I took a rare night off to enjoy (or so I planned) Monday night’s Suns-Bucks game from a fan’s perspective.
The final 42 seconds of that game emitted more “Oh’s!” and “Ugh’s” than a girl and her obliged boyfriend/husband watching Downton Abbey. The lead changed hands six times in that span in a flurry of clutch shot trumping clutch shot.
Khris Middleton’s final say in the form of a backboard-clanking, rim-rattling three-pointer at the buzzer might as well have been a clenched fist delivered to the midriff of every fan in the arena. Once they could find words to express themselves, the majority of them involved no small amount of frustrated disbelief.
The “how stupid was that” reaction constitutes the overall vibe after back-to-back Monday gut-punches. Both of them came on buzzer-beating threes from the unlikeliest of players and were made in the most unlikely fashions. Nothing, many thought just a week ago, could be worse than Blake Griffin’s physics-blaspheming triple to win in L.A.
Then Middleton happened.
Anymore, sports are a zoomed-in affair. The most recent loss hurts the worst. When it comes to the Suns, however, these December gut-punches hardly register. That’s because sports tragedies can be measured by these factors:
- STAKES: how much did your team stand to gain/lose?
- OPPOSITION: did the opponent (team and/or player) matter to you? Is this a rivalry or a squad hardly you’re hardly aware of when they’re not playing your team?
- HELPLESSNESS: did your team have a chance to respond? Or were they condemned to let their opponent have the final say?
- ODDS: what was expected to happen? Did your team blow a game they should have won, or was it a matter of almost-but-not-quite the entire time?
- WHAT THE HECK: How ridiculous was the way your team lost? Was it a play that could absolutely happen again, or was it a complete, mind-boggling act of stupid luck?
With that in mind, here’s how the more memorable daggers in the Suns’ back rank over the years. Each factor is rated on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the most painful):