While the first game of the NBA Finals between the Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks begins on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, return on the coach-player duo who will have led this franchise of Arizona to the second NBA Finals in its history. Back in 2010. Chris Paul, then star of the New Orleans Hornets, begins his sixth season in the NBA and it is a new coach who arrives on the Louisiana side to train the 25-year-old leader: the young Monty Williams, then 39 years old, who will have his first experience as a main coach. A short experience that lasted only one season since Chris Paul flies the following year to Los Angeles to join the Clippers.
Only one small season where the two men will have managed to forge links, and the duo will hoist the Hornets in the play-offs. A relationship that will develop later, in the good times as well as in the worst times. Like when, in 2016, Monty Williams, then assistant to the Thunder, tragically lost his wife in a car accident. Paul, then still at the Clippers, had given all his support to his former coach, who has not forgotten, as he confided after the qualification of the Suns: “Chris has meant so much in my career, he has meant so much in my life. In the darkest moment of my life, Chris was there. And in one of the best moments of my career, he’s there too“.
Monty: “Chris, you’re going to the Finals.”
CP3: “Coach, I’m trying to calm down, coach.”
Monty: “You don’t have to calm down.”This moment between CP3 and Monty Williams at the end of Game 6 is beautiful ❤️
(via @NBA) pic.twitter.com/SBqmrFjHJl
– ESPN (@espn) July 3, 2021
A connection that sparks
A cohesion that they will find on the side of Phoenix. Appointed on the Suns bench in 2019, the coach from Virginia will bring his former leader to Arizona at the start of the season. An alchemy that will take so well that the team will defy all forecasts and finish second in the regular season.
But despite difficult confrontations in the play-offs, the Suns have shown strength and courage, and also benefited from favorable circumstances, to eliminate the Lakers, defending champion, then the Nuggets and finally the Clippers former team of Chris Paul. Now carried by a leader, leader and solid veteran who is Chris Paul, accompanied by a young superstar in the person of Devin Booker, then essential elements like Deandre Ayton or Mikal Bridges, the Suns are armed to win their first NBA title. But that will require defeating the Bucks of Giannis Antetokounmpo, uncertain for the first game of this final.
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