It’s hard from a fan standpoint, an organizational standpoint, a reputation standpoint and of course, just hard coming up short for so many years.
They convinced Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden to team up and have nothing to show for it, mainly because the one full year all three were together, injuries to Kyrie and Harden torpedoed those hopes.
Too many bad draft situations didn’t help — Emeka Okafor, Adam Morrison, Michael-Kidd Gilchrist and Cody Zeller were all top-10 picks.
Well, Reggie Miller and Rik Smits were pretty good, just not enough to beat Shaq and Kobe Bryant at the turn of the century.
Basically, this franchise, born in Buffalo and relocated from San Diego, has been perpetually stuck by a string of crummy luck and also bad personnel decisions.
The Grizzlies only had one stretch where they could smell a championship in the distance, and that was with the Grit-N-Grind teams of Tony Allen, Mike Conley, Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph.
That was their chance and not only did they miss it, but Garnett cashed in with the Celtics the year after he left Minny.
Then Shaq bailed in his prime for the Lakers and went on a dynastic tear, with three straight titles.
Of all the club members, the Suns are probably dealing with the hardest luck, if only because they’ve had a number of very good teams that just couldn’t cash in.
With nobody on the current roster on the level of Stockton and Malone, Utah might need to, ahem, move mountains to get back into the mix.