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The Suns should be better than this without Kevin Durant

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Gerald Bourguet Avatar

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I could spend hours watching film, pouring through quotes from players and coaches, and breaking down all the things that aren’t going right for the Phoenix Suns on the court right now. But some things are just obvious, and it doesn’t take a basketball savant to know the Suns should be better than what they’ve been…even without Kevin Durant.

Before the season even began, no one was under any illusions about this team’s chances to contend if the “Big 3” couldn’t stay healthy. Come playoff time, if any one of Durant, Devin Booker or Bradley Beal is out of the lineup, their odds of winning the franchise’s first championship plummet. It’s the inherent risk that comes with building your team around three max-salaried players in the modern NBA.

But two things can be true at once: The Suns have looked the part when their best player has been healthy, and they’ve been far worse than they should be when he hasn’t.

In 13 games with KD on the court, the Suns are 11-2, with a +5.1 point differential. They went 8-0 in crunch-time, and over Durant’s first nine games, the Suns had the league’s 11th-ranked offense (114.1 points per 100 possessions) and its 11th-ranked defense (110.9 points per 100 possessions). Over Durant’s next four games, they boasted an even better offensive rating (114.4) and a downright elite defensive rating (105.5).

In their 10 games without Durant, however, the Suns are now 1-9 after Sunday’s 115-110 loss to the Orlando Magic, with a -8.6 point differential. They’ve gone 0-5 in the clutch, and they’ve posted a defensive rating of 123.3 in that stretch, which would be the worst defensive rating in NBA history over a full season.

Losses to the shorthanded New Orleans Pelicans and Orlando Magic, as well as the middling Miami Heat, Sacramento Kings and Brooklyn Nets further accentuate just how lost this group has looked without KD. And the thing is, there’s absolutely no excuse for it.

The Suns have changed coaches, updated their playing style to finally catch up with the rest of the NBA by taking more 3s, revamped their bench, added rookies to lend athleticism and youthful exuberance…and they’re still floundering without their 36-year-old superstar.

Even without him, this team has enough to compete against most opponents. But for two main reasons, cobbling together wins to even stay afloat has proven to be bafflingly difficult.

Why have the Suns been so bad without Kevin Durant?

That conversation obviously begins with Devin Booker, who is having his worst statistical season since his third year in the league. His 25-6-4 stat line doesn’t sound terrible on paper, but it’s been a mostly painful watch, especially since it’s come on subpar efficiency. Book is only shooting 43.2 percent from the floor and 33.5 percent from deep, and in his 23 appearances, he’s already had six games where he’s failed to crack 20 points. For reference, that only happened 12 times in his 68 appearances last season.

And that’s saying nothing of the defensive end. Booker prides himself on being a good defender, but that certainly hasn’t shown in his play for the majority of the season. Two years ago he was the best player on a 64-win team, and in the playoffs just over a year ago, he had the best individual playoff run of his career, putting up a blistering 34-7-5-2 stat line on .585/.508/.866 shooting splits. In both cases, he was engaged on the defensive end as an above-average, committed defender.

So wee know Devin Booker is capable of playing at an All-NBA level. We’ve seen it before, and a rough 23-game start to the season shouldn’t drastically alter anyone’s memory. But so far this year, Booker has barely looked like an All-Star, let alone the MVP-caliber, top-10 player he was just a year or two ago. That has to change before anyone has a modicum of faith restored in the Suns’ outlook, with or without Kevin Durant.

Bradley Beal has disappointed lately too. While he’s generally gets a bit more grace as the third member of this “Big 3,” he’s failed to consistently step up during these periods with Durant out. His 24-point, 10-of-18 shooting performance against the Pelicans was sullied by a game-high 7 turnovers, and he followed that up with a 15-point, 5-of-18 shooting night against Miami before failing to crack 20 once again in Orlando…in a game where he committed another 5 turnovers.

The shameful part is the role players have largely stepped up over these last three games with KD sidelined by a left ankle sprain. Royce O’Neale put up 19.3 points per game over that stretch — slightly more than Beal’s 19.0 points per game — while shooting 58.8 percent from the floor and 63.6 percent from 3.

Tyus Jones stepped up his scoring to 15.7 points and 5.3 assists a night on 47.8 percent shooting from deep. Grayson Allen chipped in 14.0 points and 5.3 assists on white-hot .600/.625/.889 shooting splits. Monte Morris has given Phoenix a lift with his 7.7 points on 47.4 percent shooting. The center rotation has left something to be desired with Jusuf Nurkic out, but for the most part, the role players have done their jobs.

Which is what makes this 0-3 skid — by far the most demoralizing stretch of the Suns’ season to this point — so confounding, especially compared to last season, when Phoenix went 5-2 in the seven games Durant missed. The stars need to play like stars, and Booker and Beal haven’t answered that call for the majority of the time Durant’s spent on the sidelines this season.

It’s been particularly bad over the last three games. Booker only managed 24.7 points per game — which would be his lowest scoring average over a full season since his second year in the league — while committing 3.7 turnovers a night. To top it all off, he only shot 35.1 percent from the floor and 23.8 percent from 3. We gave him some leeway to start the season because of the constant double-teams, the illness, the quality of opponents in question and the fact that it was small sample size. But that sample size has grown since then, and it’s gotten even worse. That’s concerning.

Beal, meanwhile, averaged just 19.0 points per game and had more turnovers (14) than assists (10) over this three-game stretch. He shot 47.9 percent overall but made only 20 percent of his 3s.

Perhaps most damning of all is how putrid Phoenix’s defense has been with those two on the court lately. Again, three games is a small sample size, but the Suns posted an atrocious 125.7 defensive rating with Booker on the court (second-worst on the team)… and a 101.6 with him off it, which was easily the best mark on the team.

Beal, meanwhile, posted a team-worst 126.1 on-court defensive rating over these last three losses. That number improved to 110.3 when he was off the court.

Not having the length and size of Kevin Durant, Ryan Dunn and Jusuf Nurkic obviously has an impact here, especially for a Suns squad that was already undersized on a nightly basis. But Phoenix has offered little resistance on the defensive end whenever KD’s been out, and once again, it starts with their two players who are expected to play like stars.

The good news is it’s a long season, and we’ve seen this group look like one of the best teams in the West with everyone healthy. But the bad news is, health is not guaranteed with this collection of players, and it’ll be a long season if this continues.

One player’s absence should not make this much of a difference, and to this point, the Suns have disappointed in spectacular fashion without that player. That does little to inspire belief in this group, or quiet the allegations that Durant is “carrying” them so far.

KD has played at an MVP-caliber level this year, and the Suns’ spiraling act whenever he’s been out has only improved his candidacy. But Durant is on track to miss the 65-game threshold to even qualify for awards, and if he continues to miss games here and there, Phoenix needs more out of its other two players who are billed as stars, paid like stars, and have played like stars for the majority of their careers.

Over these next four days without games, it’s time from some serious soul-searching to rediscover those guys again.