If you grew up outside of Arizona or ESPECIALLY outside of the states, what made you a Suns fan?

[bwgood77]

I was mostly curious about our international fans, because we seem to have quite a few of them, particularly in Australia. I often wonder what would make them a Suns fan out of all teams? And I've even seen some say they became a fan in like 2011 or recently, which seems even more odd.

But also, if you grew up in another state, what made you a fan?

And when did you become a fan?

[lilfishi22]

I became a Suns (and NBA in general) fan pretty late in life. I played streetball before I got into watching AI highlight videos on YouTube then when I got more into the NBA, I started following the beginning of the SSOL era of the Suns. I loved the ball movement, the PnR game, the vicious dunks, the 3's and fast pace nature of the Suns.

I'm probably fairly green as a Suns fan compared to many posters on here. The NBA just isn't very big on in Australia and the only way to watch back in the day was a few games on ESPN on Foxtel (cable TV) which my family never had.

[Mulhollanddrive]

Charles Barkley taking on Michael Jordan.

[batsmasher]

This is pretty ridiculous but:

There's one picture of a young Goran that looks so much like me that all my friends said I looked like him. I actually starting off following OKC but then started following the Dragon in Houston and once he signed here I thought it was a great chance to become a Suns fan.

[bwgood77]

This is pretty ridiculous but:

There's one picture of a young Goran that looks so much like me that all my friends said I looked like him. I actually starting off following OKC but then started following the Dragon in Houston and once he signed here I thought it was a great chance to become a Suns fan.

Wow, so you don't become a fan of Houston, who gets to the WCF a few years after he leaves, and follow him to Phx, become a fan, stick with us instead of following him to Miami who could end up being very good, and ever since he left, we've been a cluster...well you know what I mean. I admire your Suns dedication. You probably became a Suns fan at the worst time in franchise history....first year with Dragic and Beasley/Shannon Brown, etc. One pretty fun season, and then a season that went to crap, and now this one, which I'm not sure what's going to happen, but things certainly don't look good.

[batsmasher]

This is pretty ridiculous but:

There's one picture of a young Goran that looks so much like me that all my friends said I looked like him. I actually starting off following OKC but then started following the Dragon in Houston and once he signed here I thought it was a great chance to become a Suns fan.

Wow, so you don't become a fan of Houston, who gets to the WCF a few years after he leaves, and follow him to Phx, become a fan, stick with us instead of following him to Miami who could end up being very good, and ever since he left, we've been a cluster...well you know what I mean. I admire your Suns dedication. You probably became a Suns fan at the worst time in franchise history....first year with Dragic and Beasley/Shannon Brown, etc. One pretty fun season, and then a season that went to crap, and now this one, which I'm not sure what's going to happen, but things certainly don't look good.

On the upside, I have low expectations of this team and don't have playoff fever.

Shannon the Cannon and Supercool. What an introduction to Suns fandom that was.

[sunstrooper]

The first time the local television showed an NBA game was the 1991 All-Star. I became a Barkley fan. The next year I watched him in Barcelona and then I learned he got traded to Phoenix (at the time I didn't know such team even existed). Then the local TV started showing 2 games a week plus the "Action" and Phoenix had decent coverage. In the beginning I only watched for Barkley's game, but soon I realized I actually like how the team played and there you go. Besides, at the time everyone was a Bulls "fan" and since I disliked Jordan quite a lot, and the Suns were doing great that season, it felt good being a fan of a Bulls' rival. That sounds a bit childish and tbh it was in the beginning. The Suns went to the finals and since then I've been a Suns fan and will be for life.

[m1chal]

I played my first game of basketball when I started the high school at the age of 15. I've been hooked up ever since.
Back in '93 we only had one game per week on TV and even this one game was cut to one hour. The only exception were the finals which were broadcasted live and the '93 Finals were a thing full of beauty and drama. I think I watched all games except one, which was quite hard especially if the game started at 3 AM local time, lasted till 6 AM (triple OT game) and I had to be at classes at 8 AM Obviously all of my friends loved MJ and Pippen and supported Bulls so I took the other way. This is how this difficult relationship with Suns started. My favorite Sun then was KJ.
Besides, there have been only 3 Polish players playing in the NBA so far and all of them were on the Suns roster at some point (Trybanski - I still wonder how he got to play in the NBA in the first place, Lampe - high expectations, worse results and Gortat - not so talented but a hard worker and a likable personality. BTW we would have been better with him than Chandler today but whatever). So how could I not be a Suns fan?

[pidi]

it must have been in the mid 90´s when our german sport-tv showed a game of phx vs. portland, phx lost it after 2 overtimes, when i remember right barkley, kj and majerle were on the roster..

i fell in love with the franchise, since then i am suns fan..

we just started to play bball ourselves and you must know, that we had one game re-live on sports tv and had a broadcast called
jump ran, that was it. we collected trading cards and the rest is history

[8on]

I'm from New Jersey. A couple of things did it for me. I was reading Sports Illustrated in high school, and I hadn't been following the NBA since MJ/my NBA Jam days as a munchkin. So I find this article about what good friends Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki are. Then I looked them both up. Dirk was cool, with his pretty little jumpers and all, but Nash.....wow. My jaw dropped. Michael Jordan was never this much fun to watch. It was like he was making fun of the opposing teams, like they were getting pranked. It was just unfair, the way he controlled the court. For some reasons, I was the kind of kid who never did anything in a polished way, 100%. People with flaws appealed to me, so the fact to that Steve couldn't play defense was better, in my opinion. From there, I just started listening to Suns games back when League Pass Audio was free. I was a fan for all the right reasons, so it made sense to identify myself as one.

[kennydorglas]

Leandro Barbosa made me a Suns fan.

[Barkley_34]

Barkley and KJ - Bulls vs Suns finals

[bwgood77]

I played my first game of basketball when I started the high school at the age of 15. I've been hooked up ever since.
Back in '93 we only had one game per week on TV and even this one game was cut to one hour. The only exception were the finals which were broadcasted live and the '93 Finals were a thing full of beauty and drama. I think I watched all games except one, which was quite hard especially if the game started at 3 AM local time, lasted till 6 AM (triple OT game) and I had to be at classes at 8 AM Obviously all of my friends loved MJ and Pippen and supported Bulls so I took the other way. This is how this difficult relationship with Suns started. My favorite Sun then was KJ.
Besides, there have been only 3 Polish players playing in the NBA so far and all of them were on the Suns roster at some point (Trybanski - I still wonder how he got to play in the NBA in the first place, Lampe - high expectations, worse results and Gortat - not so talented but a hard worker and a likable personality. BTW we would have been better with him than Chandler today but whatever). So how could I not be a Suns fan?

So I imagine you must like Nash more than KJ because you didn't see him transform the team into a contender immediately as a second year player at that from a team that won less than 30 teams with their all star being Larry Nance they traded for him in 87. Once Barkley arrived, KJ became marginalized to an extent....Barkley, as good as he was, wanted the ball in his hands to create offense more than KJ who was phenomal at it....had he fell into the previous offensive system before he got there, I think the win multiple championships. KJ actually even carried them at times in the playoffs when Barkley even went kind of flat or got hammered the night before.

Don't get me wrong, but it wasn't the perfect pairing chemistry wise, and it probably could have been if Barkley just devoted his time to rebounding and playing the post only when KJ decided...sure he was good at creating offense, but KJ was a master at it, and Barkley often made nice 3s or nice game winning shots, but his popularity being in the populous east coast garnered him far more popularity than a young guy like KJ..not sure if you ever have looked at KJ's stats in his 2-5th years...they are basically unparalleled only by like Isiah Thomas like once and Magic twice or something. Can you imagine in today's day and age, a rookie contract pg averaging 20 and 12 or 20 and 10 for a pg when 3 pt shooting wasn't a big thing? No, never.

It might be interesting for you and others to watch one of the games on youtube from like 91 or 92 when they beat the Showtime Lakers with Magic (who had one like 5 titles already) and this was a young team...you would see vintage KJ and Horny...I mean this was a young team going against a juggernaut.

And for the record, I have never supported Hornacek solely because he is an ex Sun, but more because he took a team expected to tank and win 17 game to 48 wins in his first year ever coaching and think he was handed a big problem last year with the roster, and the Morris problem this year. I still don't think our talent is better than probably the top 7-8 teams and we are playing guys major minutes who have been in the league 3 or less years along with a hugely disgruntled player. Just a raw deal to me.

If (or at this point I expect when) he is let go, he will probably get offered multiple coaching jobs, and we would likely see him be successful and then a handful of fans who wanted him gone will say it was stupid to let him go....and that the guys we let go always do better elsewhere.

The biggest problem STILL is Sarver. I thought this might have reversed course in 2012-13, but it didn't completely. He will likely keep churning GM's, coaches, and rosters thinking there is a quick fix which is what all perpetually bad teams do and we will hover in a bad spot.

[TASTIC]

Everyone in NZ was a Bulls/Lakers/Hornets fan and those were basically the only three teams on TV until Shaq and Penny hit the scene, then Kemp and Payton as well. The Bulls were everyone's favourite's and they were obviously playing the Suns and that's when I remember watching a game every week with my dad. He was a Bird fan but also liked Barkley, so I went with Barkley and the Suns because they were the underdogs.

About a year later my mum went to Australia for a reunion and when she came back she'd gotten me a Charles Barkley vs Godzilla Nike tee, which I wore to DEATH.



Then when I started playing basketball they bought me some Converse React Kevin Johnson's...which were also worn into the ground.



I actually won a half-time shootout comp at the local team's game, but I was only 9 and it was this MASSIVE LA Lakers Spalding jacket. They moved the mats forward (essentially 5x car mats with 1-2-3 painted on them, scattered inside the 3pt line) where you stood and shot on them, getting as many as you could in 60sec. Because I was so small they brought them all forward to just around the key and I buried about 12pts in the first 30sec, then they moved them back! Still won though and still...unfortunately...have that jacket, though I never wore it. Was always too big for me then by the time I fit it, I naturally hated the Lakers I rocked my hornets cap, Godzilla tee and KJ shoes though, was awesome having like 5000 people cheer me on, mum has the video somewhere.

My favourite players through this time were Barkley, Majerle, KJ, Penny Hardaway, Kemp, Augmon, Hakeem and LJ. When Penny did the S&T to the Suns, that sealed it.

Two trips to Phoenix, about a dozen games and the rest is history

[NTB]

SSOL made me a Suns fan basically.

[Foliohattu]

We were only getting the occasional All-star/playoff games in the 90's and early 00's in Finland (didn't have cable lol) so I was more like a fan of the game and certain players in general and mostly reading boxscores in the internet. Amar'e caught my eye in his rookie season and I loved Matrix, but what finally did it for me was obviously Nash/Springles/SSOL.

[Sunsss]

SSOL.

[Jarlaxle0204]

I remember right around the time I started getting into basketball, I was about 12 or 13 years years old and the game NBA Jam had just came out. Living in NY, I had a friend that was really into the Knicks, I had another who was into Michael Jordan and the Bulls so I felt I had to have my own team. I picked the Suns because of Barkley and KJ. This was around 1994 and have stuck with them ever since. It's a really stupid reason but now being a fan of the Suns is in my blood. If only I had known then the kind of heartache and masochism I was getting myself in for. lol

[Maystack]

I was always kind of into basketball growing up, but I just didn't have that much of an option to experience it. I had a few NBA games, and I always played as the raptors because dinosaurs are cool. Eventually, I wanted to get more into basketball, so I decided to see what was what in the NBA. I think it was around April-ish 2010, so the season had just ended. All I had then was highlights from the playoff games. I watched a few teams, and the ones I was interested in, I did a bit more research into.

Phoenix stuck out to me as one to look into, because the name was kinda cool, and I liked the team colours. Then I stumbled into the amazing Steve Nash and he was instantly my favourite player. I'm kinda bummed I only caught the tail end of his career, and pretty much every season since I've been a fan we've been trash. I kinda got my hopes up when they did so well in the playoffs that year haha.

[jeff2020]

I always loved basketball from the time I was 3. Being from Kentucky will do that to ya I guess. Never really watched any basketball up until I turned 7 when I would get home from church and the NBA on NBC was on and then after I would go outside and play basketball trying to emulate all the players. No team really stuck until I was in my basement shooting on my nerf hoop and we had one of those 13 inch TV's with an antenna forming a V and a dial to change channels. The game on that day was Lakers @ Suns game 5 of the western conference first round. I am sure everyone here remembers that game. They kept talking about the "Westphal guarantee" and I had no idea what that was at my young age. But when they showed a clip of him at the press conference saying all that I somehow became hooked and started rooting for the Suns so hard that afternoon. Charles Barkley immediately became my favorite player and the Suns were my team. Watched as many games as my parents would let me since they were on so late at night and still remember so vividly the Paxson shot and being so mad that I hated the Bulls with a passion until I was a teenager and could start appreciating all that they accomplished. Never having moved from Kentucky and the closest team is almost 4 hours away, the Indiana Pacers, the Suns have just stuck with me. Now being almost 30 I have ordered league pass for the past 6 years catching as many games as possible even though these past 6 years have been rough. My first season of league pass was fun though! 2010 WCF! I have yet to make it out to the desert for a game, but am planning on it very soon!