New owner Mat Ishbia built a superteam in Phoenix, bringing Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal together with Devin Booker. The first season ended in a first-round sweep and a $68M tax bill. Here are three questions for the second year of the Suns’ Big Three era.
1. Can Bradley Beal stay healthy?
The Suns only had their Big Three together for 41 games in the regular season, thanks to a series of injuries to Beal. Beal missed 18 of the season’s first 21 games with a back injury and later suffered injuries to his ankle, hamstring, finger and broke his nose. It’s the fourth straight season he’s missed 22 or more games, and the season before, he missed 15.
Booker has missed at least 15 games in the past four seasons, while Durant enjoyed his healthiest season since 2018-19, suiting up for 75 games. Of course, he then got hurt leading up to the Olympics. But it’s Beal, who’s making over $50M this season, who is the real injury concern.
When he played, Beal averaged 18.2 points and five assists, making 43 percent of his three-pointers. The Suns went 26-15 when Beal, Booker and Durant all played, which was good for a 52-win pace. But a team with this much firepower needs to be better than ninth in offensive rating for the Suns, not exactly a shutdown defensive team, to be a true contender.
2. How will this team look with a real point guard?
Booker took the reins at point guard for much of last season, averaging 6.9 assists. That’s because the Suns’ other options were Jordan Goodwin, Saben Lee and an out-of-position Eric Gordon. Now they’ve added some real point guard depth in Tyus Jones, trying to rebuild his value after a nightmare season in Washington, and veteran backup Monte Morris.
The question is whether the presence of Jones pushes starter Grayson Allen to the bench. Adding Jones certainly helps facilitate the offense with his drive-and-kick skills, plus his extremely low turnover rate (Jones averaged 7.3 assists with only one turnover in 2023-24). But Jones is significantly smaller and a worse defender than Allen, who let players he defended score on 52.9 percent of their shots last season (Allen allowed 45.7 percent).
The Suns really might be better off with Beal coming off the bench, but it’s hard to imagine he’d be happy as a $50M sixth man. So while Jones and Morris should be a huge help to the offense, Phoenix needs to find a happy medium between scoring and defending. Or, just try to win every game 125-120.
3. Will Mike Budenholzer unlock the offense?
Former Milwaukee Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer took over the team this summer, the team’s third coach in as many years. Coach Bud led the Bucks to an NBA Finals win over the Suns in 2021, but was fired two years later. Postseason disappointments led Budenholzer to lose his job, but if he gets his players to buy in, Budenholzer’s tendencies should help some problem areas for the Suns.
For one, his teams love to shoot the three. In all but one of Budenholzer’s 10 seasons as a head coach, his teams have been in the top eight of NBA teams in three-point attempts. Last year, despite having the fifth-best three-point percentage, the Suns were 25th in attempts.
