After NBA Finals defeat, where do the Phoenix Suns go from here?

Coming just short of their first NBA championship, what lies ahead for the Phoenix Suns in a critical offseason and for the long-term?

The Phoenix Suns were the NBA Finals team hardly anyone outside the state of Arizona expected. Despite a remarkable, unforgettable season that was anything but a failure, their run to the championship round ended in disappointing fashion, cut short in six games by the Milwaukee Bucks and a legendary series from Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Because the Suns lost four straight games after building a 2-0 lead, it’d be easy to overreact and question whether it’s worth it for this young group to run it back in 2021-22. With a number of key players hitting free agency or due for extensions this summer, general manager James Jones (and by extension, owner Robert Sarver) have some critical decisions to make.

However, the end result shouldn’t overshadow what was an incredibly successful year. From the 8-0 bubble onward, the Suns built on their success in a way that never felt like a fluke. Even as fans from Los Angeles and Denver bemoaned injuries, Phoenix boasted the second-best record in the association, a top-10 offense and defense, and the league’s best record against winning teams. They performed well in the clutch, only suffered four losing streaks all season and displayed all the tell-tale signs of a legitimate contender.

This is also a franchise that had missed the playoffs for 10 straight years before this season, and it had been nearly 30 years since their last Finals appearance. The Suns have yet to win a title in 53 years of existence, so bearing all that in mind, will Sarver be willing to open his checkbook even wider to keep a good thing going?

Phoenix has a tantalizing young core that performed admirably well in its first postseason run. Devin Booker is only 24 years old and had been preparing for this moment for his entire life, but Deandre Ayton (22), Mikal Bridges (24) and Cameron Johnson (25) also showed exceptional poise during Phoenix’s unexpected title run.

“I just think that when you go through something like this for the first time, you don’t expect to get this far,” head coach Monty Williams said. “So from that standpoint, what a huge accomplishment by our players to get to the playoffs for the first time and get all the way to the Finals and have a chance to play for a championship. Like, that’s hard to process. You typically get to the first round and you’re done. And you learn and then you try to get to the second round. We got all the way to the Finals.”

The Suns figure to be good for a long time with that quartet, but with Chris Paul being 36 years old and possessing a $44.2 million player option this summer, the bigger question is how much longer the Suns have to be great before Father Time claims CP3 and Jones has to find a successor for the Point God.

There are also no guarantees that simply running it back will get Phoenix back to the Finals next year, even if Chris Paul shows zero signs of regression; the Los Angeles Lakers will be healthier, the Utah Jazz are still a very good team, and the LA Clippers, Denver Nuggets and Golden State Warriors will all be trying to get their star players back in good health for a title run. Contending teams need a few breaks to make title runs, and the Suns falling short this season definitely feels like something of a missed opportunity after the stars seemingly aligned for them.

“I also expressed to them, now we know what it takes to get here, it’s going to be that much harder to get past this point, and the reality is you never know if you’re ever going to get back here,” Williams said. “That’s why you have to take advantage of these opportunities, and they did. We just came up short.”

The question is, what do the Suns need to do in the offseason to put themselves in the best position to compete for a championship again in 2022?

The Phoenix Suns have a few important decisions to make

The top priority for the Suns will be locking in Chris Paul. Paul, who will be entering his 17th season next year, can decline his $44.2 million player option to become a free agent, at which point he could re-sign a longer deal with Phoenix or another team. He could also opt in with the Suns and add a one- or two-year extension on top of that.

If CP3 opts in, his $44.2 million salary and a subsequent extension would push the Suns into the luxury tax. If he opts out and re-signs with a two- or three-year deal worth about $30 million annually, the Suns would still have some wiggle room to work with. That extra space would be extremely helpful in trying to re-sign Cameron Payne, who is an unrestricted free agent and has earned a nice payday after serving as one of the league’s best backup point guards.

The Suns could offer Paul up to four years if he opts out, compared to only three-year deals from other potential suitors like the New York Knicks. Unless Sarver and the Suns completely lowball Paul and decide he’s not part of their future — which would be a disastrous, downright stupid decision given what he’s meant to the franchise in just one season — it feels highly unlikely Paul will leave Phoenix.

Not only did he get closer to a title than ever before with this group, but he repeatedly made it a point of emphasis to praise his younger teammates and express how much he enjoyed being around Monty Williams, Devin Booker, Deandre Ayton, Mikal Bridges and the rest of the guys. The word “love” was repeatedly used throughout the season, and there aren’t many other contenders that could both afford him and give him a better shot at a championship. The Knicks are probably the closest “threat,” but their younger core doesn’t compare to the playoff-readiness the Suns showed during this Finals run.

Paul mostly avoided the question after Game 6 when probed about his upcoming free agency.

“We just lost a few minutes ago, you know what I mean?” he said. “Right now we’re going to process this and figure this out. I think everything else will take care of itself.”

However, he also offered this interesting little tidbit when asked about reaching the Finals and falling short:

“For me it just means back to work,” he said. “Nothing more, nothing less. Ain’t no moral victories or whatnot. We sort of saw what it takes to get there, and hopefully we see what it takes to get past that.”

Given the way he spoke about “figuring things out,” “getting back to work” and “hopefully we see what it takes to get past that,” it sounds like his mind is already thinking about how he and the Suns can get back there again next year. If that’s the case, Paul opting out and signing a two-year, $60 million deal or a three-year, $100 million deal with the Suns doesn’t feel outlandish; he was the leader on a championship-caliber team, his influence was an instrumental part of the youngsters’ growth, and Phoenix isn’t going to find a better replacement option elsewhere even if he left and opened up $27 million of cap space.

After forcing Devin Booker to toil away on terrible teams for the first 4-5 years of his career, preemptively breaking up a title-contending team for fear of Paul’s age and injury history would be foolish, shortsighted and cheap. The Point God only missed two games this season, and last year with the Oklahoma City Thunder, he only missed two games as well. Even if he were to injure himself, the risk is worth it after he helped reinvigorate Suns basketball, proving to Booker that this front office regime is serious about helping him contend for championships. Paul’s on- and off-court impact on Book, Ayton, Bridges and the rest of the team was invaluable, and again, there are no better alternatives on the open market anyway.

The idea that Paul is “washed up” or “past his prime” is also overblown. He’s performed at an All-NBA, All-Star level the past two seasons, and despite playing through a shoulder stinger, COVID-19 protocol rust and partially torn ligaments in his wrist, he still put up 19.2 points and 8.6 assists per game on .497/.446/.877 shooting splits in the playoffs. Even in the Finals, when it felt like he wasn’t quite himself, he still managed 21.8 points and 8.2 assists per game on .550/.522/.750 shooting.

Don’t overthink it; even after dealing with some nagging injuries in the postseason, Paul is worth every penny the Suns decide to pay him this summer.

As for his backup, Cam Payne has probably earned a contract somewhere in the $8-10 million annual range. As Paul gets older, having such a high-quality scorer and driver coming off the bench to spell CP3 is a luxury the Suns need to be willing to pony up for. Something in the range of a three-year, $27-30 million deal doesn’t feel like it’s out of the question.

Additionally, both Deandre Ayton and Mikal Bridges are due for rookie extensions, and both could be approaching max territory. Again, this is not something Jones, Sarver or the Suns front office should overthink. Ayton just wrapped up his very first playoff run, where he averaged 15.8 points and 11.8 rebounds per game on 65.8 percent shooting. He was a beast against Anthony Davis and Andre Drummond in the first round, limited league MVP Nikola Jokic in the second round and even held his own against the same LA Clippers small-ball lineups that ran Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert off the floor. He had a disappointing championship series, but it took Giannis Antetokounmpo, Greek god of the NBA Finals, for that to happen. This playoff run only strengthened the idea that he’s the big man Phoenix needs to contend moving forward.

“I think that was the first thing I told Book once we got in the locker room after we got off the floor, I walked over to him and said, ‘This is just the beginning,'” Ayton said. “Now we know what we need to do and no less. We’re going to keep each other accountable for the rest of our careers together and so does Mikal and Jae Crowder, all the other guys on the team as well.”

A max extension for Ayton would be five years and $168 million — the type of rookie extension only bona fide superstars like Joel Embiid and Karl-Anthony Towns have received. Ayton may not be on that level, so maybe Phoenix finagles the price down a bit, but even a max like that for a 22-year-old showing so much potential in just his third season wouldn’t be a bad move.

As for Bridges, while his offense was a bit more intermittent throughout the playoffs than you’d hope, two-way wings are at a premium in the modern-day NBA. Not only did he shoot a career-best 42.5 percent from 3 this season, but he also doubled as one of the league’s best, multi-positional defenders. His cutting ability and growing comfort with attacking off the dribble to create his own shot in the mid-range makes this a no-brainer. He’s a All-Defensive caliber player who will eventually be able to take a ton of pressure off Booker on the offensive end of the floor.

Bridges won’t receive that same kind of max treatment, but given that OG Anunoby agreed to a four-year, $72 million contract with the Toronto Raptors last year (and that it was seen as something of a bargain), the Suns wing could get a four-year extension anywhere in the $80-100 million range.

That seems pricey, but the only person it’s really affecting is Robert Sarver; Phoenix can go over the cap line to re-sign or extend its own free agents, and Suns fans shouldn’t balk at the prospect of paying good players more money. The team wouldn’t have the means of adequately replacing them on the open market anyway, and that’s especially true for two youngsters who have incredibly bright futures in the Valley.

“Obviously, you can use this as a stepping stone, especially for our organization to get back on the right path, our players to experience this early in their careers,” Jae Crowder said of the Suns’ youngsters. “It’s great for them, obviously, and I’m happy for them. That motivation will continue to be with them as they train, just to chase this moment again. If you channel it the right way, it can be beneficial.”

Stacking up a Chris Paul extension with a new deal for Cam Payne means the Suns would most likely hit the luxury tax threshold for the first time since 2010, which is only fitting, because that’s the last time they had a team worth paying up for. From there, it’d be a matter of rounding out the rest of the roster.

Torrey Craig, Frank Kaminsky, E’Twaun Moore, Langston Galloway and Abdel Nader are all unrestricted free agents. Craig in particular feels like a guy who’s played his way out of the Suns’ price range unless he were really intent on staying in town. Kaminsky loves Phoenix and could see an increased role with Dario Saric out for the season after tearing his ACL, but nothing is guaranteed since Jones will want to add some size and length on the interior behind Ayton.

Moore, Galloway and Nader could return if they really fell in love with the Suns’ culture, but it’s a tough sell — did they agree to minimum deals with Phoenix last year because they thought they’d see more minutes, or did they see this team’s full potential from the start and want to invest in a winning roster, even if it meant inconsistent playing time? A tepid market would increase the Suns’ chances of opting for continuity and re-signing those guys to cheap deals, but they may prefer a change of scenery or an expanded role elsewhere after coming just shy of a title in Phoenix.

In any case, the Suns will be scouring the market for depth on the interior, especially after Saric’s injury revealed how ill-prepared they were for the non-Ayton minutes against Giannis (and throughout the playoffs, for that matter). Unless Jalen Smith takes massive strides over the summer, finding a capable backup big man on the open market or in the NBA Draft (pick No. 29) will be a huge priority for Jones. The Suns will have their $9.5 million mid-level and $3.7 million bi-annual exceptions to work with, as well as a $4.3 million disabled player exception to use if the league grants them one for the injured Saric.

The Suns have a championship-caliber core, even if a significant piece of the puzzle is getting older. If you ask Devin Booker, this is the new standard he expects from this group, and Phoenix should do everything in its power to preserve that new expectation.

“Championship basketball and nothing less than that,” he said. ” I haven’t felt a hurt like this in my life. So that’s what I say when I know we have a base and a foundation: just championship basketball at all times.”