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Suns stress importance of continuity heading into offseason

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The Phoenix Suns have a lot of question marks heading into the offseason, but don’t have the capability to answer a lot of them coming off a first-round sweep at the hands of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

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One thing that has been gathered from what the team has said, however, is the value of continuity heading into the summer after their first year of having everyone together.

“Continuity is key,” general manager James Jones said at his end-of-season press conference yesterday. “I can guarantee you I can ask every player, because make no mistake, continuity for us, the fans, the front office, that’s great. Continuity really matters to the players. And so if you ask any of our players, hey, ‘I know who I’m going to battle with next year. And I know all summer I can reach out to that guy, I can work with that guy, I can continue to build with those guys.’ They’ll all tell you, they’ll take that.

“It’s even more so when you’re talking about having elite talent around you. Our chemistry will be great going through the summer, and it will serve us well as we continue to talk about how we translate this continuity and chemistry into a championship.

Devin Booker echoed exactly what Jones said after the Suns’ season-ending 122-116 Game 4 loss to Minnesota on Sunday.

“It’s a tough league,” Booker said. “At the end of all this, there’s going to be one winner, and everybody that doesn’t win is gonna go into somewhat of a panic mode and feel like they have to make changes and do this and do that. But I think, over time experience is the best teacher. The more that you can spend time together and feel this hurt together and go through it together, the better off you are in the future.”

Despite Phoenix’s result this season, the NBA has proven that continuity can be the best method moving forward, as even exemplified by the Timberwolves.

“Continuity is important,” Kevin Durant said Sunday. “All the great teams in the league thus far have been together for two (or) three years. (The) Minnesotas, Denvers, Bostons, the Lakers, OKCs, a lot of teams have been together for a few years, so I’m looking forward to building.”

Suns are Handcuffed for the Future, Regardless

The Suns, simply put, went all in on their team and came up short this season. They do have their key core players under contract for at least the next couple years, but do not have much financial flexibility with how their roster is made up.

Per Spotrac, Durant will be making $51.2 million next season with an additional year on his contract after that, Bradley Beal will be earning $50.2 million on the third year of a five-year deal and Booker is set to make an estimated $49.4 million on the firstt season of a four-year extension. Additionally, Jusuf Nurkić is locked up for two more seasons after this one and will earn $18.1 million next year. Grayson Allen will be on the first season of a four-year, $70 million extension signed three weeks ago.

This means the Suns have their entire starting 5 locked up next season after only Durant and Booker played on the team in the 2022-23 season (Durant only played eight regular-season games for Phoenix then).

“One of the positives I’m looking forward to next season is now that we have a year under our belt with this group playing together and figuring things out, failing together, knowing what works and what doesn’t work, I feel like that’ll put us in a good spot for next year,” Allen said at his exit interview Monday.

Outside the starting lineup, Nassir Little is set to make $6.75 million on the second year of his four-year rookie extension next season. David Roddy is due $2.9 million on the third of a four-year rookie deal (not much more than a veteran minimum contract).

The Suns have Royce O’Neale’s bird rights if they want to sign him to a contact extension, while Eric Gordon, Josh Okogie, Drew Eubanks and Damion Lee also all have player options to extend their veteran minimum deals to next season.

With the seven salaries Phoenix currently has on the books, it is projected to have the highest tax bill in the NBA next season at $209 million.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported earlier this year that the projected second-apron level will be $190 million next season.

With the Suns over this number even before you factor in the rest of the roster and next year being the first year the full new collective bargaining agreement kicks in, Phoenix will not be able to send out cash in deals, aggregate contracts or use a preexisting trade exception. Additionally, “if the Suns finish the 2024-25 season over the second apron, their 2032 first-round pick will be frozen and unavailable to use in trades,” Wojnarowski wrote.

Once again, the Suns will pretty much have to resort to filling out the rest of their roster by veteran minimum contracts if no major trades are made.

The Suns only assets they have right now in terms of known draft picks is the No. 22 pick this season and a 2028 second-round pick from the Boston Celtics (protected 31-45). The Suns will still have a first-round pick in 2026, 2028 and 2030 as well due to all of these being pick swaps, but could be in a bad position with those if they finish in the lottery and have to give up a good pick.

Beginning on draft day (June 26), the Suns will be able to trade the No. 22 pick and their 2031 first-round pick.

Putting This in Perspecttive

The Suns finished the regular season with a 49-33 record, good for the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference with all of this in the back of everyone’s mind. Then a couple weeks later, they ended up out of the playoffs without winning a single game, so of course these numbers and stipulations come to the forefront looking ahead to the future.

Even with all this, they do have a chance to prove that experience can be the best teacher.

“We didn’t look at this thing as a one-year thing, and we’re gonna come in, and we only got this year to figure it out, like, no, we got time,” Beal said at his exit interview Monday. “You don’t want to use that as like a cop-out, but just the reality we live in that’s the game plan. We have a window, yeah, it’s a short window, but we have a window, so we want to maximize it as much as possible.

“And obviously, we still have a lot of room to grow, we all have to be better, I gotta be better. And we all have to be better as an organization and move towards that goal of winning the title, which isn’t easy. We’re not gonna sit here and say it’s easy. Everything happened this summer, the moves were made and everybody had that, ‘Oh, this is it,’ but you still got to work out the kinks. You still got to make sure it fits well, and everybody’s on the same page, and we’re working towards that same goal. I think everybody has that mindset, it just didn’t fall.”

First-year coach Frank Vogel, whose future is still up in the air in Phoenix, wanted to hammer this point home to fans that this team will be back.

“I want to speak to our fans directly and say, I share your passion. I’m as disappointed as y’all are,” coach Frank Vogel said after this loss. “Okay, I want to share that with you all. But, we got beat by a better team this year. We put this team together with the mindset that we have a 3-to-5 year window, that every year we’re gonna have a team that has the firepower to compete for (a championship). But, this league is loaded with firepower. We got a talented group, so d0 the Timberwolves, every team in the top-10 teams in the Western Conference are loaded with talent as well. We got to evaluate and figure out ways we can get better. And just process this tough series loss.”

Mat Ishbia’s Message on Continuity

Owner Mat Ishbia, who oversaw the putting together of this entire roster outside of Booker in his first 15 months on the job, recognized all of this at his end-of-year press conference yesterday when I asked if he viewed this year as Year 1 and a clean slate to build continuity off of.

“Absolutely,” Ishbia said. “When we made the trade for Kevin Durant, you realize that we had four years with him, right. That’s a big deal. Same thing with Brad Beal, we had years with him. Devin Booker lined up for years. Nurkić years, we got Grayson Allen for years. Now we gotta go figure out how to get Royce (O’Neale) or Josh Okogie or Bol Bol and all these guys for years.”

There has been talk that the Suns should just trade everyone away and start over, but that is not how Ishbia feels.

“It was never, ‘we’re gonna win a championship this year or we got to blow it up.’ It’s just ridiculous stuff,” Ishbia said. “And so yeah, would I have liked to have won it this year. Absolutely. But I do think continuity, consistency. process works, and guys playing together. One of the things we talked about at the beginning of the year was like, ‘Can we get our guys to play 60 to 65 games together – the starting five?’ I think we played less than 40. Right? That continuity does affect it. Now, it doesn’t mean that’s why we lost, it just means it’s something we have to be aware of. And guess what? Going into next year, knowing that we have the whole starting five back, I feel pretty good about that.”

Ishbia took over the job in February last season, and even though last year’s team lost in six games in the second round to the eventual champion Denver Nuggets, he feels this year’s team made significant strides even with a worse playoff result. Last year’s team finished with a regular season record of 45-37 record, but was the fourth seed.

“Will we be better next year than we were this year? Yes,” Ishbia said. “Are we better this year than we were last year? Absolutely. Think about the team that lost in Denver, although it was the second round. Is our team better this year than last year? It’s not even close. But, we didn’t win. So NBA championship, that’s what we’re focused on. And that’s what we’re gonna focus on again this year coming up.”

Even though Ishbia did not specifically say what moves the Suns were going to make, he emphasized multiple times that the Suns were not going into panic mode, like a lot of people have suggested, and added that he likes the position the team is in.

Ishbia said he will be conducting meetings with the coaches, front office and players over the coming days, so stay tuned if any moves end up happening.

Mat Ishbia Stays Positive, Commits to Building on Current Team

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Brendan Mau is a senior writer covering the Phoenix Suns and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on X via @Brendan_Mau

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