By Jacob Seliga
Lead Writer
With the 2024-25 NBA season tipping off in just over a week, the excitement amongst most fanbases in the league is at an all-time high. Parity throughout the association has reached a level not seen in the league’s 78-year history and many teams believe they have a championship caliber roster or are one acquisition away from reaching that point.
One of the teams that believes they are in a position to win a championship this season is the Phoenix Suns.
The Suns are now three years removed from an appearance in the NBA Finals and won 49 games last season following a trade for former Washington Wizards shooting guard Bradley Beal but fell flat on their face in the first round of the playoffs, losing in a sweep to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Since then, the Suns have completely overhauled the organization. Head coach Frank Vogel was fired after only one season in favor of Arizona native Mike Budenholzer who was the head coach for the Milwaukee Bucks when the Suns lost the 2021 finals. Former assistant coach Kevin Young who stayed following the departure of Monty Williams left to become the head coach at BYU. And each free agent signing from the 2023 offseason with the exception of Bol Bol did not return either.
They hit on their new rookie additions
With a roster that’s capped out financially due to Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, and Bradley Beal’s contracts which are the fourth, fifth, and sixth highest in basketball respectively, this offseason had to be the definition of perfect. The Suns have zero control over their own draft picks between the start of the 24-25 campaign and the 2031 offseason, and if Phoenix commits to the exorbitant salary cap they’ve built their 2032 pick will move to the end of the first round after this season.
All that being said, this past offseason was the last one for the immediate future that Phoenix would have flexibility and the opportunity to game the system in a way that would be beneficial for them. The first moves came in the NBA Draft where Phoenix started off with the No. 22 draft. Knowing that Denver was the team that made a draft night promise to select Dayton forward DaRon Holmes II, the Suns drafted the local product and immediately traded him to the Nuggets for the 28th pick and the 56th pick.
This was crucial as the Suns entered the draft without a second round pick due to their tampering of former Sun Drew Eubanks in free agency.
With the 28th pick, the Suns selected who many considered the best true defensive prospect in the draft class in Ryan Dunn from Virginia. A 6-foot-8 Swiss Army knife defender with a 7-foot-1 wingspan that brings something to a roster that’s desperately needed a point-of-attack defender in the lineup since trading Mikal Bridges to Brooklyn in the Kevin Durant deal just 20 months ago.
For Dunn his versatility to guard both wings and guards make him a valuable piece in a lineup that couldn’t stop a nosebleed at times last season, it also helps that Dunn has said multiple times that he models his game after Herb Jones and Jaden McDaniels, two of the premier defenders in basketball.
In college, Dunn played small minutes as a center in Virginia’s lineup but still led the ACC in blocks per game at 2.3 and his 1.3 steals per contest was one of the highest marks in the conference as well. His college film shows Dunn’s ability to switch with ease which is key in a lineup full of mismatches, he stops drives to the rim with his physicality, and his ability to chase down blocks or contest shots straight up makes him a valued commodity.
As the Suns went into day two of the draft, Phoenix was looking for ways to jump up towards the front half of the draft as the player they had number two on their draft board was still ripe for the taking, after packaging a couple of picks, Phoenix was able to move up to pick 40 and take Oso Ighodaro from Marquette, a 6-foot-9 big man who was born and raised in the Valley. And immediately in the preseason, his value on the offensive end has paid dividends.
His ability to be a connector at the top of the key and out on the perimeter and hit cutting guards or shooters coming off screens is valuable in an offense that needs as much playmaking as it can get and a system that values free flowing play. With little to no debate, the conversation around Ighodaro entering the draft was that he was the best passing big in the class as he averaged three assists per game in a Marquette lineup that had the best passing point guard in the country running plays.
In Summer League, Ighodaro averaged 4.5 assists per game and in his action during the preseason so far, the ability to move the ball has been showcased multiple times. But for how good he is as a passer, what may be his best attribute is his ability to set screens and be a roller in the offense. His physicality and proper footwork allowed him to run the 1-2 game with Tyler Kolek at Marquette with ease and when rolling Ighodaro showed the ability to finish at the rim but also from 8-10 feet with floaters.
Immediately after the draft, the Suns went to work grabbing another prospect that was near the top of their draft board in a player that was nearly their selection at pick 22, undrafted free agent Jalen Bridges from Baylor. Bridges unlike Ighodaro and Dunn is the one rookie who did not receive a guaranteed contract however, his two-way deal gives him a good chance at being one of the final selections for the NBA roster. This is because of his “3 & D” ability that he showcased in his time in college and what has become the most coveted piece in roster construction in the modern NBA.
At 6-foot-7 immediately Bridges adds additional length to the rotation with his 6-foot-10 wingspan and his ability to help guards that switch and cover ground creates problems for zone offenses. His three-point shot is his most valuable asset as we saw in Summer League where he shot 40-percent from three in action with the Suns after shooting 41-percent on three-point attempts during his final year at Baylor.
Free agency splashes
In free agency, due to their limited cap space the only pieces that Phoenix was able to add would be minimum contract players. The majority of the time, these are players that wouldn’t crack most contending rotations or are players that are considered past their prime. After addressing both their pressing issues on the wing and in the big rotation, the next step was to address an issue that has been debated since the “Big Three” was formed, and that’s whether or not the Suns needed a traditional point guard.
At the beginning of free agency, it appeared unlikely that the Suns would be able to walk out with a point guard that would fit with the “Big Three” and be a valuable rotation piece. But little did Phoenix know that what may end up as the x-factor to their championship run would take a pay cut to come to the Valley.
Tyus Jones for the past five seasons has been one of the most valuable playmakers in all of basketball. In 2023-24 for the fifth consecutive season, Jones led basketball with the highest assist to turnover ratio as in his first season as a starter he posted career highs in assists per game and led the league in games with five or more assists and zero turnovers. Throughout his career, that has been his greatest asset, to run the offense like a chef dishing out assists and setting plays up like plates leaving a kitchen rarely making a mistake.
And that’s crucial as last season the Suns averaged 15 turnovers per game, a number that was near the bottom of the league. In the fourth quarter of most games as teams would blitz one of Beal, Booker, and Durant, the offense would be disorganized and stagnant and that contributed to multiple fourth quarter collapses and losses that bit the team in the butt as it neared the postseason.
With Jones sliding into the starting lineup, the next goal was to find a backup point guard that could help stabilize a bench unit that for lack of a better team was abysmal at times last season, and that point guard was Monté Morris.
Morris’ 2023-24 campaign was one to forget early on, he started off the season in Detroit and never quite looked to be in rhythm as he suffered an injury and only appeared in a handful of games before he was traded to Minnesota who had a massive hole at the back up guard spot, a hole he’d fill with ease.
While averaging over 15 minutes per contest across 27 regular season games, Morris only committed five total turnovers before not committing a single one in the postseason.
This is massive, and is a trend that has continued for his career as he’s averaged a 5:1 assist-to-turnover ratio across his first eight seasons in the association.
Between Jones and Morris, the stability in the playmaking department is something Phoenix hasn’t seen in some time, even while Chris Paul was running the show. Their ability to create without generating turnovers and pass players into open positions is valuable to a lineup that has Beal, Booker, and Durant all on the perimeter as shooters.
The system will fit their playstyles
“Play fast” from the moment those words were said by Mike Budenholzer, the feeling in the air around the offense in Phoenix was that for the first time since the days of Mike D’Antoni, the Suns would be running a system that is built to be successful in the modern NBA. As most saw during Budenholzer’s reign as head coach in Milwaukee, his teams have a tendency to play a defensive drop coverage style that allows for quick transition baskets and the ability to get out in space and quickly knock down three-point shots. Multiple times last season, including during stretches of the first round playoff series against Minnesota. The Suns time and time again would slow the game down to a halt with their isolation-centric style that didn’t matchup well against teams that could throw multiple long defenders on a ball handler at a time.
In this new system, the ball is constantly flowing to find either a quick and easy basket inside or an open shooter on the wing which is perfect for an efficient shooter like Durant or Grayson Allen who led the league in three-point percentage last season or even a Damion Lee, a career 38-percent three-point shooter who is returning after missing all of last season.
This emphasis on three-point shooting is a breath of fresh air as a mid-range heavy offense that was stuck in 2002 has now joined the modern game. Last season, the two teams that met in NBA Finals were the Boston Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks, the top two three-point shooting teams in terms of value last season as they shot 42 and 39 attempts per game respectively. The Suns as they’ve been for some time, were near the bottom of the league averaging only 32 three-point attempts per game, a number that dropped to a frightening low 26 attempts per game in their first round series.
In the Suns first preseason game against the Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix attempted 39 three-point shots, knocking down 41-percent from the field. In their second game against the Detroit Pistons, that number ballooned to 46 attempts.
Outlook
The West for how loaded it is talent wise, is as wide open as it can get. Truthfully there’s close to a dozen teams in the conference that believes they can make a championship run this season including Phoenix. But for the first time since the 2020-21 season, the Suns enter a season with lowered expectations. After back-to-back seasons of falling short of where most expected Phoenix to finish, there’s doubt to some if the Suns could even make it out of a play-in spot.
Phoenix addressed the most pressing issues this roster faced entering the season. The bench unit which will be led by Allen and Royce O’Neale has a stable veteran point guard in Morris who can get them open shots on the perimeter and can provide a breather that the “Big Three” did not have at all last year. The backup big spot was addressed with Ighodaro and Mason Plumlee who comes over from the Clippers and has proven to be a pick-and-roll savant with his former Nuggets teammate in Monté Morris who ran it a lot in Denver.
With a defensive formula that works for the personnel the Suns currently have the roster and an offensive scheme that is perfect for the shooting and newly found playmakers throughout the roster, this season could be one to remember in Phoenix as the Suns appear to be reloaded and ready to take the league by storm once again. After a “golden” Summer in Paris, Booker and Durant are ready to showcase that their team USA performances are indicative of what’s to come and with an early season schedule that’ll provide tests early and often, the Suns are ready to make a run at the first championship in franchise history.
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