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Brian Windhorst, ESPN Senior Writer
Sometimes in the NBA, a team would give it their all and end the season in disappointment. But the Phoenix Suns, who suffered a heartbreaking first-round series loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday night, have never been in a situation like this before.
Their reality is that the poker analogy ends here. Due to how deeply the Phoenix have mortgaged their future, and new collective bargaining agreement rules that strangle their ability to change the roster, the Phoenix cannot simply buy back or hope for another move now. You can't address the shortcomings of the season.
Never before has a team been so lacking in options to make changes to its lineup heading into the offseason.
The high-risk, high-reward acquisition of Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to build a star trio with Devin Booker gives the team four future first-round picks and six future second-round picks. I ended up losing. Phoenix also sent away four first-round picks in exchange, effectively leaving them with zero draft capital.
His salary for next season is already over $200 million, and the Suns will enter the second tier of the NBA's luxury tax, which will place strict restrictions on trades and free agency. Additionally, Beal still has a no-trade clause in his contract with the Washington Wizards, so even if they wanted to regroup their top three stars, they wouldn't be able to freely trade Beal again.
Considering all of this, how do the Suns plan to solve some of their major problems this season, namely the lack of a true starting point guard and one of the shallowest benches in the NBA, without creating other holes? It is a mystery whether that is the case.
Solving these issues is just part of the checklist for an unpleasant offseason. The Suns also have to deal with the future of coach Frank Vogel, who has been under scrutiny following his tearful playoff loss, and deal with the possibility of a contract extension for Durant.
Durant can extend his contract starting July 8th. He has two years and $106 million left on his contract. He will be 36 years old when training camp begins in September.
If the Suns and Durant want, they can add an extra year for just under $60 million in the 2026-27 season, when Durant turns 38. This is not an easy story. But how interested the Suns and Durant are in doing so will create a natural checkpoint in the relationship and will be closely monitored elsewhere in the league. If for some reason an agreement is not reached, you cannot have confidence in the future of the relationship.
Durant averaged 27.1 points, 6.6 rebounds and 5 assists and is likely to be named to the All-NBA team for the first time in three years. He was also surprisingly healthy, appearing in 75 games, his most since the 2018-19 season.
But there were times when he seemed lost in the offense. Especially during the series against the Wolves, he walked most of the game without being featured, acting as a decoy between floors or simply moving the ball to the next station.
This is where Durant and Vogel's futures could be tied together. Finding a way to get the most out of the Suns' offensive stars is a question Vogel will have to answer. Front office and ultra-offensive owner Matt Ishbia could consider a coaching change in the coming days, just one year after firing coach Monty Williams, who led the team to the Finals in 2021. be.
Vogel, who has built a career that has shown confidence in all situations, is clearly looking forward to his return.
“very [confident]'' Vogel said before Sunday's Game 4. “I fully support Matt Ishbia.”
At the very least, Vogel will need to revamp his coaching staff. Associate head coach Kevin Young, who made $2 million this season as one of the highest-paid assistants in the NBA, led the offense and is now BYU's new head coach.
In Vogel, the Suns found a coach with a championship pedigree and a track record of soothing the egos of multiple star players. The Suns wanted a coach with a title on his resume, and consulted ring-bearing coaches Mike Budenholzer and Nick Nurse before hiring Vogel.
Vogel's methods and strategies were meant to maximize the team's star power, but Williams was perhaps too rigid and slow to adapt. Even though the Suns were sluggish and inconsistent throughout the season, Vogel continued to tout the belief that the team would eventually find a rhythm.
For various reasons, that never happened.
Beal missed most of the preseason, but then played in six of the Suns' first 30 games, ruining the team's plans to build chemistry with only four returning players. The front office-approved concept of having Booker play point guard had its time. He averaged a career-high 6.9 assists and was named to the All-Star team, but Phoenix never became the offensive juggernaut it dreamed of after acquiring Beal.
As has been a theme in basically every aspect of the team throughout the season, the Stars have been very inconsistent offensively. The Suns, who were expected to eventually become one of the most powerful offenses in history, only moved up slightly from 14th in the 2022-23 season offensive rankings to 10th this season. And Williams' defense, which he always kept in the top 10, sometimes dropped out of the top 10.
“There are going to be periods of adversity, but eventually it will even out,” Beal said after Friday's Game 3 loss to the Suns. “I wish I had an answer as to why this is happening.”
The other real issue evaluating Vogel was the Suns' disastrous fourth quarter loss, a devastating anchor that dragged the team into the No. 6 seed. Phoenix ranked last in the NBA in offensive efficiency for the fourth time, a surprising statistic considering the team's firepower, and was 22nd in defensive efficiency.
On average, the Suns were outscored by about 12 points per 100 fourth-quarter possessions during the regular season. That's where the loss of floor general Chris Paul, whose key salary was traded when the Suns acquired Beal, was felt most.
Not surprisingly, Vogel was asked about this repeatedly during the season. The matter was the subject of detailed internal analysis as the Suns' basketball operations department sought to understand the lineups, strategies and decisions that led to such disappointment. Vogel often didn't have a clear answer to what was going on because, as a deep dive revealed, there was no clear answer.
“It's all kinds of different things,” Vogel said in February. “We've looked at everything and there's a lot of different things going on.”
Even if this is ultimately true, it is unsatisfactory. The Suns had issues with turnovers, stagnation of the ball, defensive lapses, playing too slow and frigid shooting times. Coach Vogel tried different lineups, but he primarily moved Booker around aggressively because his team tended to struggle when Booker sat in the fourth quarter. There was no clear through line to focus on. At times, he lost his cool, such as when they lost the series to the Timberwolves.
“My frustration is just within the team. We need to execute. When we're playing, we're playing well, but when things get bad, we need to stick together,” Booker said after the Game 2 loss. “There is,” he said. “We've been doing that all season. [It’s] There are some things that need to be fixed. ”
The fourth quarter may not have been the root of all of the Suns' problems.
The team lost in the fourth quarter in 47 of its 82 regular season games, going 25-22 in those games. At the end of the third quarter, they led 43-10.
The raw data from the fourth quarter was the basis for a harsh assessment for Vogel, and these losses stripped the Suns of a better seed they could have clinched in the finals. But that wasn't the only culprit.
The composition of the roster was super top-heavy. Beal, Durant and Booker made a combined $130 million, resulting in the Suns having 10 players on minimum or two-way contracts on opening night. General manager James Jones traded four of them and signed two more during the season, as the Suns were looking for inexpensive players who could provide some production.
The cost of acquiring Durant and Beal hollowed out the roster and emptied Phoenix's stock of draft picks.
The Suns believed they had scored a goal last summer with some of their bare-bones additions, especially Eric Gordon, Yuta Watanabe and Keita Bates-Diop, who were wanted elsewhere. But Vogel never found a reliable bench-heavy lineup, and the Suns ranked last in another important offensive statistic, averaging 26.6 points per game on the bench.
No matter what accusations are leveled at Vogel, putting so much trust in a rookie, lowest-salary player was a risky strategy that simply didn't work.
That's why the Suns didn't have much wiggle room when giving Grayson Allen a contract extension right before the start of the playoffs. Allen played his role admirably as a floor spacer, leading the league in 3-point percentage with a team-leading 205, and was signed to a four-year, $70 million contract earlier this month.
Restricted by collective bargaining agreement provisions for high-salary teams, the Suns had no leeway. do not have Re-sign Allen. If he had left in free agency in July, the only way to replace him would have been at the minimum salary rate, which has disappointed the Suns this season.
The same advantage awaits Royce O'Neal, who was acquired midway through the season in a trade with Brooklyn. When O'Neal becomes a free agent this summer, he won't need a competing big offer to put pressure on the Suns. He appeared in 30 games after the trade, averaging 8.1 points and shooting 38 percent from 3S, but he can't be replaced if he leaves.
With Booker's 2022 supermax extension starting next season, Durant, Beal and Booker's bills will balloon to $150 million in 2024-25. Assuming they keep their three stars, the Suns will be a tax team on the second apron. At that level, Allen's new contract, plus O'Neal's new contract starting this season with a salary of nearly $10 million, would generate $100 million in luxury taxes alone.
This doesn't mean the Suns have done worse than they did this season, but it does mean they're largely locked into this roster. They could explore the trade market for Jusuf Nurkic, who will make $18 million next season, but he is a franchise center and a replacement with little salary flexibility in his contract. Planning would have to be included.
Barring major changes to the roster, the Suns will need to find improvement from somewhere. It is not as simple as saying that you can expect improvements in your health.
Durant has had a very healthy season, with Booker averaging 63 games and 68 appearances over the past six seasons. Beal may have felt quite injured, but he played in 53 games, the most since the 2020-21 season. In fact, based on trends, we might expect the Big 3 to play fewer games next season.
Sands' poker chip is in the center of the table and must stay there. This reality could lead to some soul-searching this summer. The best-case scenario is that everyone agrees to try again and hope for better results the second year. The worst case scenario might be that someone wants to fold.
If there's any drama for the Suns this offseason, this could be it.
