The Phoenix Suns are facing reality.
According to veteran NBA reporter Chris Haynes, Phoenix is benching starters Bradley Beal and Jusuf Nurkić after losing seven of their past eight games, a stretch that has lowered their record to 15-18. Rookie wing Ryan Dunn and veteran big man Mason Plumlee will replace the pair in the starting lineup.
The move is an admission that the Suns’ would-be superteam featuring Kevin Durant and Devin Booker is nowhere close to materializing, and Beal and Nurkić were the easy levers to pull.
Both players’ stats are well down from their marks last year, but what’s most telling is that while the Suns have been outscored by 1.9 points per 100 possessions so far this season, they’ve been outscored by 8.7 points when Beal is on the floor and by 4.7 points with Nurkić. Both players have been valuable for other teams in the past, but have looked like shells of themselves recently.
The problem for the Suns is those two players plus Durant and Booker represent 77.5% of their team payroll this season — and 120% of their cap space. The rest of their team represents what they can afford on a shoestring budget, meaning any significant change for the better will have to come from a) the players they already have or b) a trade.
There has been no shortage of trade speculation involving the Suns, especially around Beal. Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler, currently suspended seven games for all but screaming he wants a trade, has been a popular idea, but the Suns would still need to get Beal to waive his no-trade clause and find another team to make the finances work, because the Heat reportedly don’t want anything to do with Beal’s supermax contract.
The Suns’ chest of draft picks is relatively bare after the trades for Durant and Beal, and further enhancing the roster would mean emptying it further. It’s an unenviable situation for a team when a trio of expensive superstars just doesn’t work, and Phoenix is trying to work through it now.
