The Phoenix Suns start the post-All Star break portion of their schedule tonight, when they take on the San Antonio Spurs in Texas.
The Suns have a record of 32-23 and are in seventh place in the Western Conference, currently in position to make the play-in tournament. That leaves them only four wins short of their total from all of last year, when they missed the playoffs altogether. Their 32 wins also exceeds the preseason predictions of many observers for how many games the team would win over the course of the season.
So what’s behind the Suns’ surprising success so far this season? And can they keep it up and make the playoffs?
Law Murray, NBA writer for The Athletic, joined The Show to discuss more.
Full conversation
LAW MURRAY: It’s very surprising to me this, it’s not just even about this year’s team. The previous teams that the Suns have had with so much more talent all underachieved, all of them. Even the one-seed that they had back in 2022 — that team didn’t make it to the Conference Finals, and I believe that was the best regular season in Suns history, or close to it.
So ever since then, they’ve had Kevin Durant in the playoffs. And they won one playoff series in two years with Kevin. The expectations that I had for this Suns team was that they were going to be safely in the bottom five of the Western Conference. And instead of they’ve looked like this year what the LA Clippers looked like a year before.
So big, big shoutout to Devin Booker for holding things down and Jordan Ott for what he’s been able to implement with that team in his first year as an NBA head coach.
MARK BRODIE: OK, so how much do you attribute to Devin Booker sort of being Devin Booker and Jordan Ott’s approach and what he’s been able to do as the coach in relation to everything else that’s sort of gone on with the Suns, What do you attribute the fact that they’re so much better than you and so many others thought?
MURRAY: Defense. Defense. Jordan Ott coming from the Cleveland staff. I mean, I didn’t even think of what he would do to shape Phoenix’s defense. Cleveland was the best offense in the NBA last year. And I felt like, OK, well, you’re going to get some heavy pick and roll because that’s kind of what Cleveland did.
But the great thing about basketball and your opportunity to coach basketball is that your specialties aren’t always as black and white as they are like in football. Basketball is a lot more checkers compared to the chess of football.
And so the Suns being a strong defense, especially how they defended last year — like, I didn’t see it with the personnel that they had. I didn’t think that Jordan Ott would be the reason that they would come in and defend at a high level. I will give Dillon Brooks a lot of credit for, for that energy. And so there, there’s that.
But I will say that that team doesn’t pop off the page offensively. You have to give the Phoenix Suns credit as far as their turnaround goes for being a top-10 defense at this point of the season and for an identity with that defense. Like, they’re going to foul you. They’re going to hit you. But they’re also going to take the ball away from you.
And that is half the battle to being good is you have to understand what your route to being good is and then commit to that consistently. And here we are two-thirds into the regular season, and they’ve done that.
BRODIE: Do you see this team and maybe some of their success as maybe being the kind of team where the sum is greater than the parts, as opposed to past years where, as you alluded to, they’ve tried to do sort of the big three thing and it didn’t really work out that well?
MURRAY: You always are going to have to have a team that brings the most out of everybody who gets an opportunity to contribute. And to your point, those guys were supposed to be good last year and the year before that, and even the year before that coming off of the Finals because of the star-level talent that they had.
And when you don’t have that, sometimes it’s easier to lock in on what you need to do to compete and win. There was so much to look at and say, if those Suns teams couldn’t do it, this Suns team won’t do it. And that’s what’s inspiring about what the Suns have been able to show to this point in the season.
Like a guy like Collin Gillespie has emerged, a guy like Dillon Brooks. It feels like Dillon Brooks is always better when he is able to take as many shots as he wants, and he’s been able to do that. Like Devin Booker needs somebody to help him with that offensive workload, and Dillon Brooks has been more than up for it.
They take a ton of threes. Again, that’s the kind of influence that you see from the Cleveland Cavaliers, that Jordan Ott kind of came from that staff and that way of playing.
So when you don’t have a certain level when it comes to personnel, when it comes to talent, guys know that. Guys know what league they’re in and they know that if you’re going to compete, you’re going to have to play over that and you’re going to have to do things harder. And I don’t think anyone’s questioned the effort of the Phoenix Suns this year.
I think the internal expectations for the Suns was to compete. Like, the bar was low. Like you have a first-year head coach, you strip down your roster, you don’t really have future assets. Just try hard and see what happens and they’ve done that.
BRODIE: So, understanding that crystal balls are often cloudy, how sustainable do you think this is for the Suns at least through the rest of this, this season?
MURRAY: Well, the good news is, again, we’re in the third quarter of the season. We’re not through the third quarter, but we’re in it. You’re firmly in the second half of the regular season already. They’re at this point where they should be getting better, to be honest with you.
Devin Booker is going to have a little bit more health. Jalen Green hopefully is healthier now than he was in the first half of the year, and that should help a lot. Like, Jalen Green’s a talented player. He’s a messy player, but he’s a talented player. And you need guys who can be comfortable with the ball in their hands and to get you through the regular season.
The concern will be for the playoffs, but I think if the Suns make the playoffs, they’re playing with house money. And they’re in a position where they’re going to have a great shot to make the playoffs. They are seventh in the Western Conference. It is not outside the question for them to rise as high as third.
They’re not going to get there. But, you know, like, if you only have three fewer losses than the team currently in third, then you go out and you say, “Well, why can’t we do that?” They’re as close to third place as they are to eighth place.
So they are very relevant in the Western Conference. All these games are going to matter. I will say it’s not like they’ve played their best basketball of late.
But this is a team, again, they have an identity, and having an identity is half the battle. They are very reliant on Devin Booker, but Devin Booker did miss some time in the end of January going into February. And and again, he’s healthier now than he was.
So I think that sustainability for the Suns is just a matter of can you put yourself in position to maybe avoid the play-in tournament? They are certainly in position to do that.
Every team above them in the West is more talented than them. That’s just how it is. But they also have put themselves in the spot where even if they’re in the play in-tournament, I think they’re going to have a comfortable spot to clinch a playoff spot. And that would qualify as a successful season for this Phoenix team.
KJZZ’s The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ’s programming is the audio record.
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