The Phoenix Suns face reality.
According to veteran NBA reporter Chris Haynes, Phoenix is benching starters Bradley Beal and Jusuf Nurkić after losing seven of their last eight games, a stretch that 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 roster will be revealed for the first time on Monday against the Philadelphia 76ers.
The move is an admission that the Suns’ potential superteam of Kevin Durant and Devin Booker is far from materializing, and Beal and Nurkić were the easy levers to pull.
Both players’ stats are well below last year’s, but what’s more 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 1.9 points per 100 possessions so far this season. by 8.7 points when Beal is on the court. and 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 that those two players plus Durant and Booker represent 77.5% of their team’s 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 changes 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, particularly 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 have to convince Beal to waive his no-trade clause and find a another team to make the finances work. , because the Heat apparently want nothing to do with Beal’s supermax contract.
The Suns’ draft vault is relatively empty after the trades for Durant and Beal, and improving the roster further would mean emptying it further. It’s an unenviable situation for a team when a trio of expensive superstars just isn’t working, and Phoenix is trying to get out of it now.
