Dick Van Arsdale

Richard Albert Van Arsdale, born February 22, 1943, in Indianapolis, Indiana, holds a distinction no other player in franchise history can claim: he was the very first Phoenix Sun, selected in the 1968 NBA expansion draft that brought professional basketball to the Arizona desert for the first time. "The Original Sun" is not a marketing phrase — it is a literal historical fact, and Van Arsdale's distinguished twelve seasons in the NBA, nine of them in Phoenix, built the foundation upon which everything the Suns franchise would become was constructed. Van Arsdale and his twin brother Tom (who also played in the NBA) grew up in Indianapolis and attended Indiana University, where both became standout players under coach Branch McCracken. Dick was selected by the New York Knicks in the 1965 NBA Draft and spent three solid seasons in New York, establishing himself as a dependable, hard-nosed shooting guard before the Suns chose him in their expansion draft. In Phoenix, Van Arsdale became the franchise's first star and its most consistent performer through the team's early years of establishing identity in a new basketball market. Selected for three NBA All-Star Games as a Sun (1970, 1972, 1973), he represented quality that many expansion teams struggled to provide and gave Phoenix fans an immediate reason to invest in the new franchise. His consistent scoring — he averaged between 15-21 points per game across his best Phoenix seasons — and reliable defensive effort made him the rock upon which the franchise was built. Beyond the statistics, Van Arsdale's significance is cultural: he was the first player to wear a Suns uniform, the first to compete in a Suns game, and the first to give Phoenix something to cheer for in its earliest basketball days. He wore number 5, which the Suns retired in his honor — a permanent acknowledgment that building a franchise requires someone willing to go first and establish that the endeavor is worth caring about. Van Arsdale did that with excellence and professionalism across nine Phoenix seasons.