2023-24 Season Discussion and Speculation 6 - The Playoff Quest for a Title

[RedIndian]

I’d be very disappointed if James Jones is kept around as GM. It’d be proof that Ishbia hasn’t learnt anything, and just wants a yes man for decisions that he makes himself.

Jones isn’t particularly to blame for the KD or Beal trades – those were very clearly Ishbia decisions. But he was responsible for all the tertiary moves, which included the Ayton trade, all the useless vet min signings, the decision to bring back nobody from last year’s roster (including guys like Payne, Craig or Landale who might have helped us somewhat) and also the roster construction which saw us have 4 shootings, 2 wings and 1 immobile center as part of our playoff rotation.

That apart, Jones has been part of two the worst decisions in franchise history (Ayton over Doncic and Smith over Haliburton), shown no interest in the draft or the undrafted pool, has consistently bled value on trades, and left us with no assets. How is this guy supposed to salvage what already looks like a very bleak situation for us?

When our only avenues to continue to be competitive this decade are late 1st rounders (2024, 2026, 2028, 2030), undrafted players and trades, we desperately need a competent GM, preferably one with a strong scouting and player development background.

I’d be looking at Trajan Langdon at New Orleans who’s been wanting to run his team for a while, and has a good recent draft record (Herb Jones at #35, Trey Murphy II at #17, Dyson Danieles at #8, Jordan Hawkins at #14, Jose Alvarado and Naji Marshall has undrafted guys).

[KdoubleDees23]

Give me KD to the Cavs for Jarrett Allen, Levert, and 1st round pick.

Get rid of Nurkic for Dennis shroder

Trade Beal to Chicago for a sign and trade for Demar Derozan - Alex caruso

Cavs run

Garland, Mitchell, Strus, KD, Mobley ****Pick up a SF

Bulls get Beal over Demar

Suns run

Shroeder / Caruso, Derozan, Booker, Levert , Allen

[spanishninja]

Give me KD to the Cavs for Jarrett Allen, Levert, and 1st round pick.

Get rid of Nurkic for Dennis shroder

Trade Beal to Chicago for a sign and trade for Demar Derozan - Alex caruso

Cavs run

Garland, Mitchell, Strus, KD, Mobley ****Pick up a SF

Bulls get Beal over Demar

Suns run

Shroeder / Caruso, Derozan, Booker, Levert , Allen

Tanking setup?

Sent from my SM-S926U using RealGM mobile app

[Slim Charless]

Give me KD to the Cavs for Jarrett Allen, Levert, and 1st round pick.

Get rid of Nurkic for Dennis shroder

Trade Beal to Chicago for a sign and trade for Demar Derozan - Alex caruso

Cavs run

Garland, Mitchell, Strus, KD, Mobley ****Pick up a SF

Bulls get Beal over Demar

Suns run

Shroeder / Caruso, Derozan, Booker, Levert , Allen

Tanking setup?

Sent from my SM-S926U using RealGM mobile app

Doesn't matter. Cav owner and Ish HATE each other. Ishbia has said that he won't deal with them. As such:



We need to not have posts suggesting Cavs-Suns trades in our forum. They just won't happen. Ever.

Until 1 of the owners sell.

[BobbieL]

I’d be very disappointed if James Jones is kept around as GM. It’d be proof that Ishbia hasn’t learnt anything, and just wants a yes man for decisions that he makes himself.

Jones isn’t particularly to blame for the KD or Beal trades – those were very clearly Ishbia decisions. But he was responsible for all the tertiary moves, which included the Ayton trade, all the useless vet min signings, the decision to bring back nobody from last year’s roster (including guys like Payne, Craig or Landale who might have helped us somewhat) and also the roster construction which saw us have 4 shootings, 2 wings and 1 immobile center as part of our playoff rotation.

That apart, Jones has been part of two the worst decisions in franchise history (Ayton over Doncic and Smith over Haliburton), shown no interest in the draft or the undrafted pool, has consistently bled value on trades, and left us with no assets. How is this guy supposed to salvage what already looks like a very bleak situation for us?

When our only avenues to continue to be competitive this decade are late 1st rounders (2024, 2026, 2028, 2030), undrafted players and trades, we desperately need a competent GM, preferably one with a strong scouting and player development background.

I’d be looking at Trajan Langdon at New Orleans who’s been wanting to run his team for a while, and has a good recent draft record (Herb Jones at #35, Trey Murphy II at #17, Dyson Danieles at #8, Jordan Hawkins at #14, Jose Alvarado and Naji Marshall has undrafted guys).

If you tell me they are replacing James Jones with not somebody names Isiah Thomas, fine. But with that, not sure I want Jones gone

I don't think Jones had a say in the Doncic - my guess that was Bobby Sarver

But picking Smith over Haliburton, you are right there

I am open to whatever this offseason - if that means moving Booker and /or Durant - so be it.

[bwgood77]

Spoiler:

Brian Windhorst, ESPN Senior Writer
Apr 29, 2024, 08:00 AM ET

The NBA has occasionally seen teams go all-in only to have their seasons end in disappointment. But never before has the league seen the situation the Phoenix Suns find themselves in after a crushing first-round series sweep loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday night.

Their reality is the poker analogy ends here. Because of how deeply they've mortgaged their future and the new collective bargaining agreement rules that clamp down on the ability to alter its roster, Phoenix cannot address this season's shortcomings by simply buying back in or even hoping for a different hand.

Never before has a team been this devoid of options to alter its roster going into an offseason.

The high-risk/high-reward acquisitions of Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to build a star trio with Devin Booker has left the franchise out four future first-round picks and six future second-round picks. Phoenix has also sent out four first-round pick swaps, effectively zeroing out its draft assets.

With next season's payroll already exceeding $200 million, the Suns will be in the NBA's second apron of the luxury tax, subjecting them to heavy restrictions on trades and free agency. Also, they can't freely re-trade Beal, even if they wanted to reformat their top three stars, as he retained the no-trade clause he had with the Washington Wizards.

Considering all this, how the Suns plan to fix some of this season's major issues -- namely their lack of a true starting point guard and one of the shallowest benches in the NBA -- without creating other holes, is a mystery.

Figuring those problems out is only part of what could be an uncomfortable offseason checklist. The Suns also have to address the future of coach Frank Vogel, who is under scrutiny after the whimper of a playoff exit, and manage a possible contract extension for Durant.

Starting July 8, Durant can extend his contract. He has two years and $106 million left on his hefty deal. He will also turn 36 at the start of training camp in September.

If the Suns and Durant want to, they can add one year for just under $60 million for the 2026-27 season, when Durant will be 38. This is not a no-brainer. However, how interested the Suns and Durant are in doing so creates a natural checkpoint in the relationship and something that will be closely watched elsewhere in the league. If there's no deal, for whatever reason, it will not project confidence in the future of the relationship.


The Phoenix Suns were swept by the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday night. Joe Camporeale/USA TODAY Sports
Durant is likely to be named to the All-NBA team for the first time in three years after averaging 27.1 points, 6.6 rebounds and 5.0 assists. He was also remarkably healthy, playing in 75 games, his most since the 2018-19 season.

But there were times when he seemed lost within the offense, especially during the series against the Wolves, when he went large swaths of the game without being featured, acting either as a floor-spacing decoy or simply moving the ball to the next station.

This is where Durant's and Vogel's futures may be linked. Figuring out how to get the most out of the Suns' offensive stars is a question Vogel will have to answer. The front office and ultra-aggressive owner Mat Ishbia may consider making a coaching change in the coming days, just a year after they fired coach Monty Williams, who had led the team to the Finals in 2021.

Vogel, who has made a career of projecting confidence in every situation, clearly expects to be back.

"Very [confident]," Vogel said before Game 4 on Sunday. "I have the full support of Mat Ishbia."

At the least, Vogel will need to revamp his coaching staff. Associate head coach Kevin Young, who made $2 million this season as one of the NBA's highest-paid assistants, directed the offense but is now off to be BYU's new head coach.

In Vogel, the Suns saw a coach with a championship pedigree and a track record of massaging the egos of multiple star players. The Suns wanted a coach with a title on his résumé and spoke with ring-bearing coaches Mike Budenholzer and Nick Nurse before hiring Vogel.

The idea was Vogel's methods and strategies would maximize the team's star power, whereas Williams had been perhaps too rigid and slower to adapt. Even as the Suns were sluggish and inconsistent throughout the season, Vogel kept selling the belief the team would find a rhythm in time.

For various reasons, it never happened.

Beal missed most of the preseason and then played in six of the Suns' first 30 games, undercutting the plans of constructing chemistry on a team with just four returning players. The front office-endorsed concept of playing Booker at point guard had its moments; he averaged a career-high 6.9 assists and made the All-Star team, but Phoenix was never the offensive juggernaut that was dreamed of after the Beal acquisition.

In what was a theme for basically all facets of the team throughout the season, the stars were highly inconsistent on offense. With expectations they might end up with one of the most potent offenses in history, the Suns only mildly improved from being ranked 14th in offense in 2022-23 to 10th in this season. And it came with the defense dropping out of the top 10, where Williams had routinely kept it.

"We do have times in which adversity hits and we'll kind of just get flat," Beal said after the Suns' Game 3 loss Friday. "Why it happens, I wish I had an answer."

Another real issue for evaluating Vogel was the outright disaster the Suns were in fourth quarters, a devastating anchor that dragged the team to that No. 6 seed. Phoenix ranked last in the NBA in offensive efficiency in the fourth, a jarring stat considering the team's firepower, and 22nd in defensive efficiency.

On average the Suns were getting outscored by about 12 points per 100 fourth-quarter possessions during the regular season. It's where the Suns most felt the loss of floor general Chris Paul, who was the key salary piece traded to acquire Beal.

Vogel, naturally, was asked about this repeatedly during the season. It was the subject of deep analysis internally as the Suns' basketball operations department tried to understand the lineups, strategies and decisions leading to such letdowns. Vogel often didn't have a clear answer for what was going on because, as the deep diving revealed, there was no clear answer.

"It's all kinds of different things," Vogel said in February. "We've looked at all of it, and there's a lot of different things that are happening."

This is unsatisfying, if ultimately true. The Suns had issues with turnovers, ball stagnation, defensive lapses, playing too slow and periods of frigid shooting. Vogel tried various lineups, mostly aggressively moving Booker around as the team tended to struggle in fourth-quarter minutes when he sat. There just wasn't a glaring through line to focus on. Sometimes, including during the series loss to the Wolves, it came with a loss of composure.

"My frustration is just within the team. We need to execute. We play well when we're playing, and then we need to stick together once things turn bad," Booker said after the Game 2 loss. "We've done that throughout the season. [It's] something that has to be corrected."

The fourth quarters might not have been the root of all the Suns' problems.

The team lost the fourth quarter in 47 of 82 regular-season games but went 25-22 in those games. They were 43-10 when leading after three quarters.

The fourth quarter raw data is a basis for being rough on Vogel, and those losses pushed the Suns out of a better seed that might've bitten them in the end. But it wasn't the only culprit.

The roster construction was ultra top-heavy. Beal, Durant and Booker made $130 million combined and, as a result, on opening night the Suns had 10 players on minimum or two-way contracts. General manager James Jones traded four of them and signed two more during the season as the Suns searched high and low for cheap players who could provide some production.

The cost to acquire Durant and Beal hollowed out the roster and emptied Phoenix's stockpile of draft picks.

The Suns believed they'd scored with some of their minimum signings last summer, particularly Eric Gordon, Yuta Watanabe and Keita Bates-Diop who were desired elsewhere. But Vogel never found bench-heavy lineups that could be relied on, and the Suns ranked last in another key offensive stat: bench scoring, averaging 26.6 points per game.

Whatever blame can be directed at Vogel, trusting so heavily in brand-new minimum-salary players was a risky strategy that simply did not work.

This is why the Suns didn't have much room to maneuver when giving Grayson Allen a contract extension just before the start of the playoffs. Allen, who played his role as floor spacer beautifully in leading the league at 46.1% shooting from 3 and led the team with 205 of them, scored a four-year, $70 million contract earlier this month.

Restricted by collective bargaining agreement rules on high-salary teams, the Suns simply couldn't afford not to re-sign Allen. Had he left in free agency in July, the only way to replace him would've been the minimum salary market that let the Suns down this season.

The same advantage lies ahead for Royce O'Neale, a midseason pickup in a trade with Brooklyn. O'Neale doesn't need a big competing offer when he reaches free agency this summer to pressure the Suns. He played reasonably in 30 games after the trade, averaging 8.1 points and shooting 38% on 3s, but he can't be replaced were he to leave.

With Booker's 2022 supermax extension kicking in next season, the bill for Durant, Beal and Booker will balloon to $150 million in 2024-25. Assuming they keep their three stars together, the Suns will be a second-apron tax team. At that level, the new deal for Allen plus even a new deal for O'Neale that comes close to his $10 million salary from this season will create $100 million in luxury tax alone.

That's a long way of saying the Suns underachieved this season but are largely locked into this roster. They could explore the trade market for Jusuf Nurkic, who will make $18 million next season, but he is the franchise center, and any deal for him would have to include a plan to replace him with next to no salary flexibility.

If there are no significant roster moves, the Suns will have to find improvement from somewhere. It's not as simple as saying they can hope for better health.

Durant had a very healthy season, and Booker played 68 games after averaging 63 games over the previous six seasons. It may have felt like Beal was hurt a lot, but he played 53 games, the most he has played since 2020-21. If anything, the big three might project to play fewer games next season based on the trends.

The poker chips are in the middle of the table for the Suns and will have to remain there. That reality could lead to some soul-searching this summer where the best-case scenario is everyone agrees to give it another try and hope for better results in Year 2. The worst-case scenario might be that someone wants to fold.

If there's any drama from the Suns this offseason, that's where it could be.

[Slim Charless]

Give me KD to the Cavs for Jarrett Allen, Levert, and 1st round pick.

Get rid of Nurkic for Dennis shroder

Trade Beal to Chicago for a sign and trade for Demar Derozan - Alex caruso

Cavs run

Garland, Mitchell, Strus, KD, Mobley ****Pick up a SF

Bulls get Beal over Demar

Suns run

Shroeder / Caruso, Derozan, Booker, Levert , Allen

Tanking setup?

Sent from my SM-S926U using RealGM mobile app

Doesn't matter. Cav owner and Ish HATE each other. Ishbia has said that he won't deal with them. As such:



We need to not have posts suggesting Cavs-Suns trades in our forum. They just won't happen. Ever.

Until 1 of the owners sell.

As a matter of fact, I'll make a prediction:

If the Cavs lose this series then they trade Mitchell to the Nets for ALL of our picks along with whatever filler is needed (CamJo and 1 other dude). Donavon wants to play in NYC and the Knicks are a no go. So he gets the next best thing in BRK.

Cavs owner gets a bonus in having stock in his hated rival Ishbia losing. Don't think for a second that he wouldn't enjoy rubbing that in Ish's face. Plus, CamJo would help that team's shooting anyways.

[Ghost of Kleine]

The thing is though, That clearly you can't successfully "run it back" as is with this big three just to satiate ego and deflect from accountability by doubling down on your mistake!! Because if you do,

- You don't really get any better. And you're really only helping BOTH Brooklyn and Washington to a much higher lotto pick at our expense.
- You obviously maintain a slow decline into inevitable mediocrity anyways as a perennial "first round flame out" treadmill team.

- You're obviously not competing for a championship. At best your (at this point and going forward first round sacrifical lamb for the bigger, stronger, younger, more hungry and significantly more athletic and more physical next gen upstart teams already surpassing us!
- You widely become the consensus laughing stock of the entire league labeled as a futile playoff pretender that really has no future and no options to pivot because you waited too long out of sheer stubborn pride to accept reality and change course.

- Finally you go down in history as one of the very worst and most selfish, deluded ignorant owners along with "Saver" to take accountability and save the franchise's future by admitting your mistakes and salvaging what you can before you have no options left in any capacity.

- Finally after two or three more losing seasons falling short of expectations, Booker demands out, because he wants to legitimately compete in the final years of his prime rather than be ob a fake pretender playoff team with no way to get better because you chose to sit and watch everything fall apart instead of taking decisive action when you actually had an opportunity to change things!
And if you let foolish pride override sanity and accountability, The fanbase will loathe you to the point of running you out of town and you'll also wear the title of worst NBA owner in sports history wherever you go! Overall Ishbias' decisions to either run it back or to be smart and pivot before it's completely too late depends upon his level of testicular fortitude, willingness to put his big boy pants on and take accountability for making a mistake although genuinely trying! Bcause at least that way he can still endear himself to this fanbase and save face by saving our future! As long as he's willing to put his pride and ego aside and do what's best for the team and the city!

[KLEON]

The media already circling the wagons with stupid bull.

What else is new right?

Are you insinuating that Stephen A has personal motivation to say that Booker wants to be on the New York Knicks?

Sometimes SAS can be a real arse clown. He's even going at KD for getting swept in the playoffs. Its a part of the game, you have your ups and you have your downs. At the end of the day no will remember Kd for getting swept in a playoff series but I'll remember him as one of the greats. For those who bring up his 2 chips with GSW, I guarantee that GSW wouldn't won those without Kd. The media needs to stop going at this man.

[Fo-Real]

Give me KD to the Cavs for Jarrett Allen, Levert, and 1st round pick.

Get rid of Nurkic for Dennis shroder

Trade Beal to Chicago for a sign and trade for Demar Derozan - Alex caruso

Cavs run

Garland, Mitchell, Strus, KD, Mobley ****Pick up a SF

Bulls get Beal over Demar

Suns run

Shroeder / Caruso, Derozan, Booker, Levert , Allen

That makes my stomach hurt!

[BobbieL]

The thing is though, That clearly you can't successfully "run it back" as is with this big three just to satiate ego and deflect from accountability by doubling down on your mistake!! Because if you do,

- You don't really get any better. And you're really only helping BOTH Brooklyn and Washington to a much higher lotto pick at our expense.
- You obviously maintain a slow decline into inevitable mediocrity anyways as a perennial "first round flame out" treadmill team.

- You're obviously not competing for a championship. At best your (at this point and going forward first round sacrifical lamb for the bigger, stronger, younger, more hungry and significantly more athletic and more physical next gen upstart teams already surpassing us!
- You widely become the consensus laughing stock of the entire league labeled as a futile playoff pretender that really has no future and no options to pivot because you waited too long out of sheer stubborn pride to accept reality and change course.

- Finally you go down in history as one of the very worst and most selfish, deluded ignorant owners along with "Saver" to take accountability and save the franchise's future by admitting your mistakes and salvaging what you can before you have no options left in any capacity.

- Finally after two or three more losing seasons falling short of expectations, Booker demands out, because he wants to legitimately compete in the final years of his prime rather than be ob a fake pretender playoff team with no way to get better because you chose to sit and watch everything fall apart instead of taking decisive action when you actually had an opportunity to change things!
And if you let foolish pride override sanity and accountability, The fanbase will loathe you to the point of running you out of town and you'll also wear the title of worst NBA owner in sports history wherever you go! Overall Ishbias' decisions to either run it back or to be smart and pivot before it's completely too late depends upon his level of testicular fortitude, willingness to put his big boy pants on and take accountability for making a mistake although genuinely trying! Bcause at least that way he can still endear himself to this fanbase and save face by saving our future! As long as he's willing to put his pride and ego aside and do what's best for the team and the city!

Suns organization need to be honest with themselves. Sure, they can run it back but if it doesn't work, might set your team back farther as you might have players teams want this year and trade for but not next year.

If the team needs to move on from Durant - so be it

[Ghost of Kleine]

Spoiler:

Brian Windhorst, ESPN Senior Writer
Apr 29, 2024, 08:00 AM ET

The NBA has occasionally seen teams go all-in only to have their seasons end in disappointment. But never before has the league seen the situation the Phoenix Suns find themselves in after a crushing first-round series sweep loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday night.

Their reality is the poker analogy ends here. Because of how deeply they've mortgaged their future and the new collective bargaining agreement rules that clamp down on the ability to alter its roster, Phoenix cannot address this season's shortcomings by simply buying back in or even hoping for a different hand.

Never before has a team been this devoid of options to alter its roster going into an offseason.

The high-risk/high-reward acquisitions of Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to build a star trio with Devin Booker has left the franchise out four future first-round picks and six future second-round picks. Phoenix has also sent out four first-round pick swaps, effectively zeroing out its draft assets.

With next season's payroll already exceeding $200 million, the Suns will be in the NBA's second apron of the luxury tax, subjecting them to heavy restrictions on trades and free agency. Also, they can't freely re-trade Beal, even if they wanted to reformat their top three stars, as he retained the no-trade clause he had with the Washington Wizards.

Considering all this, how the Suns plan to fix some of this season's major issues -- namely their lack of a true starting point guard and one of the shallowest benches in the NBA -- without creating other holes, is a mystery.

Figuring those problems out is only part of what could be an uncomfortable offseason checklist. The Suns also have to address the future of coach Frank Vogel, who is under scrutiny after the whimper of a playoff exit, and manage a possible contract extension for Durant.

Starting July 8, Durant can extend his contract. He has two years and $106 million left on his hefty deal. He will also turn 36 at the start of training camp in September.

If the Suns and Durant want to, they can add one year for just under $60 million for the 2026-27 season, when Durant will be 38. This is not a no-brainer. However, how interested the Suns and Durant are in doing so creates a natural checkpoint in the relationship and something that will be closely watched elsewhere in the league. If there's no deal, for whatever reason, it will not project confidence in the future of the relationship.


The Phoenix Suns were swept by the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday night. Joe Camporeale/USA TODAY Sports
Durant is likely to be named to the All-NBA team for the first time in three years after averaging 27.1 points, 6.6 rebounds and 5.0 assists. He was also remarkably healthy, playing in 75 games, his most since the 2018-19 season.

But there were times when he seemed lost within the offense, especially during the series against the Wolves, when he went large swaths of the game without being featured, acting either as a floor-spacing decoy or simply moving the ball to the next station.

This is where Durant's and Vogel's futures may be linked. Figuring out how to get the most out of the Suns' offensive stars is a question Vogel will have to answer. The front office and ultra-aggressive owner Mat Ishbia may consider making a coaching change in the coming days, just a year after they fired coach Monty Williams, who had led the team to the Finals in 2021.

Vogel, who has made a career of projecting confidence in every situation, clearly expects to be back.

"Very [confident]," Vogel said before Game 4 on Sunday. "I have the full support of Mat Ishbia."

At the least, Vogel will need to revamp his coaching staff. Associate head coach Kevin Young, who made $2 million this season as one of the NBA's highest-paid assistants, directed the offense but is now off to be BYU's new head coach.

In Vogel, the Suns saw a coach with a championship pedigree and a track record of massaging the egos of multiple star players. The Suns wanted a coach with a title on his résumé and spoke with ring-bearing coaches Mike Budenholzer and Nick Nurse before hiring Vogel.

The idea was Vogel's methods and strategies would maximize the team's star power, whereas Williams had been perhaps too rigid and slower to adapt. Even as the Suns were sluggish and inconsistent throughout the season, Vogel kept selling the belief the team would find a rhythm in time.

For various reasons, it never happened.

Beal missed most of the preseason and then played in six of the Suns' first 30 games, undercutting the plans of constructing chemistry on a team with just four returning players. The front office-endorsed concept of playing Booker at point guard had its moments; he averaged a career-high 6.9 assists and made the All-Star team, but Phoenix was never the offensive juggernaut that was dreamed of after the Beal acquisition.

In what was a theme for basically all facets of the team throughout the season, the stars were highly inconsistent on offense. With expectations they might end up with one of the most potent offenses in history, the Suns only mildly improved from being ranked 14th in offense in 2022-23 to 10th in this season. And it came with the defense dropping out of the top 10, where Williams had routinely kept it.

"We do have times in which adversity hits and we'll kind of just get flat," Beal said after the Suns' Game 3 loss Friday. "Why it happens, I wish I had an answer."

Another real issue for evaluating Vogel was the outright disaster the Suns were in fourth quarters, a devastating anchor that dragged the team to that No. 6 seed. Phoenix ranked last in the NBA in offensive efficiency in the fourth, a jarring stat considering the team's firepower, and 22nd in defensive efficiency.

On average the Suns were getting outscored by about 12 points per 100 fourth-quarter possessions during the regular season. It's where the Suns most felt the loss of floor general Chris Paul, who was the key salary piece traded to acquire Beal.

Vogel, naturally, was asked about this repeatedly during the season. It was the subject of deep analysis internally as the Suns' basketball operations department tried to understand the lineups, strategies and decisions leading to such letdowns. Vogel often didn't have a clear answer for what was going on because, as the deep diving revealed, there was no clear answer.

"It's all kinds of different things," Vogel said in February. "We've looked at all of it, and there's a lot of different things that are happening."

This is unsatisfying, if ultimately true. The Suns had issues with turnovers, ball stagnation, defensive lapses, playing too slow and periods of frigid shooting. Vogel tried various lineups, mostly aggressively moving Booker around as the team tended to struggle in fourth-quarter minutes when he sat. There just wasn't a glaring through line to focus on. Sometimes, including during the series loss to the Wolves, it came with a loss of composure.

"My frustration is just within the team. We need to execute. We play well when we're playing, and then we need to stick together once things turn bad," Booker said after the Game 2 loss. "We've done that throughout the season. [It's] something that has to be corrected."

The fourth quarters might not have been the root of all the Suns' problems.

The team lost the fourth quarter in 47 of 82 regular-season games but went 25-22 in those games. They were 43-10 when leading after three quarters.

The fourth quarter raw data is a basis for being rough on Vogel, and those losses pushed the Suns out of a better seed that might've bitten them in the end. But it wasn't the only culprit.

The roster construction was ultra top-heavy. Beal, Durant and Booker made $130 million combined and, as a result, on opening night the Suns had 10 players on minimum or two-way contracts. General manager James Jones traded four of them and signed two more during the season as the Suns searched high and low for cheap players who could provide some production.

The cost to acquire Durant and Beal hollowed out the roster and emptied Phoenix's stockpile of draft picks.

The Suns believed they'd scored with some of their minimum signings last summer, particularly Eric Gordon, Yuta Watanabe and Keita Bates-Diop who were desired elsewhere. But Vogel never found bench-heavy lineups that could be relied on, and the Suns ranked last in another key offensive stat: bench scoring, averaging 26.6 points per game.

Whatever blame can be directed at Vogel, trusting so heavily in brand-new minimum-salary players was a risky strategy that simply did not work.

This is why the Suns didn't have much room to maneuver when giving Grayson Allen a contract extension just before the start of the playoffs. Allen, who played his role as floor spacer beautifully in leading the league at 46.1% shooting from 3 and led the team with 205 of them, scored a four-year, $70 million contract earlier this month.

Restricted by collective bargaining agreement rules on high-salary teams, the Suns simply couldn't afford not to re-sign Allen. Had he left in free agency in July, the only way to replace him would've been the minimum salary market that let the Suns down this season.

The same advantage lies ahead for Royce O'Neale, a midseason pickup in a trade with Brooklyn. O'Neale doesn't need a big competing offer when he reaches free agency this summer to pressure the Suns. He played reasonably in 30 games after the trade, averaging 8.1 points and shooting 38% on 3s, but he can't be replaced were he to leave.

With Booker's 2022 supermax extension kicking in next season, the bill for Durant, Beal and Booker will balloon to $150 million in 2024-25. Assuming they keep their three stars together, the Suns will be a second-apron tax team. At that level, the new deal for Allen plus even a new deal for O'Neale that comes close to his $10 million salary from this season will create $100 million in luxury tax alone.

That's a long way of saying the Suns underachieved this season but are largely locked into this roster. They could explore the trade market for Jusuf Nurkic, who will make $18 million next season, but he is the franchise center, and any deal for him would have to include a plan to replace him with next to no salary flexibility.

If there are no significant roster moves, the Suns will have to find improvement from somewhere. It's not as simple as saying they can hope for better health.

Durant had a very healthy season, and Booker played 68 games after averaging 63 games over the previous six seasons. It may have felt like Beal was hurt a lot, but he played 53 games, the most he has played since 2020-21. If anything, the big three might project to play fewer games next season based on the trends.

The poker chips are in the middle of the table for the Suns and will have to remain there. That reality could lead to some soul-searching this summer where the best-case scenario is everyone agrees to give it another try and hope for better results in Year 2. The worst-case scenario might be that someone wants to fold.

If there's any drama from the Suns this offseason, that's where it could be.

The premise that the suns have no options to run it back is completely asinine and inaccurate. I find it funny whenever these NBA experts start out their diatribes with "The suns have no options now but to try and run it back"!! and then shortly later, they begin postulating on various KD and/or Booker possibilities! I mean obviously, The suns have three distinct options they can legitimately choose from! Each with it's own benefits and it's own indirect tehthered consequences:

Option #1-
Run it back with little to no improvements (simply because we have no assets to legit improve)!!
The glaringly obvious risks here with this is:

1- Injury history. This last season, Our team has experienced an absolutely outlier run of our big three and starters staying healthy when history has overwhelmingly shown them not to be. And if any of them go down for any significant time, we'll easily not even make the playoffs and finish even worse than this last season, while our pick (If we even had one) would be the very last in the first round AND Kds' value declines further!

2- KD our only viable asset of value aside from Booker will significantly decrease due to contract getting shorter, potential injury and age concerns too!

3- Every other team around us that we have to compete against will get even stronger and further progressionally than we will, as we just continue to decline even further whilestill accruing exponential penalties.

Option #2-
Just trade KD and retool around a Book and Beal backcourt.
This option is the most obvious and logically responsible path for us to still stay competitive and recoup some assets and depth pieces for a viable future going forward. The only consequences of this would be a blow to Ishbias' ego having to admit he was overtly impulsive and made a rash decision without thinking things through fully. And the other consequence would be that we could no longer promote a big three superteam that really didn't function together anyways!! Honestly it could thusly be argued that this path really offers little to no down sides or poor outcomes/consequences aside from t being splashy on paper!

Option #3-
Blow it all up by trading BOTH KD and Booker for as much young talent and assets to try and catch back up to this next generation of incoming young superstar teams.
This one is easily the most extreme, But perhaps clearly much better in the long run for our franchise than simply doubling down on our mistake and riding out the next few seasons as an underperforming treadmill "play in" team with declining assets and no cap space or draft picks and a dismal future of very long, very painful rebuild just to try and keep our owner from having to feel feeling embarrassed because he made a rash and impulsive decision! In this one, We trade KD and Booker and likely Nurkic too. We do this to completely load up on young, promising talent, a ton of draft picks to use for adding more talent, or to bank away for when one of theses younger (still in their prime) star players becomes available while also adding high end talent and pursuing potential star talent in the coming drafts! The 25' draft by the way If we just happen to move KD by the trade deadline, Is completely loaded with high end talent and potential star level talent too! The benefit of this is we'd have a great long term future! And young intriguing players that are exciting and wouldn't financially cripple us moving forward. The consequence is that we wouldn't have an aging "BIG THREE" to look impressive on paper, and we surely wouldn't be in the playoffs for a few years!! But then again, we won't be as is going forward either.

[KdoubleDees23]

Give me KD to the Cavs for Jarrett Allen, Levert, and 1st round pick.

Get rid of Nurkic for Dennis shroder

Trade Beal to Chicago for a sign and trade for Demar Derozan - Alex caruso

Cavs run

Garland, Mitchell, Strus, KD, Mobley ****Pick up a SF

Bulls get Beal over Demar

Suns run

Shroeder / Caruso, Derozan, Booker, Levert , Allen

Tanking setup?

Sent from my SM-S926U using RealGM mobile app

Allen is a stud!

[KdoubleDees23]

I think the honest truth is...... what can the suns get for Beal? Where would he like to go.

Beal to LA for Hachimara & Russell?
Beal to Mia for Terry Rozier & Duncan Robinson?

There isn't much out there

[SunsRback4Good]

I think the honest truth is...... what can the suns get for Beal? Where would he like to go.

Beal to LA for Hachimara & Russell?
Beal to Mia for Terry Rozier & Duncan Robinson?

There isn't much out there

Beal to Mia for Herro & Jovic

[spanishninja]

Give me KD to the Cavs for Jarrett Allen, Levert, and 1st round pick.

Get rid of Nurkic for Dennis shroder

Trade Beal to Chicago for a sign and trade for Demar Derozan - Alex caruso

Cavs run

Garland, Mitchell, Strus, KD, Mobley ****Pick up a SF

Bulls get Beal over Demar

Suns run

Shroeder / Caruso, Derozan, Booker, Levert , Allen

Tanking setup?

Sent from my SM-S926U using RealGM mobile app

Allen is a stud!

yeah but we lose a lot of playmaking in this case.

[Ghost of Kleine]

The biggest question that we should really all be asking aside from how to fix things and maybe find a way to give us a future again is that ( as garrick mentioned previously) Kevin Durant has an extension that he is eligible for this July.

Now we have to decide if ( at 36 yrs old), do we really intend to offer Durant a big contract to resign through years 36, 37, 38 yrs old?? Knowing that if we do, we'll for sure be horribly handcuffed even longer financially with a severely restrictive future.

Now IF we at any moment pause hard and have doubts about doing this, then shouldn't it be obvious that we should be aggressively looking at trading Durant?? Because it either comes down to trading him before July or committing a huge chunk of our cap space to him as he nears age 38-40. And if we choose to do that, we can kiss any hope of future flexibility Goodbye!!!

And then we'll be looking at an even longer and more painful rebuild than we've gone through before.

[SunsRback4Good]

The biggest question that we should really all be asking aside from how to fix things and maybe find a way to give us a future again is that ( as garrick mentioned previously) Kevin Durant has an extension that he is eligible for this July.

Now we have to decide if ( at 36 yrs old), do we really intend to offer Durant a big contract to resign through years 36, 37, 38 yrs old?? Knowing that if we do, we'll for sure be horribly handcuffed even longer financially with a severely restrictive future.

Now IF we at any moment pause hard and have doubts about doing this, then shouldn't it be obvious that we should be aggressively looking at trading Durant?? Because it either comes down to trading him before July or committing a huge chunk of our cap space to him as he nears age 38-40. And if we choose to do that, we can kiss any hope of future flexibility Goodbye!!!

And then we'll be looking at an even longer and more painful rebuild than we've gone through before.

Ghost we need playmakers desperately.

[sashaturiaf]

I have no words for this team. All season we suffering fans put up with the lackluster and uninspired play by excusing it as this team is coasting and saving their best for the playoffs. The warts were out there for all to see, yet we buried our heads in the sand.

I don't know where to go from here. Were capped out with zero roster flexibility and stuck with 3 max players that look like they don't like playing with each other. I can't see Ishbia running it back next season with the same core given this humiliation, and sad as it is I think we may have seen the last of Book in a Suns uniform. He's the only one that has enough value to restock this roster. Selling low on Beal (zero value right now) would be madness when we have **** all assets to play with in the first place.

[lilfishi22]

We have 2 years of winning playoffs after 10 years of rebuilding and we want to go back to 10 years of rebuilding?

I reckon Mike Dantoni would win us 60 games with this roster with the appropriate leadership.

You realize we have crappy rebuilding because we had terrible people making decisions right?

Look at OKC. They were contenders for years then they sucked and rebuild for 4-5 years and they’re good again and will be contenders for years to come. Because they actually have a good GM making decisions.

Look at Minnesota….they sucked forever, hired a smart assistant GM from Denver and they rebuild and are contenders now for years to come.

Rebuilding isn’t a bad or super slow strategy in general. It only becomes that if you have a shtty GM. If Ishbia can hire someone like Bob Myers then a rebuild would take about as long as OKC did.

Wouldn't put Minny on that same list, yet. They had a great regular season, Gobert is having a 2nd wind of sorts for his career and Ant is cementing himself as one of the best players in the league (as you would expect from a highly touted #1 pick). But let's see how far they go before we consider them perennial contender especially when this is the first season they are considered a contender.