The Phoenix Suns entered last season with championship expectations. They were ultimately swept out of the first round after a 49-win regular season. Historically speaking, it is fairly rare for a team to make a jump from there to a championship in the next season. Since 1980, only six teams have won fewer than 50 games in one season, only to go on and win the championship in the next. All of them dealt with extenuating circumstances of some form or another.
The 2023 Nuggets played the prior season without Jamal Murray or Michael Porter Jr. The 2022 Warriors played the previous season without Klay Thompson. The 2020 Lakers didn’t have Anthony Davis for the 2018-19 season. The 2008 Celtics didn’t have Kevin Garnett or Ray Allen one year earlier. The 1995-96 Bulls made a pretty important addition in the spring of 1995 when they signed a retired guard named Michael Jordan. The 1980 Lakers had just drafted Magic Johnson. With that in mind, the overarching sentiment is that it’s possible to jump from 49 or fewer wins up to the title, but it takes some substantial agent of change.
Is such a change possible for the Suns? Well, they could potentially be healthier next season. Bradley Beal missed 29 games and Devin Booker missed 14, but the Suns were only 26-15 in games that its entire big three played in last season. That’s only a 52-win pace. Mike Budenholzer could be an improvement on the bench, but he’s replacing Frank Vogel, a championship coach in his own right.
Do the Suns have a path to a major roster upgrade? It’s hard to imagine they do. The Suns are restricted by the second apron and don’t control any of their first-round picks until 2030. Maybe Phoenix could improve on the margins, because it’s hard to imagine the Suns adding a Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan this summer.
If it’s not going to happen for Phoenix next season, it frankly probably won’t happen for Phoenix at all. Kevin Durant will turn 37 before the 2025-26 season, and the Suns need the 14-time All-Star to play at an All-NBA level, given the depth they sacrificed to get him and Beal. Only one 37-year-old player has ever been named to an All-NBA Team during a championship season: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1985. Only seven 37 year olds have ever earned All-NBA honors, period, and five of those slots are owned by either Abdul-Jabbar or LeBron James.
The Suns took a justifiable risk putting this team together. On paper, it looked like it had a genuine championship upside. That upside never materialized on the court. Keeping Durant likely means a slow and steady decline into irrelevance in a monstrous Western Conference.
From that perspective, recent trade overtures from the Houston Rockets represented a lifeline. The Rockets got several of Phoenix’s future first-round picks from the Nets back. They have several intriguing young players to dangle in front of the Suns. Houston is the best-equipped team in all of basketball to push the Suns back in the right direction. And Phoenix, thus far, is seemingly rejecting all overtures.
“NBA Draft night is the best. Everyone talking about the drama and storylines, some are right and some are just wrong. My turn,” Suns owner Mat Ishbia tweeted Wednesday. “Phoenix loves Kevin Durant and Kevin Durant loves Phoenix, and we are competing for a championship this year because we have the team to do it.”
As we’ve covered, historical precedent suggests that they won’t have the team to do it. Could the Rockets change that down the line? Potentially. Booker is only 27. He’s not going to have much of an appetite for a full rebuild, but a reload over the next year or two might be a bit more palatable. Beal is still on the roster. It’s not as though the Suns would need to tank without Durant. Beal might even be better suited to the higher-usage role he held in Washington than the third-wheel position he played last season.
If nothing else, they have a number of players that would seemingly be strong fits next to Booker provided they develop properly. For years, two of Phoenix’s biggest weaknesses have been getting to the basket and defending guards. Amen Thompson will be able to do both at an elite level once he reaches his peak, and he badly needs to play with an elite scoring guard to cover up his own shooting deficiencies. Booker fits the bill.
The Celtics proved that the NBA is now a forwards league. Jabari Smith checks a lot of boxes as a big, versatile defender who can shoot. He just can’t create his own shot. Booker obviously can. Even Alperen Sengun could inject some badly-needed ball movement into a Suns offense that ranked fifth in the NBA in isolation frequency last season.
Are these players the Rockets should be giving up for Durant? Probably not. Houston, like Phoenix, fails to check the “won 50 games last season” box most presumptive contenders want to have reached. Durant’s presence might qualify them for extenuating circumstances, but it’s not as though the rest of the roster is championship-ready, either.
Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks both have playoff skill sets and experience. Everybody else is probably a few years away. By the time they’re ready to win at the highest level, Durant likely won’t be. There are absolutely teams that should consider making hefty Durant offers. Those teams, for the most part, fall into the “won 50 games” club last season. The Rockets probably aren’t one of them, but the Suns shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. If the Rockets want to bail them out of their hasty all-in push, well, why stop them?
The crown jewel in this scenario is the Suns’ picks that Phoenix sent to Brooklyn to get Durant in the first place. Those picks now largely belong to the Rockets. As the Nets proved when they traded for the picks they sent to Houston in the James Harden, NBA teams are finally beginning to recognize the need to own your own draft capital. Brooklyn is using it to kick off a rebuild. The Suns would likely think of it as something closer to insurance.
The idea would be to spend the next year or two putting a younger, more versatile roster around Booker. But if that fails and Booker eventually decides he wants to leave, the Suns wouldn’t have to risk getting held hostage by the Rockets in future negotiations. If Durant already gets them some or all of their own picks back, they could then cast a wider net on Booker.
That’s a last resort for the Suns, but let’s face it, a Booker trade request, at least down the line, is on the table. That’s what happens when you go all-in on two aging and injury-prone co-stars with redundant skill sets. If the Suns had drafted Tyrese Haliburton in 2020 or merely kept Mikal Bridges in 2023, they might not be in this mess. But the Suns have spent the last several years bungling any future they might have built around Booker.
Moving Durant is their last chance to get it right. Despite Ishbia’s protests, the Suns don’t have a contention-worthy team right now. They have three former All-Stars who largely do the same things, no point guard, a center that can’t defend in space and very little perimeter defense from their guards and wings. This isn’t a contender hiding in plain sight. It’s a 49-win team that’s getting older and more expensive by the day.
We don’t know what Houston has or hasn’t offered. We don’t even know how the Rockets plan to match Durant’s max salary in a trade without including VanVleet or Brooks, two players they’d want to keep to play next to Durant. But by all accounts, the Rockets are determined to make a win-now trade. That exact mindset is what got the Suns into this mess. Houston’s persistence might be their way out of it. No matter how badly they want to pretend otherwise, history tells us this team probably isn’t making the jump into championship contention in time to justify keeping this group together. If the Suns don’t proactively break it up now, it’s only going to get worse from here.
