For the Phoenix Suns, things weren’t meant to proceed this way.
In an ideal world, this year would have marked the team’s recovery from the injuries, trades, coaching change, and inconsistent lineup that plagued 2023.
The 45-win season the previous year—which culminated in a six-game matchup with the NBA champions—was meant to be the exception. The Suns were officially all-in when they acquired Devin Booker, Bradley Beal, and Kevin Durant to form an elite offensive triumvirate, giving up almost all of their draft equity in the process.
When I released my preseason projections for the 2023-24 season, Phoenix landed second in the Western Conference and fifth overall with a 51-31 record. That was accounting for the inevitable absences, untimely shooting slumps, and the adjustment period that was necessary when Frank Vogel took over the coaching reigns.
The Suns aren’t too far off from that prediction after four months. At the moment, they are playing at a 47.5 win pace. But the conference as a whole has advanced (many times) and overtaken Phoenix in the race for the championship. Since late December, the Suns have shown glimmers of excellence. However, none have endured long enough to become popular in the West or establish themselves as genuine competitors.
Phoenix had won 14 of their previous 18 games and had a +8.4 net rating, which placed them fourth in the league, going into the All-Star break.
Play resumed, and they staggered out of the gate right away. Against Houston on Friday, the offense struggled in the first half, scoring just 52 points on 54 possessions. They shot 22.6% from beyond the arc toward the conclusion of the game, which is just not going to help them win on the road. The previous evening, Phoenix lost a crucial game that determined the tiebreaker with Dallas after giving up 41 points and 11 assists to their fiercest opponent, Luka Doncic.
Two straight losses during their Texas road trip have knocked the Suns down to eighth in the West standings.
If there was a time for urgency, it’s now. This is late February with only 25 games left. To say the clock is ticking would be putting it mildly.
When asked Sunday about the West playoff picture and whether or not Phoenix is concerned about the standings, Vogel quickly shut down any notion that his team is okay with coasting into the playoffs as a low seed.
Vogel responded, “Oh, we care.” “Obviously, the higher seed we can obtain, the better. That is what we want. Our goal is to become a top-four team with home court advantage. We’re not that at this moment. However, let’s return to the top six and avoid the play-in match. The most crucial thing is to stay healthy and play our best basketball during the postseason. The seedings do, however, matter. Being the best seed possible is our goal.
Phoenix has been one of the unluckiest teams in the league, so it’s difficult to be too critical of their play despite their unimpressive 33-24 record. They have had a consistent lineup for around five weeks in terms of health.
One star disappears and another rises.
Beal suffered another hamstring injury on February 13, which came after he had played 23 straight games and demonstrated his ability to take this club to a tier-one offense. Including the All-Star break, he has now missed almost two weeks of play.
There’s no other way to slice it — the Suns only getting 22 total games with their highest-paid players together is the first major problem. That’s just 38.6% of the team’s season thus far. While it’s something Vogel is used to seeing from his final two years with the Lakers, it’s simply not enough for a team hoping to build championship habits throughout the process. And he knows it.
When fully intact and healthy, there aren’t many squads better than Phoenix. Every time you hear an opposing coach speak pregame on the Suns, there is a reason they rave about the shot creation and offensive capabilities. There is a reason they’ve often thrown ‘junk’ defenses — halfcourt traps and constant blitzes — when Booker or Durant initiate pick-and-roll. When the team is whole, they are a handful to deal with. Teams are selling out their defense to suffocate the Suns’ superstar duo and daring the outlets (or release valves) to beat them on the backside.
When that’s Beal catching the ball in open space, it yields tremendous offense. When that’s literally anyone else on the roster … things can get dicey.
Still, they should be performing better when one of Beal-Booker-Durant are out of the lineup. With a 14-8 record in the 22 games the Suns’ trio has played, it means they are 19-16 any time they don’t share the floor.
If the only time they can string together quality games is when the environment is perfect, that’s not exactly conducive to making a deep postseason run. As a team susceptible to injuries, you can’t expect to have no major absences from April to June. It just doesn’t happen unless the basketball gods are fully on your side.
The Suns have yet to prove they can fight through different forms of adversity and come out on top. Perhaps that’s the reality of the situation when a team is constructed with three max salaries and asked to fill out the roster with limited resources. Depth was always going to be somewhat of an issue for this top-heavy group, but for playoff purposes, all they really need to figure out is what type of combinations work well around the stars.
