No team has been more aggressive reshaping their roster over the past two years than the Phoenix Suns. After reaching the Finals in 2021, the Suns have just one player — Devin Booker — still on their roster from that team that fell to the Milwaukee Bucks in six games.
The Suns started to revamp their roster just days after Mat Ishbia purchased the team in 2023, flipping Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, and a boatload of first round picks to Brooklyn for Kevin Durant at the trade deadline. After a second consecutive second round exit that spring, they fired Monty Williams and doubled down on their efforts to build a superteam by trading Chris Paul and a boatload of second round picks to Washington for Bradley Beal. The Suns then sent Deandre Ayton to Portland to bring in Jusuf Nurkic and Grayson Allen to start completely fresh.
Phoenix built out is roster with veteran minimum signings, which at the time seemed like a collection of solid values. But the lesson they (and the rest of us that wrongly praised those signings) learned was players available for a veteran minimum are in that position for a reason. After stumbling out of the gates, James Jones again tapped Brooklyn for a trade — two of those vet minimum guys, Keita Bates-Diop and Jordan Goodwin, were package with some second-round picks for Royce O’Neale, while the Memphis Grizzlies also got pulled in and sent David Roddy to Phoenix. The idea: go get a player capable of helping in the postseason.
The result of all that effort to turn over the roster was a first round sweep at the hands of the Minnesota Timberwolves, a team they dominated in the regular season only to get steamrolled come playoff time. Unlike the Milwaukee Bucks, another team that took a big swing on the trade market this summer, the Suns, while they’ll certainly try, won’t get much sympathy for injuries playing a role in their early exit. While they struggled to get everyone on the court during the regular season, they were mostly at full strength come playoff time. Allen injuring his ankle certainly created a spacing issue, but when you have all three of your top stars healthy and available for the full series, there are no real excuses. On top of that, given the recent history of Beal and Durant, the expectation was for there to be missed time in the regular season.
In the playoffs, Phoenix was outclassed in just about every way, and most crucially, they play a style of ball that leaves almost no margin for error even when things are going well. They do not shoot threes at a high volume and do not get to the rim at a high volume, meaning they are heavily reliant on tough shot-making to get by. Now, they have some of the game’s best from the midrange, particularly Durant and Booker, but even when those two are on fire (see: Game 4) they still can get clipped by a team that takes more threes, gets to the rim, and gets on the glass like Minnesota. We saw the same thing last year against Denver, where Durant and Booker had to put up insane stat lines on crazy efficiency just to get two wins.
Adding Beal only put another cook in the kitchen that wants to do the same things. Swapping Ayton (who has his own flaws, for sure) for Nurkic eliminated any vertical rim threat from their arsenal. They almost defiantly refused to bring in a point guard to help run things alongside Booker and Beal (or, more importantly, when neither were on the floor). Doing all of that and leaning on stars who don’t want to let it fly from three makes your offense extremely one-dimensional, and in the playoffs, that lack of variability makes their lives significantly harder.
The problem for the Suns is, despite having a fairly clear result to show this experiment has failed, they do not have a clear path to do anything else. Their cap sheet might be the most jarring to look at in the entire league, and all they really have locked in is their current starting five.
Booker just inked a supermax extension that has four years left, worth ~$220 million. Durant has two years and $105 million remaining on his deal. And Beal, who never quite found his footing alongside the other two, still has a no-trade clause and is owed $160 million over the next three years (no, that’s not a typo) on a deal he signed with the Wizards. They inked Allen to a $70 million extension before the playoffs, which was probably a smart move but only further locks them into this team, and Nurkic will make north of $37 million over the next two years. Aside from them, the only players on the books for next year are Nassir Little and Roddy, neither of whom sniffed the playoff rotation.
There is no way to round out this roster without moving one of those five starters, and the guy you would probably most like to move (Beal) can veto any trade. Trading Booker would be extremely surprising given the franchise’s investment in him, and trading Durant would probably not net the kind of return they’d need — for how good he is and how his game should age well, he is about to turn 36. Instead, they will almost have to re-sign O’Neale using his Bird rights, as he’s their only chance at a non-vet minimum signing. Otherwise, it will once again be a trip to the vet minimum roulette wheel, which is a 000 wheel with a loaded ball. And so, the Suns will enter this offseason with very few options, and barring something unforeseen, their plan seems to be simply hoping things get better and that the three stars who pick up injuries with some frequency just stay healthy.
Shams Charania and Doug Haller of The Athletic dropped a report as soon as the final buzzer sounded in Game 4 detailing this plan and citing Vogel’s voice as “waning” as the season went on. The plan would be to bring their core back and once again look on the margins for help — this time, this has to include a point guard, even if that means taking the ball out of the other three guys’ hands so they can get the ball in spots they like more frequently.
That means the team is going to look mostly the same as this one, and we have learned by now that veteran minimum signings are not things that can raise a team’s ceiling. There won’t be a real impact point guard that’s going to come available that they will be able to sign, so at best they’ll get someone capable of leading a bench unit (which would be an upgrade, it must be said). And while Vogel could be an easy fall guy, it’s hard to see how a coaching change yields anything dramatic.
Durant, Booker, and Beal don’t consistently hunt tough shots because that’s what they’re being demanded to do by Vogel, they do it because that’s what they all are comfortable doing and prefer to do. If his voice got lost in the locker room, I genuinely don’t know who is going to come in and be able to demand significant play style changes. That’s not to say Vogel’s completely faultless in their struggles, but I have a hard time pinning anything close to the majority of the blame for Phoenix’s struggles on the coach. It is also worth mentioning that The Athletic reported that a front office shakeup is unlikely, as James Jones “is expected to continue overseeing team-building.”
As such, the Suns’ most likely path involves running it back and simply hoping that another year brings a bit more continuity, a bit better regular season health, and a more favorable first round matchup. However, at some point they’re going to have to face the top teams that have dismantled them the last two seasons, and when they do, history is likely going to repeat itself.