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#21 in the LBB end of the season team rankings...

Jun 12, 2024

It may seem crazy to have a team with the type of top-end talent that Phoenix has this low, but their situation in terms of roster management is one of the worst in the league going forward. The team is aging, with no assets, and several needs that they have to fill with players in-house who were not capable of doing so last season. The Suns got smoked in the first round, and while some of that may have been a reflection of matchup, in truth, I just don’t think that beyond Booker and Durant that this is a particularly great group, especially when taking into account age and injury luck. If Phoenix struggles to begin next season the way they did this season, I could see this going sideways really quickly, as there are no moves for the Suns to make to improve the team, and we already know that Kevin Durant’s buy-in has diminishing returns.

#21 Phoenix Suns

Record: 49-33 (Tied-8^th); 99.00 Pace (15^th); 116.8 Offensive Rating (10^th); 113.7 Defensive Rating (13^th); 3.1 Net Rating (8^th)

Total Salary Cap Allocations: $244,701,551 (5^th)

Cap Space: $-103,701,551 (26^th)

Current Roster: Grayson Allen, Bradley Beal, Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, Nassir Little, Jusuf Nurkic, David Roddy

Key Free Agents: Udoka Azubuike (Unrestricted – Two-Way), Bol Bol (Unrestricted), Drew Eubanks (Unrestricted – Player Option), Eric Gordon (Unrestricted – Player Option), Damion Lee (Unrestricted – Player Option), Saben Lee (Unrestricted – Two-Way), Josh Okogie (Unrestricted – Player Option), Royce O’Neale (Unrestricted), Thaddeus Young (Unrestricted)

Single Word Description: Overleveraged

Biggest Positive: Kevin Durant and Devin Booker. I know it’s a bit of a “no duh” statement to say that the best thing about a team is having two of the 15 best players in the league—Durant was selected for second-team All-NBA, while Booker was third-team—but honestly, I am struggling to conjure much else to be excited about with this Phoenix unit. Durant and Booker were tied for fifth in scoring, both averaging 27.1 points per game last season, with each being their typically efficient selves from the floor—Durant: 52/41/86; Booker: 49/36/88. Despite all that, Phoenix finished just sixth in the West—which I know isn’t bad in a stacked conference, but for the cost of this team, it just feels disappointing—and was the worst scoring team in the fourth quarter in the entire league, averaging just 25.1 points in the final period. If your best players are playing at that level, and you still feel about as threatening as a Joe Biden jab, you’re probably in a lot of trouble going forward.

Share Live. Breathe. Ball.

Biggest Negative: Building a functional roster. For a team that is more top-heavy than a 90’s playmate and sitting over the second apron already due to their seven current rostered players making an eye-popping $194 million combined, the Suns are stuck in a situation where they have almost no mechanisms for adding depth to a group that was pretty rough outside of their starting five last season. Thanks to the Suns' cap situation and the punitive measures with the second apron, Phoenix can’t use any signing exceptions, they can’t acquire players via sign-and-trade, they can’t aggregate salary on the outgoing side of a trade, they can’t take back more than 100% of a player’s salary on any deals, they can’t sign a buyout player who made more than the Non-Taxpayer MLE on their previous contract, and they can’t pass go and collect $200. For all intents and purposes, Phoenix is fucked (sorry again Mom).

Worse still, the Suns are coming off a somewhat disappointing regular season, followed by an ignominious exit via first-round sweep in the playoffs at the hands of Ant Edwards’ Timberwolves, despite getting some of the best individual years in terms of health from their collection of oft-injured stars. Here’s a look at just how surprisingly healthy Phoenix’s brittle ballers were last season:

Kevin Durant - 75 games, most since 2014
Devin Booker - 68 games, tied for most since 2020
Bradley Beal - 53 games, most since 2021
Eric Gordon - 68 games, second most since 2019
Jusuf Nurkić - 76 games, most since 2019
Grayson Allen - 75 games, most in his six-year career

It’s a pretty ominous sign that despite getting the healthiest seasons you could hope for out of your top-six rotation players, the Suns still struggled to be the dominant force that many had thought them capable of after trading for a mid-3—they were never a big-3—when they acquired Bradley Beal last offseason. The expectation next season has to be that injury luck won’t hold, especially when considering only Allen and Booker will enter next year below the age of 30. So, when the injuries inevitably come, Phoenix is likely in a whole hell of a lot of trouble, as they will have to rely much more heavily on a bench unit that was dead last in the league in scoring this season at a meager 26.6 points per game.

What’s Next: First, Phoenix has to hope that pretty much everyone exercises their player options, as they will struggle to just fill out their roster even if most of those players return. Okogie and Eubanks meant far more to this team than they should have this season, and in doing so, may have played their way to offers good enough elsewhere that the player option doesn’t make much sense for them. With the Suns’ second apron issue and the fact that they traded pretty much all their draft picks for Durant, Phoenix can’t even make a deal where they attach assets to a player in an effort to get someone that could be a productive rotation piece for them. Really, the only option is that Phoenix runs it back with a roster that will likely be a bit diminished and hopes that this group can just find some better rotational chemistry. Either that, or Big Body Roddy or Nasir Little has an out-of-body experience and becomes a player that none of us expects them capable of. Furthermore, if you’re betting on Bradley Beal having a renaissance, that seems highly unlikely, as his numbers have declined for three straight seasons now, meaning he is probably just the player we saw this year. Which was good (18.2 points, on 51.3% from the field and 43.0% from distance) but not good enough to be the type of third-option star that Phoenix had hoped for.

What They Shouldn’t Do: Hold out hope for next season to be better than this year. The Suns should trade Kevin Durant right now. I know that owner Mat Ishbia went on his delusional discursive fugue shortly after the Suns' playoff exit, basically giving the verbal representation of the “it’s fine” meme, but there is little to no chance that this situation gets any better next year. Sure, the hiring of Mike Budenholzer might make the Suns seem viable during the regular season, but this is also the same coach that is notorious for playing his starters too many minutes during the regular season, not to mention his penchant for schematic rigidity, which was apparently part of Kevin Durant’s issue with former coach Frank Vogel. I expect the Suns to have the type of year that is rife with finger-pointing and flabbergasting, and considering they are landlocked into their roster, it would benefit them to move one of their two high-level assets in Durant or Booker. However, it would be crazy to move Booker, who is much younger and the face of the franchise; perhaps they could get something for Nurkić, but it wouldn’t be much and they have no alternatives to replace him at starting center. If feels like Phoenix needs a hard reset, which seems a crazy position to be in considering that they spent so many assets to acquire Durant and Beal so recently.

Is There Hope?: That’s gonna be a big no for me dog. I wouldn’t even have Phoenix in the top 25 if it weren’t for the fact that there is no denying the greatness of their top two players. That is unless you’re the Minnesota Timberwolves, who had absolutely no issues denying them. With their cap situation, the inevitable collapse of their health, and the fact that this team is a front-runner for bad vibes next season, I would want no part of this Phoenix situation going forward.

Links to Other Team Reviews:

#30 Brooklyn Nets

#29 Washington Wizards

#28 Portland Trail Blazers

#27 Detroit Pistons

#26 Charlotte Hornets

#25 Toronto Raptors

#24 Chicago Bulls

#23 Atlanta Hawks

#22 Utah Jazz

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