The Suns re-signed Mark Williams to give Khaman Maluach more time. Williams' injury means that time has run out.
Watch: Reacting to Suns' Mark Williams having surgery; will Khaman Maluach step up? | 7 mins
The decision to re-sign Mark Williams ultimately told you what the Phoenix Suns thought of Khaman Maluach’s ability to contribute next season, which makes the ripple effects of Williams’ shoulder surgery all the more fascinating.
Williams tore the labrum in his left shoulder. Arizona Sports’ John Gambadoro places the recovery timeline at several months, a minimum of five. Five would take Williams’ absence nearly to the All-Star break, and if he wasn’t back by then, he’d already have missed 58 games.
This will now allow us to really see what Phoenix has in Maluach, the No. 10 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, who played sparingly toward the end of the season once Williams got hurt. The lack of a role until then put Maluach in a small group of top-10 picks without much playing time as a rookie. It was a rare occurrence that at the least sprouted minor anxiety on how he was developing.
Phoenix feeling the need to retain Williams, even with his large inconsistencies in the last three-quarters of the year and more injuries popping up, was not a large endorsement of Maluach being ready for 20-plus minutes a night. Time to find out if he is.
Before expanding on that, for those lower on Williams and higher on his replacements, there might be a view here for this to be a blessing in disguise or a situation the Suns will ultimately benefit from.
But what this does to Williams’ value makes the cost-benefit analysis too one-sided.
This will be the fourth season out of Williams’ five that he has missed significant time for. Let’s say he has a magnificent recovery, exceeding expectations in that regard and is out for 60 games while playing in the other 22. That would put Williams at 188 career games played out of a possible 410. It’s awful for Williams, a premium talent who put in a ton of work last summer to reshape his body to remain durable. It didn’t through the whole season as planned, and it betrayed him yet again this summer. These cases, the Grant Hill’s and so on of basketball’s story, are always such a bummer.
The thought behind Williams’ three-year, $38 million deal at the time surely was that the low price tag was the benefit for Phoenix, while Williams got it all guaranteed despite his terrible track record to stay healthy. Optimistically, the Suns would think that contract stays tradeable. It’s even less possible to see that vision now, however, than it was two-and-a-half months ago when he re-signed.
They’re stuck with him now. Before Williams was even able to play one game on his new contract, it’s now going to take one hell of a recovery from him on the last two years of his deal to make it a positive in the end.
It was a risk the Suns don’t have a lot of room to mess around with given Devin Booker’s supermax extension kicks in this year for the next four, along with the $22 million in dead money, a pair of obstacles the Suns have to work around money-wise that complicates each eight-figure choice. Leaving that contract without qualifiers for guaranteed money was unwise and is already coming back to bite Phoenix.
There is tons to consider for who starts and how much head coach Jordan Ott wants to play Maluach.
It was third-year big Oso Ighodaro starting all year when Williams was out, a connective hub on both ends of the floor that undoubtedly made both his teammates and the overall team better when he was out there. He was one of their five best players last season, doing so while also undeniably functioning as a very limited offensive player who is still a bit undersized defensively.
For a team that is also undersized elsewhere, plus Ighodaro’s fantastic chemistry with reserve Collin Gillespie and the rest of the bench, it leans toward Maluach getting the nod.
It’s really going to come down to where Ott wants to go through the growing pains the most. Maluach spending almost all of his time on the floor with Booker, like Williams did, is the easiest way to cushion them. On the other hand, the energy and rhythm of the second unit could allow Maluach to play more free. There’s also the risk that he junks up that signature flow.
For Maluach to start, Ott will need to be confident that his foundation as a rim protector is sound. The biggest reason Maluach wasn’t playing was strictly based on his feel for where to be on the floor. There is an intricate balance to the timing of being an anchor, and Maluach can’t be thinking about that timing as he moves his feet. It should be somewhere between instinctual and second nature. If he’s a step out of position, that’s an open shot somewhere, whether it’s directly the ball-handler or what comes a pass or two later.
There was a clear level of improvement from Maluach as March progressed, and there was an instance or two when he was the most impactful big on the floor. That growth has to continue throughout the season. This will only work if he’s twice as good at the end of the season. Ighodaro offers not only sound positioning, but versatility with his ability to switch and mix in a much more diverse base of schemes. That’ll happen less with Maluach.
Offensively, there’s a strong argument for using Ighodaro’s playmaking to activate what will likely be a lethargic and plodding pace of ball movement between Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks and Miles Bridges. The counter is that Ighodaro’s effectiveness could get drowned out by that, when we already know how much it thrives alongside the second unit guys.
Maluach will have to spend extra time all year on his screen-setting, analyzing his angles and figuring out his timing for each player. It’s easily the most underrated skill in the NBA and one of the most important for each team to have in their big rotation. Ighodaro is revered in the locker room for his abilities in that regard. If Maluach lags behind in that regard as a starter, it would be the death blow to that unit’s chances of being productive on offense.
It’ll also be on Maluach to really separate himself from Ighodaro as a rebounder and finisher, his two easiest areas to be a difference-maker when considering what’s needed on the roster. Maluach’s scouting report coming into the league wasn’t with rebounding as a strength, particularly because of his hands and how he had an inclination for not fully securing the ball. His motor is top tier and where he can make up for that, putting in the extra work for a few more rebounds each night and maybe a bucket or two more around the basket.
The good news for the Suns is that regardless of what happens with Maluach, they’ve got Ighodaro. Even if he never develops a corner 3 and it’s really just going to be push-shot floaters and open dunks with the ultra-shaky free-throw shooting numbers, Ighodaro is still a plus every time he’s out there.
This could also be viewed as an opportunity for him. If Ighodaro starts all year and the Suns replicate their defensive success for a full season, that’ll have him in talks to make an All-Defense team. For about two months once his playing time was that of a true starter and the defense was still thriving, Ighodaro was at that level as a defender.
It would be surprising if the Suns enter camp with two healthy centers on the 15-man roster. It’s currently full, with non-guarantees on Haywood Highsmith and Jamaree Bouyea. Phoenix presumably will waive on of those guys here fairly soon to bring in a veteran 5 on the backend.
There was a lot of pressure on the Suns to nail the Maluach pick last summer, an asset in the draft they likely won’t have for several seasons. The long-term ramifications were obvious, but they couldn’t have been prepared to see short-term effects coming so soon. Time to see what those are.
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