It’s early December, the Suns are 10-12 and fans are counting down the days until Deandre Ayton returns from his suspension (8 days left) and Aron Baynes returns from his calf injury (hopefully, any day now). After 22 games last season, the Suns were 4-18 and four games into what would turn into a 10-game losing streak... which wouldn’t be their longest of the season.
We weren’t thinking about the playoffs then. We were once again already starting to talk about draft prospects, a topic of conversation that I’m quite happy to have not noticed among Suns fans this year.