Grade the deal: Suns agree to sign Monte Morris to 1-year deal

The Phoenix Suns have addressed their backup point guard slot, and they’ve done so with one of the better options left on the free agency market. According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, the Suns have agreed to a deal with Monte Morris.

A source told PHNX Sports the deal is a one-year agreement. Given that Morris has seven years of experience, his veteran minimum salary will be $2.8 million. He’ll come with a cap hit of $2.1 million on that vet minimum deal, per Spotrac.

Monte Morris agrees to join Suns

It was only a few seasons ago that Monte Morris was one of the league’s elite backup point guards on the Denver Nuggets. He struggled to replicate that same high-end impact on a winning team since the Nuggets traded him away, spending one solid season with the Washington Wizards before recovering from a quad injury that limited his time with the Detroit Pistons last season.

After Detroit traded him to the Minnesota Timberwolves, Morris got inconsistent minutes as he got back into the groove, alternating shifts with Jordan McLaughlin at times and finishing his 27-game stint there averaging 5.1 points and 2.1 assists in 15.1 minutes per game. He only shot 41.7 percent from the floor, but nearly half his shot attempts came from beyond the arc, and he made 42.4 percent of those looks.

The Wolves were reportedly optimistic about bringing Morris back on a vet minimum, but after drafting Rob Dillingham and facing second tax apron concerns, re-signing Morris and finding a role for him became more difficult.

Now he’ll join a Suns squad that had honed in on the point guard spot in recent days, with Monte Morris, Kris Dunn and Kyle Lowry being their top options, as PHNX Sports reported on Monday. Only being able to offer Dunn the vet minimum likely took Phoenix out of the running before he reportedly agreed to sign with the LA Clippers in a still-developing sign-and-trade, while the 38-year-old Lowry feels like a more likely bet to re-sign with his hometown Philadelphia 76ers.

Morris is no consolation prize, however, since the 29-year-old is much younger than Lowry and he brings many desirable traits to the table. The hope here is that a fully healthy offseason and training camp will lead to a resurgence for Morris, rather than trying to jump back into the swing of things mid-season like he had to do in January.

If that’s the case, and Monte Morris can get back to the guy who put up 10.3 points and 5.3 assists per game on .480/.382/.831 shooting splits in his last healthy season for the Wizards, he could wind up being an offseason steal. This is a capable backup who can score, knock down 3s at a career 39.1 percent clip, set the table for the second unit, and defend opposing lead guards.

For his career, Morris has put up 10.0 points and 3.8 assists per game on .477/.391/.824 shooting splits. He’s efficient and can knock down a spot-up 3, hitting 46.2 percent, 38.6 percent and 42.1 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s over the last three seasons.

Monte Morris can also help on the notorious turnover front, since he’s pretty great about taking care of the ball. Last season, he racked up 69 assists to only 7 turnovers over his 33 games in Detroit and Minnesota. He didn’t play enough games to qualify for season-end leaderboards, but he had the second-highest assist-to-turnover ratio in the entire league (9.86) over his 29 games with the Wolves. One of his nicknames on Basketball-Reference, “the Count of Monte Assist/TO” is truly incredible, but also fitting.

Defensively, he’s not quite the swarming ball hawk that Kris Dunn is, but he’s a lot more respectable on that front than he’s given credit for. On the Timberwolves’ No. 1 defense, Morris frequently put together sequences that helped him fit right in:

In his last healthy season in Washington, Morris ranked in the 90th percentile in on-ball perimeter defense, per The BBall Index, as well as the 95th percentile in off-ball chaser defense and the 94th percentile in ball-screen navigation. He even spent time guarding wings in Minnesota, so Mike Budenholzer will be able to use him on or off the ball on both ends of the court.

Having someone who can come in, facilitate, score, knock down catch-and-shoot looks and defend opposing guards will check off a lot of boxes for Phoenix. At a vet minimum price tag, this was a quality, veteran pickup who could be in store for a solid bounce-back season now that he’s fully healthy and on a playoff-caliber team.

Grade: A-