You may have already heard this, but despite all the problems the Phoenix Suns had last year, they still managed to win 49 games. None of that washed away the bitter taste of a first-round playoff sweep, but it’s worth mentioning for the umpteenth time heading into a new season, if only because this group still has room for growth.
Despite having an older core, the most expensive payroll in the NBA and a short-term championship window, the Suns’ situation isn’t as dire as some would lead you to believe.
We’ve already covered some Suns fallacies when it comes to draft picks and the team’s window to contend, but keeping our focus on the upcoming season, there are plenty of reasons for optimism that Phoenix will be even better than last year. This team isn’t perfect by any means, nor are they sure fire favorites in the West, but those reasons for optimism shouldn’t be overlooked. In no particular order, here are the five biggest ones.
1. The Suns Big 3 will (Hopefully) be healthier
Injury luck is far from guaranteed in this league, and relying on this particular Big 3 comes with its fair share of injury concerns. Kevin Durant is coming off his healthiest season in five years, but he’s also turning 36 years old this month and has his own injury history. Not including the entire 2019-20 campaign that he missed while recovering from an Achilles tear, KD had played an average of 55.5 games over the eight years prior to last season.
Bradley Beal missed 29 games with an assortment of unlucky injuries last year, and he’s played an average of 52 games over the last five years, never cracking more than 60. These kinds of things are impossible to predict, but after turning 31 this summer, it’s unlikely Beal will suddenly play 80-plus games.
And finally, although Devin Booker will only turn 28 years old in October and is in the midst of his prime, he’s also dealt with some repeated hamstring issues and ankle sprains — nothing serious, but enough to hold him to an average of 63.4 games over the last seven years.
It’s not some revolutionary thought to say an NBA team needs its stars healthy to contend, but that was especially true for last year’s top-heavy Suns squad. Even with improved depth this season, it remains true.
Last year, Phoenix only got 41 games with their Big 3 on the court together, and in those 862 minutes, they boasted a +6.6 Net Rating and a 26-15 record. That’s a 52-win pace, and even that feels conservative considering how disjointed those 41 games were due to the timing of those injuries. It wasn’t like Beal missed 29 games at the start of the season and then got to play the rest of the way through while building chemistry.
Instead, Beal missed the first few weeks of the season due to back problems, came back for a few games before re-aggravating his back, missed a whole month, got hurt again in his third game back after landing on Donte DiVincenzo’s foot, missed two more weeks with that ankle injury, returned for six weeks, broke his nose and hurt his hamstring before the All-Star break, missed nearly three weeks, and then finished out the season — all with minor Booker injuries sprinkled here and there.
That’s no way to build a rhythm as a team, but it’s worth noting that Beal’s six healthy weeks in the middle of the season were when the Suns looked like an actual contender, going 19-7 over their stretch from Dec. 27 through the All-Star break. Assuming Phoenix finds a way to get more than 41 games with their three best players on the court at the same time, that alone could lead to 50-plus wins and more cohesion in a playoff environment.
2. Better bench depth
The Suns aren’t the deepest team in the league, but there will be a lot more competition for playing time this year. Last year, the team jettisoned four offseason signings in a trade deadline move because they were all upside swings who wound up being fully expendable. Phoenix is hoping they’ll fare better with the more experienced pickups they targeted this summer.
For starters, the Suns are particularly high on rookies Ryan Dunn and Oso Ighodaro. There’s always a learning curve when it comes to first-year NBA players, but they were Phoenix’s top-two targets entering draft night, and they got them both. If Dunn’s 3-point shot is simply passable, he could earn minutes as the defensive-minded wing the Suns need. Ighodaro’s athleticism, playmaking, screen-setting and rim-running could earn him minutes if Jusuf Nurkic or Mason Plumlee get banged up at any point too.
Even if the rookies struggle to contribute on a playoff squad in their first season, the Suns upgraded their depth by landing Tyus Jones, Monte Morris and Mason Plumlee on vet minimum deals. Whether an undersized point guard is actually what the starting lineup needed is irrelevant at this point, and it comes with clear advantages.
One that hasn’t been spoken about as much? With Jones being promised a starting job, that will almost certainly move Grayson Allen — last year’s league leader in 3-point percentage — to the bench. Allen will have to adjust to that role, but if he can, he automatically becomes a potential Sixth Man of the Year candidate who will bolster the second unit’s scoring, spacing and secondary playmaking.
Morris, meanwhile, was one of the best backup point guards in the NBA before his injury-riddled campaign last year. In that same vein, Plumlee had been a reliable rim-runner, screen-setter and playmaking big for years leading up to his injury-torn season. If they can stay healthier this year, they’re both due for bounce-back seasons as they reunite in the Valley.
Even if they can’t stay perfectly healthy, Morris and Plumlee are better than what Phoenix had last year at those positions: nobody, and Drew Eubanks. Jordan Goodwin was supposed to fill that backup point guard role and failed to do so, and the Suns’ -4.1 Net Rating with Eubanks on the court drastically improved to +6.0 whenever he sat. All Morris and Plumlee have to do is be better than that!
With a bench unit that includes Monte Morris, Grayson Allen, Royce O’Neale (who’s getting a full season and training camp under his belt this time), Bol Bol, Mason Plumlee and possibly the rookies, Josh Okogie or Damion Lee, the Suns have way more dependable options to stagger alongside the Big 3 than they did last year.
3. Point guards help cut down on turnovers!
One of the other main benefits of adding traditional point guards is obviously cutting down on Phoenix’s egregious turnover problem. Looking at the film, most of those turnovers came in situations where the Big 3 will still be asked to create even with a point guard, but putting those three star scorers in more positions to attack and fewer situations where they’re asked to create will still be beneficial.
Case in point, it will probably help reduce last year’s 14.9 turnovers per game, which led to 18.2 opponents points a night. The Suns ranked 25th in the NBA in both of those categories.
The particular point guards Phoenix landed matter here too, since Tyus Jones and Monte Morris are both assist-to-turnover ratio gods. Jones has led the league in that category for five straight seasons, while Morris — nicknamed “The Count of Monte Assist/TO” — had been a top-five performer (usually second place) in that category for the four straight seasons leading up to last year.
As we broke down before, most of the Suns’ turnovers were fixable, with nearly 30 percent of them being the result of sloppy mistakes, passes right to the outstretched arm of a defender, or miscommunication errors:
Even eliminating 1-2 of those mistakes a night would’ve put Phoenix near the top-10 in turnovers! A year of continuity for the main guys will help, but even with new arrivals like Jones and Morris, the Suns are getting two of the absolute best in the business when it comes to setting up their teammates while taking care of the ball.
There will be defensive shortcomings to Phoenix’s approach of putting smaller guards in an already-undersized lineup, but the offensive benefits in terms of maximizing possessions, feeding three otherworldly scorers, and cutting down on miscues are pretty clear. That’s somewhat scary for a Suns squad that — despite all the turnovers and injuries and lack of chemistry — still ranked 10th in offensive rating last year.
4. The 4th quarters can’t possibly be that bad again…right?
Even the biggest haters of Durant, Booker and Beal never could’ve predicted the Suns would be the NBA’s worst fourth quarter team (by far) last year.
Phoenix’s league-worst -11.6 Net Rating was more than double the second-worst Net Rating in fourth quarters last year (Miami Heat at -5.5), but it was also tied for the sixth-worst fourth-quarter Net Rating in the last 28 years, dating back to NBA.com’s first available tracking data in 1996-97:
- 2021-22 Portland Trail Blazers: -15.5 Net Rating
- 2022-23 San Antonio Spurs: -15.3 Net Rating
- 1998-99 Chicago Bulls: -14.4 Net Rating
- 1998-99 Vancouver Grizzlies: -14.2 Net Rating
- 1999-00 LA Clippers: -11.9 Net Rating
- 2011-12 Charlotte Bobcats: -11.8 Net Rating
- 2023-24 Phoenix Suns: -11.8 Net Rating
- 1998-99 Washington Wizards: -10.8 Net Rating
- 2013-14 Detroit Pistons: -10.8 Net Rating
- 2000-01 Chicago Bulls: -10.7 Net Rating
We already dissected the root of this particular phenomenon, but here are the end-of-season numbers: Out of 82 fourth quarters, the Suns won 28 of them, lost 47 of them and tied seven times. However, of the 47 fourth quarters that they lost, a whopping 22 came in garbage time, with the Suns going up big after three quarters, losing the fourth quarter and still ultimately winning the game. (For reference, of those 22 instances, 17 of them happened with Phoenix up by 15-plus points after three quarters, and 13 of them occurred with Phoenix up by 20-plus.)
On top of those 22 instances, another three came in close games where the Suns lost the fourth quarter but still narrowly won the game. Another three on top of that came in games where the Suns were getting blown out and losing the fourth quarter was irrelevant.
According to our own meticulous tracking, there were 10 instances where the Suns held a lead going into the final frame and choked it away with one of those fourth-quarter meltdowns — and the last instance occurred in late January. From then on, choke jobs in the fourth quarter didn’t cost Phoenix team wins (although they did cost the fanbase a portion of their sanity from time to time).
That’s not to minimize the drop-off in performance in those fourth quarters though. Even in games where they led by double digits through three quarters, the Suns made it harder on themselves by continually allowing lesser teams back into games that should’ve been over. It’s hard to pinpoint a specific area where the improvement will come from, since nearly every aspect of the Suns’ play fell off a cliff in the fourth, from turnovers and shooting percentages to offensive and defensive rating.
But all of that misery, disorganization and chaos won’t be as bad again next season. Whether it’s because the Suns have more depth to stabilize those early fourth-quarter minutes when Booker gets his rest, or because Phoenix has point guards to keep the offense more organized, or simply because we refuse to believe a team with Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal will be that bad late in games again, it’s impossible to imagine last year’s results being anything more than a once-in-a-lifetime fluke.
5. Coaching change
Speaking of which, we’ve hinted at this aspect a few times, but hopefully a change at the helm will help with a lot of last year’s problems. Frank Vogel was not as incompetent as he’s been made out to be, and extracting a top-10 offense and the league’s 13th-ranked defense — despite all the injuries and a complete lack of defensive personnel — was a greater accomplishment than he’ll ever get credit for.
But it’s also true that at a certain point, Vogel lost his locker room, and after a first-round sweep, the team felt a change in leadership was needed. Enter Mike Budenholzer, another recent championship head coach who has a better track record when it comes to churning out regular-season wins by fielding elite defenses and offenses.
Budenholzer has his deficiencies as a coach, and he’s been criticized by his teams’ fanbases in the past for his lack of playoff adjustments. But he also understands the modern NBA and the necessity of the 3-ball, so rest assured, last year’s Suns squad ranking 25th in 3-point attempts — despite being fifth in 3-point percentage — simply won’t fly this season.
“There’s gonna be philosophical approaches to how we practice every day, how important shooting 3s is, and the spacing and all the value and all the things that come from being a high-volume 3-point team,” Budenholzer said. “I’m gonna work with the whole group to help them embrace it, understand why it’s important to us.”
Besides stressing the importance of taking more 3s, coach Bud has also recognized that he doesn’t want to take away from what Durant, Booker and Beal are able to do in the midrange. He’s acknowledged the importance of playing with a point guard and being able to play without one, and his teams in Milwaukee and Atlanta consistently ranked in the top 10 for 3-point attempts, offensive rating and defensive rating.
“He’s so detail-oriented,” Suns CEO Josh Bartelstein told PHNX Sports. “He thinks Phoenix Suns all day, every day, from the biggest things of where is Kevin [Durant] gonna get the ball to the smallest things of how do we maximize our two-way guys’ days? He’s just always thinking Suns basketball, and he’s a basketball savant. The way he uses players, the success he’s had, the wins, you’re talking about one of the best coaches in the NBA.”
If all this materializes, the Suns are in great shape. But even if Bud doesn’t immediately overhaul Phoenix into some 60-win juggernaut like he did at his previous stops, a simple change in leadership may still work wonders for a team that felt disjointed and uncompetitive during that jarring first-round exit.
