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Bereft of any ticket-selling talent and lacking the likelihood to win on any given night, the Phoenix Suns watched their home attendance dwindle to the lowest totals since they moved into this arena TWENTY YEARS AGO.
The Suns drew 632,913 fans to their home games this season, averaging 15,436 fans per game, according to ESPN. That ranks 23rd out of the National Basketball Association's 30 teams.
The team's total home attendance for the season, 632,913, is also the lowest annual figure for the Suns since moving into the downtown Phoenix arena during the 1992-1993 season.
While some fans might hope that there's nowhere to go but up, that's not the case. There are seven teams with worse attendance than the Suns.
But we're not talking about the rest of the NBA. We are talking about a tried-and-true, first-major-sport-in-the-valley, multi-generational fan base here that has always loved their Phoenix Suns.
Now, not only did they finish with the second-worst record in franchise history (25-57), not only did they win a staggeringly low number of home games (capped by a 7-game losing streak late in the season), the fans didn't even bother to show up like in years past.
The Suns averaged 15,597 fans during the 2011-12 season and 17,567 fans the season before.
The team drew close to 780,000 fans per season right after the arena opened and between 725,000 and 755,000 fans per season in the mid and late 2000s. Those time frames also saw the Suns in the NBA's upper echelon on the court.
That's a lot of cash not coming into the team's coffers.
Wonder if the team thinks bringing back winning and All-Stars is important now?