Your weekly Inside the Suns analysis straight from the BSotS community who live and breathe the team.
Welcome to Inside the Suns, your weekly deep down analysis of the current Phoenix Suns team.
Each week the Fantable — a round table of Bright Siders — give their takes on the Suns’ latest issues and news.
Fantable Questions of the Week
Q1 – The Beal buyout is done. What are your thoughts on where this leaves the Suns now and in the future?
Ashton: I breathed a sigh of relief. There were so many countless articles and comments on the subject that I was beginning to suffer Beal fatigue.
Should he stay? Should he go? Who screwed up? Relief from the second apron? There is a myriad of ways to view this subject. and I was just quite frankly burned out from chatter and having my head spin through the discourse as well.
Peace out Bradley Beal. We barely got to know you and yes, the fans may have given you a raw deal. Coaching and management surely did when they overlooked the fit and decided to cut checks instead.
Time to move on, Suns fans.
OldAz: I have been fairly vocal on the chats with my opinion on this. I am glad that they are able to move on as he does not fit the teams new direction at all. However, that really only speaks to the buyout portion and not the stretch. I understand the math of this buyout equating to far less of the overall cap in years 4 and 5 but it is still almost $20M that could be used elsewhere in those seasons. I want to see another move this year that smartly uses this newfound flexibility before I can be happy about the “stretch” portion and its impact on future years.
That does not mean using the MLE and magically competing this year. I am good with a rebuilding year or two if it means exciting basketball with more passionate and engaged young players. I would like them to use the flexibility to get off of Allen and O’Neale’s long term deals. Theoretically that could have been done while still over the aprons, but it may take aggregating someone like Richards to get back exactly what they want or need. If that return is expiring contracts to free up Allen’s and Oneal’s salary the next few years, includes picks, or brings back a young player that fits the teams new direction then it would make the whole Beal exit seem far better in my mind. This is similar to how the KD trade looked a lot better after the draft added Maluach, and allowed them to maneuver up to get Fleming and Brea.
One last note: I am split on a sign and trade for Kuminga being the move I describe above. I don’t mind them being hard capped in a rebuilding year because of a sign and trade, but I am not sure Kuminga is the guy worth doing that for. He is not much bigger than either of Dunn or Brooks so he might be duplicative at the wing position just like the logjam already at SG. If they are able to make this move for $15-18M a season while offloading Allen or O’Neale then it fits my description above perfectly and swaps out a bad contract for a young player with enough upside to justify giving minutes. However, if that S&T is for $20M+ (sending back Allen and Richards) then I feel like it may be piling a new mistake on right as they are trying to move on from the last mistakes.
Rod: Do I like all the dead money on the Suns’ cap sheet for the next 5 years? No. Do I believe it will completely cripple the team for years to come? Also, No. This pretty much came down to a choice between the lesser of two evils and there were cases to be made for both sides, both choices but no matter how strongly I or anyone else believes this was the right or the wrong choice to make, only time will tell how good or bad this choice was.
With that in mind, I prefer to remain cautiously optimistic. I am very glad that the team is now under both tax aprons and has gained a lot of flexibility moving forward. What they do with that added flexibility is the question now. With a new GM, we can’t really go by how well or how badly the front office has done in the past to predict the future but I can understand why some tend to predict gloom and doom but for me that’s just not worth the aggravation it would cause I will just wait until I see more of how the Suns are going to navigate this new reality before passing judgement.
Q2 – What are your thoughts on the rookies (Khaman Maluach, Rasheer Fleming, Koby Brea) after Summer League?
Ashton: The Suns are 2-3 in Summer League. The point is, that it is not going to cut it. What started as a promising blow-out over the Wizards, turned into losses with being blown-out by the Kings and Hawks, while playing an entertaining game against the Wolves. Suns followed up with a very convincing win over the Portland Trail Blazers with only Fleming starting and the other two were DNP.
What do three teams have in common in the loss column? They are all 4-0 in Summer League.
So, who can say how their performance was affected by going against the “Murderer’s Row”. I think all the players need improvement.
Khaman Maluach: Oh Vey (I am not Jewish, I just like the expression)! If he wins Most Improved Player this year, then you should have taken any Vegas odds at +20000 or above. He needs to stop with the three-pointers and focus on actually making shots around the basket, which was awful, just like his +/-. Not a good showing for the #10 pick in the draft He was a DNP against Portland when he clearly needed some more time on the court. It was basically handed to him as Hanson Yang was out. Load management, I guess. But I remain unconvinced.
Rasheed Fleming: Just too many DNPs due to injury for me to accurately judge. The jury is still out on him too. However, he did start against Portland, so the injury concerns are unjustified. And he recorded a respectable + 26 over 20 minutes of play. I need to see more, but he seems like a keeper.
Koby Brea: He could very well be a rotational player off the bench at a very loaded SG position. Lit the world on fire with his game against the Wizards to the point that some national pundits were wondering if he could be the steal of the draft. Inconsistent at times, but I remain hopeful. He was also a DNP with the blowout win against Portland. I would have liked to see more.
OldAz: I watched more Summer league this year than I have in all past seasons combined. That was 100% because of these 3 rookies and wanting to see what the Suns are getting. I tend to be fairly optimistic about young players and also recognize that significant development will be needed regardless of where they are drafted. With that said, here are my thoughts:
Maluach is really raw, but you can also see every bit of that potential everyone has been raving about. I get excited about young players developing and can see him being everything DA was for the Suns plus some of the things DA wasn’t. I am even more excited that they have another young center in front of him for now that has already proven to do some of these same things. It will give Maluach time to develop with much less pressure to perform immediately.
Fleming excites me the most despite us not getting to see too much of him. The simple fact that he displays NBA level talent in an actual NBA power Forward shaped body gets me excited. The Suns have not had that in a young player since Amare and even then they had to play him at Center. With Maluach and Williams, that won’t be a problem.
Brea looks to be a great value for where he was drafted and has such a pure and pretty jump shot. Some people compare him to a young Booker (a big stretch), but I would be happy just to get the sharp shooter and smart basketball player they had in Cam Johnson coming off the bench.
Rod: Maluach was pretty much what I expected, lots of potential, flashes of talent but needs time to learn and develop. He’s not a guy who’s going to come in and be a real force right away which is why getting Mark Williams will turn out to be a really smart move as Maluach will have time to adjust to the NBA without a lot of pressure to perform right away. My biggest concern with him right now is conditioning. I hope he will work to improve that during the rest of the summer before training camp opens in September.
I wish we had gotten to see more of Fleming but what I did see looked pretty good. He wasn’t flashy but payed well and under control. Offense mostly stands out in games but it might surprise some to know that Fleming lead the Summer Suns in defensive rating and a PER of 22.0. His per 36 stats for rebounding were 8.6 rebs which is encouraging. I’m encouraged by his performance but still want to see more of him in games with a more structured offense and defense (not Summer League).
Brea looks like he could easily get time this year as a microwave scorer off the bench. He might not be ready for a lot of minutes, but I think sticking into the lineup whenever team scoring goes flat might just kick start the Suns’ offense back to life. Getting him on a two-way contract is a very big plus and, depending on how the Suns’ season goes, he might wind up getting converted to a standard contract before the end of it.
Although CJ Huntley wasn’t mentioned in the question (an unfortunate oversight made by me), I was fairly impressed by his play too. He looked solid for a two-way player but still has a way to go before being a real factor on the court during a real NBA game. I’ll be following his progress in the G League this fall with interest.
Q3 – What are your thoughts on 2nd year players Ryan Dunn and Oso Ighodaro after Summer League?
Ashton: Talk about that second-year jump! Ryan Dunn was the leading scorer for the Suns in Summer League and Oso had a really nice game against the Hawks, but boy does he need to work on his FT shooting. Both were DNP against Portland in the last Summer League game of the year. Even Draymond Green is complaining about “Rest Management” in SL, but he complains about everything.
They received the most minutes on the team when I kinda wish that would have gone to other players. Boogie Ellis anyone?
They will both be rotational players on this year’s Suns squad, unless they become aggregation trade bait.
OldAz: Dunn was too good to be playing in Summer league and should have been pulled after the first game. You could tell that he had NBA experience and had worked on his game to get better since his rookie campaign. However, when he went down late in game 4 I cussed and shook my head and only felt a little bit better when they put him back in because it was not worth the risk. You can see that he works hard on his game and I expect him to take a significant leap given the youth movement and change in direction for the team. He should get plenty of minutes to continue his development. I see him on a similar trajectory as a young Mikal with the benefit of a bigger frame and possibly even better offensive mindset earlier in his career.
Oso is a tough read for me because we have yet to see what Ott’s offense and defense look like. While Oso has incredible basketball IQ, he is just not big enough to play center long term at the NBA level. There has been talk of playing him as PF, but without an outside shot I don’t see how that works. If he is hanging out at the corner on offense, you are basically allowing the defense to play 5 on 4. The Summer league did give some glimpse of his ability to help the offense as a facilitator and he continues to work on his shot from inside 10 feet, but it only worked because Maluach was able to man the center position on defense and then float out to the 3 point line on offense and provide the shooting threat that Oso cannot. I will be happy to be proven wrong, but I see Oso as a career bench player looking for minutes.
Rod: One thing about both of them impressed me. That was how confident and active they were on the court. Oso especially looked much more confident and aggressive offensively. Last season I was often frustrated at what seemed to be hesitancy on his part to make decisions and instead looked to just pass the ball off to someone else. Yeah, it was just summer league but I liked seeing that disappear and him aggressively taking the ball to the hoop rather than searching for someone else to pass to.
On the negative side, neither of them seem to have improved their free throw shooting much (Oso – 47.4%, Dunn – 60.0%). Watching Oso make only 3 of 10 FTs in the Minnesota game was exasperating. And he’s still not developed any kind of an outside shot…but at least he seemed to be a little more accurate with his push-shot floaters than before.
As always, many thanks to our Fantable members for all their extra effort this week!
Suns Trivia/History
On July 24, 1996, the Suns officially signed their 1st round pick (15th) Steve Nash to a 3-year deal worth $992,300 a season. When asked what kind of player he expected to be, Nash joked, “Probably a little bit like Michael Jordan at first.”
On July 26, 2010, the Suns waived Taylor Griffin (the older brother of Blake Griffin) whom they had drafted with the 48th pick in the 2009 NBA Draft. Taylor turned out to not be anywhere near the player his soon to be NBA All-Star younger brother would become and played in only 8 games for the Suns (averaging only 4 minutes per game) throughout the season. He would not play in the NBA again although he was briefly picked up by the Charlotte Bobcats for 9 days in December before being waived yet again without seeing any court time there. Taylor did actually make the Suns’ highlight reel once though…
On July 27, 2013, the Suns traded Luis Scola to the Indiana Pacers for Gerald Green, Miles Plumlee and a 2014 1st round draft pick (Bogdan Bogdanović was later selected). Green and Plumlee played integral parts in the Suns’ short-lived turnaround in 2013-14 when they went 48-34. They improved by 23 wins over the previous season (25-57) and just barely missed the playoffs in an extremely tough Western conference.
Last Week’s poll results
Last week’s question was “If the Suns make another trade this summer, who do you think is the most likely Suns player to be traded?”
35% – Nick Richards.
48% – Grayson Allen.
17% – Royce O’Neale.
A total of 350 votes were cast.
Important Future Dates
October 3 – Preseason game vs LA Lakers
October 10 – Preseason game vs Brooklyn Nets (China)
October 12 – Preseason game vs Brooklyn Nets (China)
October 21 – Regular Season Opening Night
Feb. 13-15 – 2026 NBA All-Star weekend in Los Angeles, CA
This week’s poll is…
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