The Phoenix Suns enter the season with a profile that’s hard to pin down and easy to watch. They mostly kept the roster intact, leaned into continuity and development, and still made a notable change to 20% of the starting lineup by bringing in Miles Bridges while moving on from Royce O’Neale and Grayson Allen.
That kind of setup can point in a lot of directions, and Phoenix might have one of the widest ranges of outcomes in the league. In one version of the year, they win 50 games.
In another, they’re closer to 30. That gap says less about hype and more about how the roster is built.
The Suns don’t have the kind of top-end force who can carry a team to 50 wins on his own. That’s the whole Devin Booker conversation in a nutshell. Booker is a star, but the roster around him has to function at a very specific level for the ceiling to show up.
Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Luka Doncic are the type of players who can lift an ordinary group into that territory just by being there. The source material even points to the Lakers as a team that could follow a similar path this season. Booker belongs in the star category, but Phoenix needs the right ecosystem around him for everything to click.
That’s why health looms so large here. This is a team built on connectivity, and if one piece goes down, the ripple effect could be huge. One weak link can throw off the whole structure.
There’s plenty to like about the depth, but the Suns also bring some real questions into the year. They’re young in several key spots, and there’s still a big unknown around whether they can handle close games. That was an issue late last season, when they struggled to finish teams off once the margin tightened.
Maybe that’s part of why the 38.5 win total hasn’t budged much. Phoenix is so dependent on health, chemistry, and every part of the roster pulling in the same direction that those same traits could either push the team forward or drag it down.
That’s what makes this group so tricky to forecast and so compelling to follow. The Suns aren’t built around one transcendent answer.
They’re built around whether Booker, Bridges, Green, Brooks, and the rest of the rotation can raise each other’s level. If that happens, 38.5 starts to look low.
If it doesn’t, the floor is a lot closer than the ceiling.
In Other News...
Mat Ishbias Suns Future Looks Clearer After Ownership Questions
Recent chatter around Mat Ishbias long-term place in Phoenix has quieted down for now, even after his company reported a sizable second-quarter loss. The Suns owner has continued to operate like someone invested in making the franchise more competitive and more appealing to fans, from keeping key pieces in place to bringing in new talent as the organization tries to build on its current direction.
For a team that has spent plenty of time under a microscope, the stability matters. There had been questions about whether the financial hit elsewhere could create pressure around the Suns, but the latest reporting points the other way, with Ishbia not facing a real threat to give up control at this stage. For Phoenix, the more immediate takeaway is that the ownership picture looks steady enough to keep the focus where it has been - on basketball, roster building and the push to make the arena and the experience around it feel like a destination again. [Read more 🡒]
Oso Ighodaro Faces A Defining Suns Season For His Role
Oso Ighodaro enters this Suns season in a spot that says as much about opportunity as it does about depth. He is still trying to carve out a larger role, and the path is there if he can show he can handle more than one job, including time at forward. For a team constantly balancing fit and flexibility, that kind of versatility matters, especially when the frontcourt is still taking shape around him.
The evaluation is bigger than one players stat line. Phoenix is looking at Ighodaro as someone who could grow into a more meaningful piece if he keeps developing, and his long-term place with the club may come down to how much progress he makes now. The comparison to Ryan Dunn is part of that bigger picture too, since the Suns are sorting through which young pieces look like keepers and which ones may leave the roster looking different before long. [Read more 🡒]
Why The Suns Could Be Set Up For A Real Jump
Phoenix finished the 2025-26 season at 45-37 under Jordan Ott, and the roster looks built to take another step if the pieces mesh the way the front office expects. The Suns kept most of their core intact and added Miles Bridges, Luke Kennard and Koa Peat, giving the group more depth and a different look around its established scorers.
The bigger question is how smoothly those additions settle into the rotation and whether the new mix can cover what changed elsewhere on the roster. There are reasonable pathways for the Suns to move up in the Western Conference picture next season, but the margin will depend on how well the lineup balance comes together when the games start to count. [Read more 🡒]