Image: kevin durant and devin booker
The Suns may be forced to break up the dynamic duo of Kevin Durant and Devin Booker.
Roughly two weeks ago, as Jordan Ott squinted into the fluorescent lighting of the Phoenix Suns practice facility for the first time as the franchise’s new head coach, he looked out on his new team.
There wasn’t much to see.
Standing behind assembled reporters there to welcome Ott, the franchise’s fourth head coach in as many seasons, were just three Suns players. All were coming off their rookie seasons: Ryan Dunn, Oso Ighodaro, Jalen Bridges. No Devin Booker, no Bradley Beal. And, especially, no Kevin Durant.
If Ott didn’t know it before, it was staring him in the face now: His team, which had finished a disappointing 36-46 the year before, was devoid of building blocks for the season ahead. And, at least for the near term, it was about to get bleaker.
This past weekend, the Suns got busy getting worse so that they could eventually get better. In a move that surprised nobody, given the team’s fortunes the last few years, the Suns dealt Durant to the Houston Rockets, saying goodbye to the otherworldly, Hall-of-Fame scorer whose arrival in Phoenix marked the beginning of Mat Ishbia’s tenure as owner.
Desperate for youth and draft capital, moving Durant was the one obvious move the Suns could make to unstick themselves from the mud. The return — former No. 2 overall draft pick Jalen Green, defensive-minded forward Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 overall pick in Wednesday’s NBA draft and five future second-round picks — earned mixed reviews. ESPN gave the deal a “B” grade while The Athletic scored it a “D.” It is certainly not the type of haul Phoenix reportedly could have netted for Durant in February, when the team explored moving him (without telling him) at the trade deadline.
Though understood to have been pissed about the deadline trade talks, Durant noted at the time that “nobody’s above the system.” After he learned of the trade to Houston — while on stage at a Fanatics Fest in New York — he took a similarly businesslike view.
“They wanted me to go,” he told an interviewer, “So it was just like, I'm glad we both… they got what they wanted and I got what I wanted.”
To say the Suns wanted this outcome would be a stretch. When Ishbia took the reins in 2022 and pushed over the finish line a franchise-altering trade to bring Durant to Phoenix, the Suns envisioned years of basketball glory. Instead — and despite Durant’s continued brilliance — they got disappointing playoff exits, head coach dismissals and, finally, a crash-and-burn campaign last season.
With no depth, no payroll space and perilously few draft picks — thanks in large part to trades for Durant and Beal — moving on from one of the NBA’s greatest players was less a want-to thing and more of a back-against-the-wall-have-to decision. The best path forward, circumstances have dictated to the Suns, is to reform the team around franchise cornerstone Devin Booker.
What remains to be seen is what that looks like, and what comes next.
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Trading for Bradley Beal was a big splash, but it has not gone well for the Suns so far.
More departures?
Barring a trade of Booker, which the Suns don’t seem eager to make, shipping off Durant figures to be the most painful move. But it may not be the last.
Already, multiple reports indicate the team will try to offload Beal, the sagging anchor of the team’s “Big Three.” The oft-injured veteran has two years and roughly $110 million left on his contract, making him an expensive pill to swallow for any interested team. Most notably, Beal can veto any trade to any team.
He doesn’t seem to have a place in the Suns' future, especially after his production and effort fluctuated following a move to the bench last season. Yet, despite Ishbia’s April assertion that anyone “not bought in and aligned with what we believe in” will ultimately “not be on our team,” the Suns have few palatable options to, uh, not have Beal on the team.
Other key players aren’t as nailed to the hardwood. Veteran role players Royce O’Neal and Grayson Allen are expected to be available in trades. They weren’t much of a supporting cast in the first place, and trading them away will only weaken what was a bad, top-heavy roster further. Devoid of desirable draft picks — the rights to the Suns’ selections in future drafts are so confusing, with so many teams possibly able to snake them away, you’d need a lawyer on retainer to understand them — all there is to do is tear down and start over.
The X-factor in that effort is Booker, the team’s homegrown star and all-time leading scorer. Booker has already been through several seasons in the figurative desert (as opposed to the entirety of his career in the literal desert) as the team floundered during his first several years as a pro. He has consistently affirmed his dedication to the Suns and his desire to remain in Phoenix, but the team is walking a thin high-wire trying to retool around him with limited resources.
Booker is due a monster two-year, $150 million extension this summer, which is likely driving the Suns’ urgency to keep him happy and committed. Since Ishbia purchased the franchise, he has maintained an aggressive attitude, once telling ESPN that he would “blow through” punitive salary restrictions imposed by the league. Given how the team’s fortunes have cratered, that approach will likely change. In May, new general manager Brian Gregory punted when asked about cutting payroll, saying his job is to ensure “we have a competitive team next year.”
Wednesday’s draft will go a long way in determining just how competitive the Suns will be, next year and beyond. Armed with the 10th, 29th, 52nd and 59th selections, the Suns can expect to close out the night with multiple young players. They also could look to trade up for a top talent, or trade back and reload with even more potential draft picks for the future.
Beyond the pressure to nail the 10th pick, the Durant trade will succeed or fail based on what they get out of Green. The fourth-year scoring guard has averaged more than 20 points per game over his career, but he has been inefficient. Sometimes, it seems as if he’s playing in a different game than everyone else. Houston, the second seed in the Western Conference last season, was outscored when he was on the court. Absurd athleticism and shot-making ability have gotten Green this far, but the Suns will need him to mature into more of a winning player, especially as he enters the first year of a three-year, $105 million extension.
If not, the Suns will be hit with deja vu, watching another offense-first shooting guard struggle on a big contract, as Beal did the past two seasons. Green has more upside than Beal — the former is 23 while the latter is 31 — but Green must make more shots and contribute more defensively to be a long-term option in Phoenix. Notably, shortly after the end of the season, Ishbia swore off players with such questions hanging over them.
“There's going to be players that sometimes we don't take the most talented player because they don't align with what we believe in,” he said then, preaching physicality and toughness for all the players on the roster.
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New Suns head coach Jordan Ott at his introductory press conference alongside general manager Brian Gregory.
A longer leash?
If it works, if the Suns successfully rebuild on the fly, Ott may be the man who makes the parts fit.
The 40-year-old Ott started as a video coordinator at Michigan State, the alma mater he notably shares with Ishbia and Gregory. He then worked his way up to an assistant coach and player development position with Atlanta, Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Cleveland. Unlike the past several Suns head coaches, he has no head coaching experience. Also unlike the past several Suns head coaches, he’s not a retread.
As the Suns get younger and feistier, Ott should fit the team. With the Cavaliers last season, he schemed a dual-ball handler offense that was the best in the NBA and that could unlock new levels of play for Booker and Green. At his introductory press conference, Ott emphasized the need to modernize the team’s style of play to something that will be recognizable to Suns fans: faster and more spaced-out. Not just an offensive tactician, Ott was credited with the development of Cavaliers big man Evan Mobley, who just won Defensive Player of the Year at age 24.
Most importantly, Ott should be free from the pressure to contend immediately. His predecessors — Mike Budenholzer, Frank Vogel and, to a lesser extent, Monty Williams — were tasked with making a sunk cost pay off. Through trades for expensive stars, the Suns had bought a pricey sports car that couldn’t shift into high gear. When it broke down soon after driving off the dealership lot, they felt obligated to tinker with it until the engine purred again.
It never did purr, and by trading Durant, the Suns have started selling parts for scrap with the hope of building something new. In Ott, they’ve hired someone who should feel empowered to experiment as the Suns construct their next contender from the ground up. Then again, NBA owners — especially new ones — tend to be impatient.
At Ott’s first press conference, one change at the Verizon 5G Performance Center loomed large. The windows up top, where the executives’ offices sit, are now heavily tinted. A thick gray makes it impossible to see where the decisions are made. The Suns — and, by extension, Ishbia — are hard to predict.
Just weeks earlier, Ishbia had appeared in the same gym and assured Suns fans that he, a real estate executive, was not the main voice in the front office. He scoffed at the idea that he would scout players or negotiate with free agents. But then, after pushing GM James Jones from his perch and installing a Michigan State buddy in his place, Ishbia changed his tone. In a mid-June letter to his front-office staff — which was leaked — Ishbia pledged to be “extremely active” as a basketball decision-maker.
“I’m not the conventional NBA owner and I don’t want to be,” he wrote. “I’ve tried running the typical NBA owner playbook — hiring the experts, signing the checks, and getting out of the way — and none of us were happy with the outcome.”
That’s a bit of revisionist history. After all, it was Ishbia who insisted upon making the Durant deal, breaking up a core that had helped the Suns reach the NBA Finals in 2021. Similarly, Ishbia’s fingerprints are all over the Beal trade, which shipped star point guard Chris Paul out of town.
But Ishbia appears to have recognized that something needed to change, even if that something wasn’t the level of his own involvement in basketball decisions. Until this summer, the team’s future was grimly predetermined — throw good money and draft picks after bad and hope that the NBA’s most expensive roster could get its act together. It promised a painful march toward irrelevancy.
The Suns’ future is more wide open now. They have a new, young coach with bright ideas. They’ve pulled the rip cord on their rickety roster, still descending but no longer free-falling and destined for a hard landing at rock bottom. If they look over the horizon on the way down, they might see the sunrise.
This time, maybe, they’ll get it right.