Alright, I have settled down. The initial shock has passed. The wave hit, it knocked me over, and now I am back on my feet, looking around and taking inventory.
Jalen Green goes down. Devin Booker follows. In real time, that kind of night does not invite patience or perspective. It invites panic. It invites spirals. It invites every scar this fan base carries to start itching again. And yes, I reacted as it was happening. Loudly. Honestly. Without a filter. Thank you for letting me do that in real time.
Once the noise fades, once the adrenaline drains out, you are left with the same choice you always are. You can stay in doom mode, or you can look ahead. I am choosing the latter, not because it is easy, but because it is necessary. “Get busy living or get ready dying. That’s goddamn right.”
Injuries have a way of dragging Suns fans straight to the worst possible conclusion. History does that to you. Experience does that to you. This is a fan base conditioned to brace for impact. So if my first reaction leaned dark, understand where it came from.
I am a Suns fan. Of course it did.
Looking forward starts tonight against the Miami Heat, and at least now we know what the injury report says. Devin Booker is out with an ankle injury. Jalen Green is listed as questionable with the hamstring. All things considered, that is actually encouraging.
Personally, I do not think either one plays.
This feels like the organization shifting into protection mode. Less short-term urgency, more long view. Protect the bodies. Preserve the runway. This is about health, not pride. That is where they are right now.
We are at the halfway point of the season. There are still 37 games left on the schedule. 17 days from now, the All-Star break arrives. Between now and then, the Suns play 10 games. Nine of them are at home.
If you want to map out an ideal window for two players carrying a combined $88.7 million cap hit to miss time, this is about as clean as it gets. They can stay around the team. They can rehab without constant travel. They effectively get an extra eight days folded into the recovery process because of the break.
None of this will be easy. The competition is real. The combined winning percentage of the upcoming opponents sits at .539. That is the stretch. That is the test.
We will wait for more reporting to come out, but the hope is that Jalen Green is not nearly as injured as the fear suggests. That is the optimism baked into the questionable tag.
He pulled up lame because he felt something tweak, not because something exploded. It did not look violent. It did not look aggressive. It was nothing like November against the Clippers, when he was clutching his hamstring in obvious pain. This looked different. This looked like awareness. He felt something was off, recognized it immediately, and removed himself from the situation.
Now, full disclosure. This is speculation. I am not a doctor. I am not in the locker room. I do not have access to imaging or medical notes. I am reacting to what my eyes tell me, same as everyone reading this, same as the folks who will weigh in below. That context matters.
If this turns into only a couple of missed games, it could actually work in the Suns’ favor.
Because in a strange way, this becomes a handoff moment. Almost like Devin Booker tapped Jalen Green on the shoulder and said, “Your turn”. This is Green’s chance to live inside these lineups, to feel the speed of the game with this group, to learn how these possessions breathe without Booker on the floor. It is reps. It is information. It is clarity.
For the coaching staff, it becomes a live experiment. You get to see how Green operates with teammates not named Devin Booker. You get to see how the spacing holds. How the actions flow. How well everyone meshes. How cleanly the schemes execute when the hierarchy shifts.
Those answers carry weight. Not only now, but later. Down the road. In the postseason, when options matter and familiarity becomes currency.
On the Booker side of things, that one looked rough. No medical degree here, but it immediately registered as something that could linger. All of his weight came down on it, and in real time it looked like a high ankle sprain at minimum.
Context matters too. He had already tweaked that ankle earlier in the road trip against the Heat, which turns this into an insult on top of injury situation. Stack enough stress on the same joint, and eventually it gives you a reminder. That is what this felt like.
It would not be surprising if we do not see Devin Booker again until after the All-Star break. We still need the medical report. We still need clarity on the severity.
As frustrating as it is, this is also one of those injuries that forces rest in the middle of the year. It creates space to heal. It creates time to get right. And with the break looming, the timing is not catastrophic. If there was ever a window to absorb something like this and still keep the bigger picture intact, this is it.
Both of those injuries were brutally unfortunate, no question. But if you zoom out and look at the reality of how the NBA operates right now, this is the landscape. Every team is dealing with it. Night after night. The Suns are not some isolated case.
Jalen Green has missed 41 games this season. That means this team has been fully intact for two games out of 45. Two. That is the context we are living in.
[According to Spotrac](https://www.spotrac.com/nba/injured/_/year/2025/view/team), the Suns have lost 100 combined games to injury so far, translating to $23.1 million in cash value tied up in missed time. 100 games sounds massive until you stack it against the rest of the league. That number is tied for the sixth-fewest in the NBA. Portland leads the league at 259 games lost.
This is not unique to Phoenix. You see it every night. Ja Morant hits the injury report. Giannis Antetokounmpo hits the injury report. Anthony Davis is out for an extended stretch. At this point, I honestly do not know how the league will hand out end-of-season awards when the threshold is 65 games played. Nobody gets there anymore. The pace is relentless. The wear accumulates. Bodies break down.
The Suns are dealing with injuries. So is everyone else. This is the modern NBA. And while it never feels good when it hits your team, it is not happening in a vacuum.
As it applies to the Suns, this is the same stretch every team eventually has to survive. This is the part of the season where theory turns into proof. Where availability thins out and the ideas either hold or they do not.
This becomes the real test for Jordan Ott. Not when everything is clean and the roster is whole, but when talent is stripped away and the structure has to carry the weight. The question is simple: How replicable are his schemes when the names change?
If this team has shown anything, it is that the identity does not live in star power. It lives in effort. In competitiveness. In connectivity. In communication. Those things travel. Those things do not get ruled out on an injury report. This group has that in spades.
Now it is time to show the rest of the league that even without Devin Booker, or without Jalen Green, this is still a problem on any given night.
And for the love of basketball sanity, let us not turn that into 23 shot attempts from Dillon Brooks every game. We need him doing what he does best. Setting the tone. Being the enforcer. Making life miserable for the other team. Not trying to moonlight as the primary shot creator.
Looking forward begins now, not because this is comfortable or clean, but because this team has built an identity sturdy enough to stand upright when the ground starts shaking.