Durant and Beal used Media Day to close the book on their Phoenix chapter

The Phoenix Suns had their media day last Wednesday, out of sync, ahead of schedule, and maybe a little symbolic of where the franchise sits in the NBA pecking order. Because while most of the league was parading its fresh faces and recycled soundbites today, Phoenix was already checked off the list, luggage packed for a two-game trip to China after their October 3 preseason opener against the Lakers. Business first, narrative later.

And as the rest of the NBA finally caught up, it was hard not to feel that familiar sting of bitterness. For the past few years, Suns media day mattered. It was loud, it was hopeful, it was the kind of day you convinced yourself you’d see banners in the rafters before long. Now? The franchise has drifted into the background hum of NBA chatter. Still there, still relevant, but not exactly the headliner.

I support the path they’re on, I do. Retooling, resetting, reshaping. It makes sense. But I’m still rubbernecking at the other media days, scanning for soundbites from the ghosts of our high-rolling gamble.

Kevin Durant, the man who was supposed to drag this team across the finish line. Bradley Beal, the auxiliary star who was meant to make it all click. Both were bought with over $100 million worth of faith last season, and both spent their new-media podium time talking about futures elsewhere while the echoes of their time in Phoenix lingered like a hangover that refuses to clear.

“I wasn’t expecting to leave Phoenix that quickly,” Durant said while donning his Rockets red new threads.

Not much was said about Phoenix, and truthfully, why would there be? The Suns are a ship already sailed for the U.S.S. Kevin Durant, drifting somewhere in his rearview mirror like all the others before it.

What he did offer was a line worth chewing on: “Every place that I’ve been, from the outside looking in, it may have been a tough breakup from each team that I’ve gone to.”

Then there was Bradley Beal, walking away from Phoenix with a $96.9 million buyout. Gulp. He tossed $13.9 million back into the pot on his way out the door (what a gentleman, right?) and the Suns promptly stretched that number across five years like some financial yoga pose nobody wanted to do in the first place. The parting gift? Beal signed with the Los Angeles Clippers, because of course he did.

“It’s a business, it’s no different than any other year. I’m in trade talks every year,” Beal said. “It’s very opinionated; that’s the landscape of the business. Phoenix made a decision…I can’t do nothing but respect it.”

He added that he had inflammation in his right knee that he tried to play through in Phoenix. He will be limited to start the season.

There are some other former Suns out there adjusting to life post-Phoenix. Tyus Jones, who came to Phoenix with the hope that he would stabilize the playmaking duties, is now in Orlando. They are a team of young, defensive-minded players who have their sights on taking advantage of a weakened Eastern Conference.

“We’re all on the same page with what we’re trying to do, and that’s what drew me to here is the chance to compete for a championship,” Jones told the media on Monday.

There’s a line in Zach Bryan’s East Side of Sorrow that says, “Let it be, then let it go.” Forrest Gump, in his slow-drawl wisdom, echoed the same sentiment: “My Mama always said you’ve got to put the past behind you before you can move on.” Different poets, same lesson. And that’s where we’re at.

Acknowledgement first. The painful nod to what could have been. Then the turn, steering the ship toward something new.

Sure, emotions will bubble up when the Suns see the Clippers three times in their first ten games, ghosts of what never materialized staring from across the hardwood. November 24, when Houston rolls into town for an NBC showcase, you’ll catch yourself drifting into the old loop of what-ifs. That’s natural. But hypotheticals are useless here, because the experiment already ran its course. We lived through it, and we know the answer.

It didn’t work.

So as the players tethered to one of the most spectacular clusterfucks in the history of the Suns’ organization scatter into new jerseys and new cities, the fans will do the same in spirit. Move on, recalibrate, and maybe even laugh at the absurdity of it all. Because if the Durant-Beal era was the punchline to the Suns’ biggest gamble, the only thing left now is to find the next story worth telling.