On the February fourth edition of TNT’s Inside The NBA, former Phoenix Sun legend Charles Barkley didn’t hold back when discussing the team that he won the MVP with in 1993.
“These guys, man, I feel so bad,” Barkley said on the show, via a transcript from Vince Marotta of Arizona Sports. “Jeff Hornacek, they threw him under the bus. Ran over him. Hang in there, Jeff, you’ll get another chance with a real NBA team.”
“Look at them, empty seats, man.” Barkley continued. “The best fans in the world have to watch this trash.”
Barkley wasn’t done there though, jokingly citing the stale popcorn, the ugly cheerleaders and the flat beer in the Suns arena as a humorous way to poke more fun at the Phoenix organisation.
However, these not to be taken serious comments from Barkley actually paint a sad reality that the Suns are facing at the moment.
The team is flat on energy and excitement.
The entire organisation is stale on, well, just about everything.
The Suns are simply ugly.
It is a tough task unpacking this Phoenix outfit as more problems are found the deeper you look into what is a burning sun – and not in a good way.
Where to start? Well, let’s start on the actual basketball court, where Phoenix have established themselves as the worst team in the NBA, currently riding a 12-game losing streak, the second worst mark in franchise history (14).
The Suns don’t score a lot of points, averaging 100.4 points per game, which places them 21st in the league. They dish out just 20.8 assists a night, which is 24th in the association and they shoot the ball at just a 43.8 per cent clip, the 26th best mark in the NBA.
It must be noted that Phoenix has been dealt with a slew of injuries to their top scoring threats this season. Eric Bledsoe and Brandon Knight, who were averaging 20.4 and 19.7 points per game respectively before their injuries, are lost for the season.
Even youngster T.J. Warren, who is putting up 11.0 points a night, has been bitten by the injury bug and won’t return this season.
Take the best offensive players out of any team and they will struggle winning ballgames. That is no secret and the Suns are no exception to this rule. Although, when you notice that Phoenix was losing games even when Bledsoe and Knight were in uniform, it amplifies the Suns problems.
For so many seasons, the Suns have been known around the league as an offensive machine. Dating back to the ‘seven second or less’ offence incorporated by Mike D’Antoni in the Steve Nash/Amar’e Stoudemire days, Phoenix has always embodied the run and gun identity of the Western Conference.
In fact, the Suns have finished in the top 10 in terms of points per game in 10 of the past 11 seasons (not including 2015-16).
One of the most puzzling conundrums facing NBA teams in this era is trying to establish an identity. Look around the league and very few have been successful. The Golden State Warriors are known for their long-range shooting antics. The San Antonio Spurs have been the benchmark for ball movement since the late 1990s.
Then what? The closest challengers to the Spurs and Warriors would be the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder and neither of those units have an established identity that you can immediately point to.
So where does that leave teams like the Suns?
Change can be difficult, painful and unwanted. Seriously, which child wants to endeavour into high school after a stress-free tenure in primary school?
Phoenix is living proof of the arduous path change takes. No longer can the Suns live off outscoring teams and scoring at astronomical rates.
The Suns need to start their metamorphosis into a new era and a good place to start would be cleaning up the defence.
Phoenix is giving up 107.4 points per game this season, the second worst mark in the league. Teams are shooting 47.3 per cent from the field against the Suns, which pits Phoenix last in the NBA in that department.
The Suns have never been known as a defensive juggernaut but the offence has been able to cover that up in recent years. Not this one though, as the defensive issues are simply magnified with the offensive being ineffective.
So, the offence is bad and the defence is worse but why?
Well, the obvious answer would be because the team stinks but let’s turn to General Manager Ryan McDonough and break down his moves with the squad since being hired in May of 2013.
McDonough has done an excellent job at acquiring draft picks in the coming years, as the Suns own three first round picks (their own, Cleveland’s, which is top ten protected and Washington’s, which is top nine protected) in the upcoming draft. Add in Phoenix’s second-rounder, and the Suns currently hold four of the first 33 picks in the 2016 draft.
For a rebuilding team that has been stuck in mediocrity for almost half the decade, this is a brilliant move by McDonough to allow Phoenix to continue adding young talent, while maintaining flexibility, as those picks could also be used to swing a deal to get a superstar to the Suns.
There is a slight problem though – McDonough has had numerous of draft picks to work with ever since he came to Phoenix and despite being well respected around the league for having a eye to find diamond-in-the-rough talents, he has yet to find a player that has the ability to turn the franchise around.
Archie Goodwin, Alex Len, Warren and Devin Booker can all be considered as good, not great, picks under McDonough. Those guys all have very solid games and will be contributors in the coming years but none of them are at the superstar status that the Suns crave.
The rest of McDonough’s picks – Nemanja Nedovic, Alex Oriakhi, Tyler Ennis, Bodgan Bogdanovic, Alec Brown and Andrew Harrison – are yet to make an impact in the league and probably won’t.
It is tough to fairly grade McDonough’s draft history – the highest draft pick he’s had to play with has been number 13 (Booker). Very rarely do teams draft franchise changing players with mid first round picks, so a better indication of McDonough’s true ability at drafting talent will be evident after this year’s draft, where the Suns are almost assured to have a top-five pick.
McDonough has made some questionable decisions in the process of attaining all of those draft picks though.
Goran Dragic and Isaiah Thomas were both traded by McDonough. For Dragic, Phoenix was able to get Danny Granger, John Salmons, Miami’s 2017 first round pick and the Heat’s 2021 first round pick. Ultimately, this move was a salary dump though, as the Suns didn’t want to pay Dragic the max in the off-season. The Suns also acquired Knight on the same day of the Dragic deal in a separate trade but the question still lingers whether McDonough jumped the gun on this deal, as many believe the Suns could have received some more talent for Dragic.
Phoenix was able to get Marcus Thornton and the Cavaliers 2016 first round pick for Thomas, which, in the simplest of terms, isn’t a good deal for Phoenix. Thomas has bloomed into an All-Star with the Boston Celtics, while the Cavs pick will be a very late first rounder. Thornton has bounced around the league and is now with the Houston Rockets. Would Thomas have become an All-Star playing behind Bledsoe and Knight in Phoenix? Probably not but that doesn’t mean the Suns received virtually nothing for him and that is a fail mark on McDonough’s tenure with the team.
One of the best moves McDonough has made in Phoenix was trading disgruntled forward Markieff Morris to Washington for their first rounder in 2016, Kris Humphries and DeJuan Blair (who was later placed on waivers). Morris has been a locker-room cancer ever since the Suns traded his brother Marcus in the off-season.
However, a case can be made that McDonough held onto Markieff for way too long, which may have created greater long-term problems. Morris has had fights with teammates on the bench, thrown towels at his coaches and publicly called out the fans and organisation this season. He made his demands clear before the season started that he wanted out of Phoenix but despite this, McDonough still held onto him for 50 games. Sure, the Suns managed to get a first round pick for him but the question must be asked, was more harm created by McDonough by holding onto Markieff for this long?
The aforementioned Marcus trade is another stain on McDonough’s resume. Sure, the Morris twins can’t expect to play together for their entire careers. But when Markeiff signs for less money and receives a promise from McDonough that he won’t trade his twin brother, one can understand his frustration. McDonough didn’t notify Markieff or Marcus before the deal took place and it is a General Manager’s job to maintain a positive relationship with the players. McDonough has failed in this aspect.
McDonough has also failed in his duty of cultivating a working relationship with GM and coach. Former Suns coach Jeff Hornacek was unable to gauge any indication of his future with the team, until he was unceremoniously fired mid-season. McDonough was unsuccessful in his job to keep the coach and subsequently the locker-room happy.
Add in McDonough’s signing of 33-year old Tyson Chandler in an attempt to attract LaMarcus Aldridge to Phoenix and his stubbornness to continue to play and build around a two point guard system with no evidence of it’s success, and it becomes painfully clear that he has played a big part in the downfall of the Suns.
Yes, every sports team goes through stages where they rebuild. That is the nature of the beast but that doesn’t mean McDonough can get away with some of his moves as Suns GM over the past few years.
Phoenix owner Robert Sarver also deserves the blame as well and Brian Windhorst of ESPN explained how the league isn’t too fond of him.
“To me, the biggest hurdle anyone has to overcome – whether it’s hiring a coach or signing free agents – is getting past when somebody does their due diligence on what’s happened in Phoenix,” he said. “No matter what you want to say – and (Sarver) could come on and debate me right now and probably put up a fight and probably score some points since he’d be preaching to his fans, they would probably side with him.
“But I’m telling you, when people talk about the Phoenix Suns in the league, people who have to make decisions on whether they want to sign in Phoenix or whether they want to coach Phoenix, the first thing they talk about is the owner. There is damage there that needs to be rectified and it’s not going to be done in one summer.”
The Suns are stuck in the middle of a dumpster fire and it is going to take a big extinguisher to remove it. A flurry of injuries, bad moves and horrible play on the court has run this franchise into the ground.
As Barkley closes on though, there is one positive for Suns fans at the moment.
“There is plenty of parking…you could buy one of those seats at the top and move right down to centre court.”
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