The Phoenix Suns just finished a very up and down regular 2022-23 regular season, sent no one to the All-Star game and barely etched out a winning record.
In a normal year, their 17-losses-in-23-games midseason malaise would have doomed the whole season, triggering a sell-off at the trade deadline. In fact, I still remember comment sections of this here blog loaded with tanking talk in late January.
But this isn’t a normal year. Even after that dismal stretch that dropped their record to 21-24, they never fell further than three games out of the 4th seed.