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The Suns surprised just about everyone (including me) by winning 45 games in 2025-26 despite losing their second-highest-paid player (Jalen Green) for most of the season. There are hopes, and even expectations, that the Suns will win even more with a year of continuity, fewer injuries, the addition of Miles Bridges, and development by young players Ryan Dunn, Khaman Maluach, Rasheer Fleming, and Koa Peat. Conversely, this optimism should be tempered with 5 reasons why the Suns could easily regress this upcoming season.
Poor roster balance
The Suns enter the season with Devin Booker, Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, Miles Bridges, and Mark Williams as the nominal starters. The problem is that two of them are shooting guards, two are small forwards, and none is a point guard or power forward.
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I have written about this before, but the Suns were at their best last year when they played Collin Gillespie next to Booker, and the Suns’ best season with Booker was when he was paired with Chris Paul. Conversely, the Suns were a much worse team when Jalen Green came back. They were also a much better team when they played a true power forward (Isaiah Livers or Rasheer Fleming) at that spot, even if neither of those players was exactly setting the world on fire with their box score statistics.
The Suns are going to be forced to choose between playing guys out of position and being a worse team for it or putting their highest paid players on the bench in order to avoid handing favorable mismatches to opponents. We saw last year that they’d rather be a worse team than let their star money ride the pine and sulk. I don’t expect this year to be different unless they reach the All-Star break and it has become clear the roster clearly isn’t working (and I think this is a strong possibility).
Three-point shooting percentages
The starting lineup of the Suns is terrible from three-point range. Keep in mind, the league average is 36%, and that Mark Williams has attempted a grand total of five three-pointers in his NBA career.
Player
2025-26 3PT%
Booker
33.0%
Green
31.3%
Brooks
34.4%
Bridges
33.3%
The results are likely to be disastrous….
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/5-reasons-suns-could-fall-120000151.html
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Publish date : 2026-08-20 12:00:00
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