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"No team could beat us"- Joe Johnson blames himself for the '05 Suns not winning a championship
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- "No team could beat us"- Joe Johnson blames himself for the '05 Suns not winning a championship
There are campaigns when an NBA player who has never won a championship looks back and believes that a particular year was his best opportunity to win it all. For Joe Johnson , the 2004-05 season with the Phoenix Suns remains one of those missed opportunities.
But unlike throwing others under the bus, "Iso Joe" blames himself, believing that his Suns team was so talented and well-balanced that had he not suffered an injury in the playoffs, they could have gone all the way to lift the Larry O'Brien trophy.
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"We played San Antonio in the Western Conference finals. I missed the first two games; we lose those two games," Johnson recalled. "But I always think back to that series… Imma think no team could beat us that year."
The 2004-05 Suns were genuine title contenders
Unlike today's NBA, the Suns in the 2004-05 season only had one player who was averaging 20.0 points per game, yet there were multiple players who collaboratively developed the offensive identity of the team by great contributions.
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The MVP that year, Steve Nash (All-NBA First Team selectee), logged 15.5 points and league-leading 11.5 assists per game, while Amar'e Stoudemire led the team with 26.0 points and Shawn Marion averaged 19.4 points per game. Interestingly, the latter two were also among the Top 15 frontrunners in the league and were All-NBA Team selectees.
If that wasn't enough, Quentin Richardson and Johnson combined to average 32.0 points per game. And each of these starters featured in at least 75 games during the regular season. Unsurprisingly, the Suns were the best offensively rated team in the league that year and they revolutionized the NBA with their seven seconds or less offense.
Even then, however, it seemed like the San Antonio Spurs continuously had their number, as evidenced by them clean sweeping the Suns in their regular-season series 3-0, continuing a trend from the previous season when San Antonio had won all four regular-season games.
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Joe picked up an injury
In Game 2 of the Suns' second-round series against the Dallas Mavericks, Johnson attempted to dunk near the rim. Mavs forward Jerry Stackhouse went up to contest the attempt, resulting in their bodies colliding and Joe tumbling onto the hardwood with his face first.
The impact left Johnson with a displaced orbital face fracture, forcing him to miss the remainder of the Mavericks' series as well as the first two games of the Western Conference finals against the Spurs.
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Eventually, by the time Johnson returned for Game 3, the Suns were in a mighty deep hole that saw the series eventually end in five games. And that's why Johnson credited the resilient Spurs group for not allowing the Suns to claw their way back into the series.
"Man, the group that they had with Duncan, Ginobili and Tony Parker, they just guys who knew how to play," Johnson concluded.
That being said, Johnson's admission reveals just how one injury could derail the momentum or impact the trajectory of a team's championship aspirations. Who knows, had "Iso Joe" been available, that particular Suns team could have carved its name into history.
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This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Oct 3, 2026, where it first appeared in the Old School section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
