The Phoenix Suns moved quickly to patch a frontcourt hole after Mark Williams’ shoulder injury left the team thin up front, signing center Duop Reath, according to ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania.
Reath’s path to this point has been anything but straightforward. The 30-year-old started in community college, then finished his NCAA career at LSU before taking his game overseas in China, Serbia and Lebanon. He eventually made his NBA debut with the Portland Trailblazers in the 2023-2024 season.
This won’t be his first brush with the Suns, either. Reath spent the 2022 summer league with Phoenix, and now he gets a real shot to stick on the regular season roster.
With Williams expected to miss a majority of the saeason, Reath is projected to sit behind 2025 lottery pick Khaman Maluach and third-year big man Oso Ighodaro in the center rotation.
Reath’s rookie season with Portland showed what he can bring. He averaged 9 points, 4 rebounds and shot 36% from three.
Since then, though, his role has shrunk. Portland added Donavan Clingan and Yang Hansen in the 2024 and 2025 drafts, pushing Reath down the depth chart.
His minutes dropped over the next two seasons, and he missed the final half of the 2025-2026 campaign after suffering a stress fracture in his right foot in the middle of January.
Even with that slide, Reath’s skill set gives him a path onto the roster. He’s a willing three-point shooter, and that matters for a Suns team dealing with frontcourt injuries. Ighodaro and Maluach have seldom shown that kind of outside touch early in their careers, so Reath could carve out minutes behind the reserves when foul trouble or injuries force Phoenix to shuffle the bigs.
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