Today in our 30-in-30 we look at the Phoenix Suns, a team that went all-in on their stars and may now be paying the price for their aggression
Bill Simmons from The Ringer has a term that he uses to describe the phenomenon when a team under a new regime is aggressive in acquiring players. It’s called “New Owner Syndrome”. The idea is that a new owner will come into a team and in their rush to show that they want to win right away they will often make splashy moves that grab headlines. But sadly, more often than not, these moves do not work as they are generally misguided. An example of this is when Mark Cuban bought the Mavericks and almost immediately made a blockbuster trade to acquire Raef LaFrentz, Avery Johnson, and Nick Van Exel. Current Suns owner Mat Ishbia falls into this category of new owner.
Ishbia took over a team that had been to an NBA Finals and then proceeded to trade away pieces to get Kevin Durant. He then made another trade this past off-season and acquired Bradley Beal from Washington. These moves created a triumvirate of Beal, Durant, and Devin Booker. They then surrounded their three stars with minimum contract players, and made the decision not to get a point guard. The results were a bit clunky, but considering how many games Beal missed and the lack of a point guard, the Suns did well to win 49 games last season.
Heading into an off-season with a lot of questions, the Suns have mostly kept their team intact. They lost Eric Gordon and Drew Eubanks in free agency. They replaced them with Monte Morris, Tyus Jones, and Mason Plumlee. Morris will be more comfortable in spot point guard duty and Plumlee brings a strong rebounding presence alongside Jusuf Nurkic. Jones seems like he could be a viable solution for the team at point guard, which should allow the stars of the team to do what they do best: score the basketball. The team also drafted Ryan Dunn from Virginia, an older prospect who is likely the best perimeter defender in the draft. They also brought back Royce O’Neale who has been a good veteran presence for them and can still make threes at a high rate.
It seems that Ishbia may have overcome his new owner syndrome a bit and is content to let this team play itself out. The question with the Suns as always will come down to health. Bradley Beal had decent moments for the Suns in the regular season, but it cannot be ignored that he only played in 53 games. Durant played in 75 games, the most he has played in a decade. Coupled with the fact that he will be competing in the Olympics this summer, there has to be some level of concern over his ability to stay upright the entire season. Despite that, Beal and Durant are two of the most lethal scorers that we have in the NBA and if they are healthy, Phoenix will give teams problems.
The paradox for Phoenix, is that this experiment needs to work because they have mortgaged their future for this current roster. The Suns do not own a first round pick until 2031, which severely limits what they can do in terms of flexibility. The issue is not so much Phoenix itself, but that the West has gotten so much better. Younger teams like Dallas, Oklahoma City, and Minnesota are passing them by. They may struggle to be better than teams like Memphis, New Orleans, and Houston. More than anything it feels like the current trends of NBA roster building have passed the Suns by.
More and more teams across the league are coming to realize that having three max level players is simply not sustainable in the current financial landscape of the NBA with the new collective bargaining agreement. Depth and value contracts have never been more important and Phoenix doesn’t have a lot of those. Over the next two seasons they will be paying more than $150 million of their cap per year to their three stars. That simply does not leave them with a lot of wiggle room to maneuver. It is made exponentially more dangerous when one considers the injury histories of Durant and Beal.
With that being said, Kevin Durant is still…Kevin Durant. He remains one of the most efficient and effective scorers in the NBA and he can win them games by himself. Booker is also a superstar in this league, but it is fair to wonder if that is enough in 2024. There is simply not much that the team can do, and it seems like they simply need to take their medicine and wait out these next two years until the Beal contract can be moved on from. The Suns will still be a good to very good basketball team, but a championship feels beyond their reach at the moment. Aggression in sports is usually good, but when it comes to reckless star acquisition perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from what the Suns have shown us.
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