From 2004-2012, the Suns employed a magician named Steve Nash as their point guard. When they traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers during the summer of 2012, his final magic act was, apparently, to cast a spell of invisibility upon the entire franchise, allowing them to undergo a rebuild in obscurity. That, or the sun is so bright over here that it was literally impossible to see the Phoenix’s success or failure from season to season. Either way, no one’s watching — and the Suns are better off for it.
This past season, the backcourt flourished within this quiet ecosystem. Eric Bledsoe finally appears to be hitting his prime, producing like an elite point guard and experiencing the best injury luck of his career. Devin Booker filled out his game like a veteran sage ten years his senior; he also scored 70 points in a single game. Look around the league, and you can convince yourself that featuring a duo like that at the guard spots is a pretty direct path toward title contention. Nearly all of the top teams in the league have two superstars at the one and two.
Unfortunately, the rest of the roster is decidedly less intriguing. The 2016 NBA Draft placed two versatile young bigs in the Suns’ frontcourt, but they are both unknowns at this point. Croatian forward Dragan Bender struggled through a 2017 ankle injury and a miscasting at the small forward position, playing only 574 minutes across 43 games. In the exact opposite situation, fellow rookie Marquese Chriss was given the perfect role as a small-minutes starter, but his improvements were merely incremental. Both are young, and there is time, but stardom is no sure thing.
Filling out the roster, as on most young teams, are veterans and unproven maybes. Two young centers, Alex Len (the fifth overall pick in 2013) and Alan Williams (a Summer League star) will hit the restricted free agency market this summer. Apart from those two, Phoenix has few contractual decisions to make in the coming months. That is not to say the summer will be an easy one; armed with a bevy of cheap youngsters and a path to nearly $30 million in cap space, it is clearly decision time for a team at its turning point.
All year, Suns chatter had the same feeling to it. This is the least year of the bad — in with the good. Coach Earl Watson spoke several times toward the end of the year about this being the final summer before “remember when?”. Fans are falling sideways, charmed by the fight this team played with once the veterans were shut down in February. Game nights weren’t necessarily appointment viewing, but there was a buzz online whenever the team performed well. Booker’s 70 electrified the Valley of the Sun.
Regardless, basketball interest in Phoenix always teeters on the brink. Just as Nash’s departure pushed fans away for a half-decade, one miscue by Ryan McDonough (who is on the final year of his deal) could repeat the offense. Though none outside Phoenix may have a grip on the chances of this roster to develop into a competitive one, the Suns organization is faced constantly with the fact that the local community is tuned in.
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If 2016-17 was a lucky hideaway in the obscurity of low-stakes losing, and 2017-18 is to be the first step toward real progress, then the summer of 2017 is going to be an offseason of reckoning. What’s remarkable about the inattention paid to Phoenix is the relatively sweet setup they have going forward. Not many rebuilding franchises have a stud in his prime, a budding star just behind him, and several undeveloped, promising draft picks in the wings. No matter what comes of the Suns’ rebuild or how they perform next year, moments like Booker’s scoring explosion or the McDonough’s shopping spree in the 2016 Draft are demanding that we all pay closer attention.