Field-Reversed Configurations

In the middle of the third quarter of what would end up being a 39-point loss to the ascendent Houston Rockets, Kevin Durant, for all intents and purposes the only Phoenix Sun at this point as well as the guy who’d gotten Dillon Brooks ejected earlier in the game, collided with Jabari Smith and crumpled to the floor. He exited the game, a microcosm of how this Suns season has gone.

Reports suggest he’ll be out at least a week. With the Suns five games below .500, sitting eleventh in the Western Conference and with only seven games remaining, the slow burn of this disastrous year is reaching its flameout point. Trade rumors evoking Phoenix’s, ahem, Big Three of Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal have been circulating for months.

At this point, if not much sooner, we can take some stock of what this era of Phoenix Suns basketball has meant as the team confronts the questions that will decide what the next era might look like. Namely: what does the team do with its stars, and with Booker in particular?

To call the Suns’ past two seasons disastrous and/or catastrophic would be decidedly accurate and still somehow undersell how bad it has been. The gulf between expectation and reality is nowhere more pronounced than in Phoenix, where four years after a Finals run the team sits farther from the title than in several years. Mike Budenholzer – the very coach who defeated the Suns in the Finals for his own title with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021 – has cycled through lineups and shuffled starters, even sitting Beal for the first month of this year before returning him to the starting lineup, all to little avail.

With a terrible defense and an offense that suggests a bored, airy game of hot potato, Phoenix hasn’t been able to piece any kind of cohesive identity together. Picture an average Suns possession from this season: there is either Booker playing out of position or Tyus Jones, everybody’s favorite backup point guard-turned-starter, bringing the ball up before scooping ahead to Durant, who either draws a double or goes to work at the elbow.

Durant is an all-time individual scoring option, a cheat code in the mold of Dirk, but doing only this 100 times a game gives opposing teams a singular blueprint with which to stop them: double Durant, especially if Booker is off the floor, and cut off passes to capable shooters. In effect, this forces the Grayson Allens and Mason Plumlees of the world to have to win games[1], which is all well and good when it’s the ACC Tournament but is a much taller ask when facing the Boston Celtics.

Again, the offense is repetitive and misaligned, and the defense is beyond broken. This Suns team is definitively cooked. What matters now is how they reposition themselves. Durant has one more year left on his current deal; he’ll also be 37 in September and likely doesn’t want to spend any more time waiting to contend than is absolutely necessary. It could be that he wants to see this through, but the vultures are circling. Whispers of Durant’s name will permeate genial phone calls between general managers until next year’s trade deadline. Phoenix can get positive value back for him because he is literally Kevin Durant, and plenty of teams will make those calls.

Beal’s contract is spectacularly bad, with some in the commentariat calling it the worst in history. He has a $57 million player option for 2026-’27. He has a no-trade clause! Phoenix has very little recourse for getting his money off the books cleanly, and without many surplus draft picks to attach, the Suns may very well be stuck with Beal for the majority of that contract.

Booker, on the other hand, is in the first year of a four-year, $220 million extension. Though he missed making the team this year, he is a perennial All-Star just one season removed from a third-team all-NBA selection. He’ll turn 29 at the start of next season.

In some ways, Booker’s current contractual standing could empower the Suns to be patient. Particularly if they know they can’t trade Beal, Phoenix can focus on what kind of return it might be able to get from a Durant deal that would complement Booker, periodically miscast this year as a point guard, as well as potentially adding to their draft stock.

The Suns are almost in a Golden State-like two-timelines dilemma, but without the first timeline ever having happened. Booker is the only key player left from the 2021 Finals team; Deandre Ayton is plying his trade in Portland, Chris Paul is Victor Wembanyama’s senior advisor in San Antonio, and Mikal Bridges is enjoying Villanova grad school with the Knicks.

Phoenix took the sweat equity of that Finals run and turned it into an underwhelming half-decade of passive confusion. Whether they make the play-in this year should be entirely irrelevant to how they approach what comes next.

With Beal already sidelined, shutting Durant down may have been a wise play even before his injury. Now that it’s a certainty that they’ll be without him for a vital road trip – the Suns’ remaining schedule is the toughest in the NBA – it may behoove the Suns to sit Booker as well. Budenholzer may be the second consecutive one-and-done head coach of the Phoenix Suns, much to his own chagrin. The skies in Phoenix are rapidly turning from gold to purple, but the morning always follows.

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[1] Possibly vital note: there is a lot of Duke basketball happening on this Suns team.