Reasons Phoenix Suns Can Win the NBA Title

While they definitely were not a preseason favorite, the Phoenix Suns deserve their place in the NBA Finals. They will host the Milwaukee Bucks who were among the early favorites. In this article, I will make a case as to why the Suns have a chance to bring home their first NBA title.

Suns Have Shown Great Consistency

The Phoenix Suns were the second best regular season team in the NBA from beginning to end. At first, like most of you, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. This process started last season in the bubble where they showed us the foundation for what came this season. Adding Chris Paul was the missing link although at the time, not everyone was convinced by that. You can count me among the not convinced group because I underestimated Paul’s effect on this group.

Not only were the Suns consistently winning games, more importantly for us bettors, they were covering as well. The Suns were 42-29-1 against the spread this season which was good for second in the league. That consistency is why they have home court advantage in this series. Winning in Milwaukee isn’t easy so in order for Phoenix to bring home the chip, they’ll need their fans to be as rowdy as we know they can be.

Giannis Injury A Big Factor

I have a future bet at one of the best betting sites for the Suns to win the title which I placed after they knocked out the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers. Of course, I couldn’t have known who their opponent would be but if you would have told me that it would be the Bucks with an injured Giannis Antetokoumnpo, I would have probably bet way more than I should. The Bucks are being very cautious as you would expect when you’re a franchise player who is also a two-time MVP gets injured.

I have chosen not to believe reports about his injury status when handicapping Game 1 of this series. Why should the Bucks be honest about his injury? They want to make Phoenix’s preparation for this series as complicated as possible. I will make one prediction for this series based on Game 1; if Giannis does not play in the first game, the Suns win this series in five games.

Monty Has Edge Over Bud

Monty Williams deserved his NBA Coach of the Year award. In this series, I think Monty is the difference. I’ve made my opinion of coach Mike Budenholzer clear in the past but I’ll state again that I think he’s a regular-season coach. He has a system that he has proven can work in Atlanta and now Milwaukee. He has shown an amazing ability to maximize his players’ talent (for the most part) by putting them in roles where their skill set can blossom.

What I have not seen coach Bud do is make playoff adjustments. He is not the first coach and he certainly won’t be the last to have a system that works well in the regular season but then gets exposed come playoff time. A championship coach makes adjustments and way too often, coach Bud can see the ship sinking and instead of changing something up, he seems to stubbornly stick to the regular season script. People didn’t give Ty Lue much credit for helping the Cavs win their first title, the majority of those accolades were given to LeBron James. Now that Lue replaced Doc Rivers, we actually got a front row seat to how Lue masterfully juggles his lineups and strategy depending on the opponent. That’s why he was able to get that franchise to a Western Conference Final for the first time in their history, despite being without Kawhi Leonard.

I think Monty Williams is going to coach circles around coach Bud. I think DeAndre Ayton, who has really come into his own during these playoffs , will be a bigger problem for the Bucks on both ends of the floor than people realize. I think Devin Booker has been waiting for this opportunity his entire career and I expect him to show out. Speaking of showing out, I’m not sure I have sufficient vocabulary to explain what this means to Chris Paul. As of today, Paul is one of the best players at his position of all time. After what he’s done the last two seasons, uplifting both the Oklahoma City Thunder and now the Phoenix Suns to places nobody thought they could reach, that’s an entirely new legacy he’s created for himself. All of these reasons are why the Phoenix Suns can win an NBA championship.

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