns and they have no one to blame but themselves.

The Phoenix Suns have been a disaster. Since their scorching 8-1 start, they’ve stumbled to a miserable 23-36 record, unraveling in a way that has gone from frustrating to downright infuriating. What we’ve felt locally. The lack of effort, the defensive indifference, the sheer ineptitude. And it is now gaining traction on a national level.

Sunday’s loss to the Los Angeles Lakers was the latest humiliation, a nationally televised embarrassment on ABC. In March. When all eyes were on them. This wasn’t some forgettable game in December, buried under the weight of the NFL’s dominance. No, this was Selection Sunday — when basketball fans of all kinds were locked in — and what they witnessed was a team sleepwalking through another lifeless, gutless performance.

I’m not the biggest Stephen A. Smith fan. The over-the-top theatrics, the exaggerated takes? It’s not always my thing. But as ESPN’s halftime show opened, even I had to admit: he was absolutely right.

“We aired this game on national television. This is our network,” Stephen A. Smith began. “If there was not a second half to go where they had an opportunity to make amends, I would encourage us to give a public apology to a national audience for that atrocity we saw in the first half. No effort whatsoever, particularly on the defensive side of the ball.”

The Suns looked lost in the first half. Like they didn’t want to be there. Like they had no plan, no urgency, no fight. It was the kind of lifeless display that makes you question everything, from the coaching to the roster construction to whether this team even believes in itself anymore.

Stephen A. Smith saw it too, and he wasn’t about to let it slide.

“The Phoenix Suns resembled a little kid that was placed on punishment by his parents. and assigned to do chores,” Smith continued. “That’s how they made playing the game of basketball look in the first half. Like it was this arduous, painful task that they had to subject themselves to. That’s how bad they look. It’s it’s it’s disgraceful.”

The criticism didn’t stop there, and this is where it really hits home. Bob Myers, one of the analysts on ESPN’s ABC halftime show, carries a different kind of weight than Stephen A. Smith or Kendrick Perkins. He’s not there to go viral. He’s not there to manufacture outrage. He’s there to provide perspective. Valuable perspective.

And few in basketball have a better one. This is a two-time NBA Executive of the Year. The architect of a dynasty. A man who built a championship culture in Golden State from the ground up. When someone like that speaks on the state of a team, you listen. And what he had to say about the Suns was damning.

“When you’re at a game you can see the effort,” Myers said. “You can watch all the players you can watch off-ball stuff. And to see Phoenix it’s almost like, ‘Guys…do you want to play? Do you want to compete? I’m flabbergasted.”

The criticism of the Suns didn’t stop there. Bill Simmons, alongside fellow Ringer personality Ryen Russillo, took aim at Phoenix on their Sunday night episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, an episode bluntly titled “Phoenix in Shambles, Cleveland’s Ceiling and More!”

Neither of them held back.

Bill Simmons opened the show by stating, “We are taping this it is four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. All the March Madness stuff just came out our long national nightmare is over. Another Phoenix Suns nationally televised game is behind us.”

“Here’s the case for the season being too long: we don’t have to go through the death march of the last 20 Suns games,” he added.

“At one point Wisconsin had outscored Phoenix through like 24 minutes of real basketball,” Russillo responded. “They fuck up on defense so many times that I can’t even sometimes I can’t figure out who was wrong.”

“It should never be this bad. As bad as they are, people can make fun of it, it’s ridiculous they’re this bad,” Russillo continued. “I don’t like this team at all and I think a lot of it just the defensive effort, the lack of competitiveness, the point of attack defense, whatever their help rules are. They don’t know what they are or they don’t care to know what they are. They’re they’re just an absolute mess.”

“I think I’m done after today,” Russillo stated.

The Suns’ season has gone so far off the rails, in so many ways, that none of us even know where to start. Every game brings new frustrations, new lows, and yet the same, tired questions with no good answers. And so, we continue to absorb it. We report on it. We try to make sense of something that makes no sense.

Because that’s what being a fan is.

We’re emotionally tied to this team. It’s part of us. And that’s why it hurts in such a unique way. Watching a season like this unfold isn’t just disappointing. It’s exhausting. It wears on you. And when national voices start echoing the same frustrations we’ve been screaming all year, it forces the question: What comes next?

Pride exists in the NBA. So do egos. When the criticism reaches this level, does it spark change? Does it force anyone in this organization to look in the mirror? Or does this just become another chapter in a story that never should have been written?

We’ll see.

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