Suns Face Uncertain Team-Building Future After Falling To 0-3 Against Minnesota

After suffering a third straight blowout loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday, this one a 126-109 massacre at home in the Footprint Center, the star-studded Phoenix Suns face a seemingly insurmountable hole in their current first-round series. Though on paper, the third-seeded Timberwolves would have been the technical favorite to beat the sixth-seeded Suns, it was still hard for many to conceive of Phoenix’s impressive (and pricey) “Big Three” of All-Stars Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal falling on their faces in the first round like this.

No team in league history has ever rallied back from a 0-3 playoff series deficit. And these losses haven’t been particularly close. Minnesota has won by an average of 18 points a night.

Phoenix’s future even beyond this season isn’t nearly as sunny as one might hope. The Suns have limited flexibility to add new pieces and shore up their depth, and the ankle injury absence of sharpshooting swingman Grayson Allen is clearly not the only issue for this club (he only missed Game 3, there’s no excusing Games 1 or 2).

The team owes $150 million to just its Big Three next year, per Bobby Marks of ESPN. That money alone eclipses what 14 other teams have committed in player salaries to their entire rosters. Because of luxury tax issues, this means the club will really only be able to add new players on veteran’s minimum deals, beyond their own draft picks.

Beyond the Big Three, three other Suns players are currently set to be on non-minimum deals next year: center Jusuf Nurkic (owed $18.1 million in 2024-25), Allen ($15.6 million), and small forward Nassir Little ($6.8 million). Little may be expendable this summer, but the club really needs Nurkic and Allen to be at their best.

Last summer, team president James Jones supplemented his star players by making some impressive veteran minimum signings. He added talents like Eric Gordon, Josh Okogie, and Drew Eubanks on below-market agreements.

The Phoenix home faithful were less than enthused about this latest showing, showering the Suns in boos as the contest neared its end. Gerald Bourguet of PHNX Sports reports that head coach Frank Vogel understood the ire.

“That’s sports,” Vogel said. “You get your butt kicked at home, the fans are gonna boo. I don’t blame them.”

Bourget adds that Beal, in his first year away from the Washington Wizards since being drafted in 2012, is adamant that the Suns won’t lose on Sunday, in a do-or-die Game 4. If they fall, it’s curtains for their 2023-24 season.

“I’ve never been swept a day in my life, so I’ll be damned if that happens,” Beal said. He’s only appeared in the playoffs at all in half of his 12 seasons, in fairness.

One intriguing option for building out depth could be offloading a member of the Suns’ “Big Three.”

The $50.2 million owed the injury-prone Beal next year, though he’s effective when healthy, could make him prohibitive to trade. Even at 35, Durant remains one of the most unstoppable scorers in the league, although he’s been something of a malcontent near the end of most of his previous NBA tenures. Booker, the only member of this triumvirate who’s still on the right side of 30, is probably the most appetizing asset, but of course, he’s also the core of Phoenix’s game plan moving forward, and the most essential component of its championship push.

Timberwolves All-Star shooting guard Anthony Edwards, meanwhile, appears to be on the verge of winning his first playoff series, which would be Minnesota’s first time advancing since Kevin Garnett powered the club to the Western Conference Finals in 2004. In Game 3, Edwards notched 36 points on 12-of-23 shooting from the floor (1-of-5 from long range) and 11-of-11 shooting from the foul line, nine rebounds, five assists and two steals.

For the series, Edwards is logging averages of 28 points on a .492/.368/.905 slash line, 7.7 rebounds, 6.3 assists, and 2.3 steals per game, and seems to have lapped Booker (who’s averaging 20.3 points and six assists while losing every game) as the probable choice to be named Team USA’s starting two-guard during its Paris Olympics run this summer.

As Chris Hine of The Star Tribune notes, Edwards is still not looking too far down the road, however. Like his Suns counterparts, he’s only looking at things through the lens of a one-game-at-a-time ethos, too.

“We don’t think we broke their spirit until we win Game 4,” Edwards revealed. “We gotta win Game 4 and then we can say we broke their spirit. You never know man, a lot of crazy things happen.”

“I just want to kill everything in front of me,” Edwards added, per Tim Bontemps of ESPN. “That’s the main thing, pretty much. That’s all there is to it.”

The club’s defense-first approach to the game is an intriguing inversion of Phoenix’s. Led by Edwards and small forward Jaden McDaniels on the perimeter, plus likely Defensive Player of the Year center Rudy Gobert inside, Minnesota is built to muck up the works on offense, deterring opposing teams from their preferred modes of scoring. To wit, the Timberwolves dissuaded the Suns from shooting many threes in Game 3. By the time Phoenix had come to and had started connecting from deep, Minnesota’s lead was essentially insurmountable.

Even if Minnesota isn’t looking ahead beyond Game 4 of the series, we are. The team would most likely face the reigning champion Denver Nuggets, who themselves are up 3-0 against the Los Angeles Lakers in their own first-round series. The Timberwolves at least have the size and speed to bother Denver in the postseason, but the club’s ability to run its offense through unstoppable center Nikola Jokic could prove uniquely challenging for Minnesota.