The Washington Wizards host the Phoenix Suns Thursday night at Capital One Arena. I’ve got you covered with all the storylines, stats, and notes you should know before tipoff.
This Phoenix team is one of the NBA’s marquee trainwrecks and is careening toward a roster blowup at breakneck speed. When owner Mat Ishbia blew up a recent Finals roster to pair Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal with Devin Booker, surely he envisioned more than one playoff series win in the first two years, with the playoffs from here on out looking like a long shot at best.
Perhaps all this can be chalked up to the deal Durant signed with the devil when he joined the Golden State Warriors in 2016. A Durant team has not escaped the second round of the playoffs since 2019, when his Warriors lost to the Toronto Raptors in the NBA Finals.
Fun fact: the Suns only have two players on their entire roster that they drafted. Booker is the lone selection made by the Suns, while rookie Ryan Dunn was traded to Phoenix from the Denver Nuggets on draft night this past summer.
Theoretically, you could count Jalen Bridges, an undrafted rookie who the Suns signed to a two-way contract this past summer, although his career totals thus far are three rebounds and one lonesome point he acquired by splitting a pair of free throws.
By virtue of having expended resources to acquire the vast majority of their roster, the Suns’ depth is paper-thin. Obviously Booker and Kevin Durant are brilliant, and the aforementioned Dunn has been a solid, if not game-changing, addition.
The rest of the roster can best be categorized as “underwhelming” (Bradley Beal), “okay” (Grayson Allen, Royce O’Neale, Tyus Jones), “total non-factors” (Josh Okogie, Monte Morris, Mason Plumlee), or “outright disaster” (Jusuf Nurkic).
Bradley Beal returns to DC in the midst of a tough season
As you know, Beal, who now plays for the Suns, used to play for the Wizards. And again, as you probably know, he’s been struggling. Let’s take a look at the numbers.
Beal’s stats are down across the board (aside from steals and blocks, which are marginally higher). He’s down to 17.7 points per game, his lowest scoring output since the 2015-16 season. Year-over-year, he’s down from 4.4 rebounds per game to 3.6, and he’s dishing a meager 3.3 assists, his lowest average in eight years.
Beal has yet to score 30 points in a game this season, a jarring drop in production considering he averaged 31 points per game just four years ago. In his entire Phoenix Suns career, Beal has notched just a single 40-point game; that was in his last outing against the Wizards, in which he poured 43 points on his former team in a Phoenix blowout win.
The Beal situation in Phoenix is, frankly, a mess. Bemoaning Beal’s exorbitant contract and pointing and laughing at his bewildering no-trade clause should both be cliche at this point.
However, the fact that, less than halfway through the contract’s duration, a second team already finds itself completely suffocated in terms of both finances and roster construction is an indictment on both the since-fired Wizards front office and the current Suns front office that will soon have to bear witness to a rebuild uglier than any we’ve ever seen.
The Suns want Jimmy Butler. Contractually, however, Beal virtually has to be included in any deal, and it’s hard to imagine any sweeteners that would prompt the Miami Heat to damn themselves deeper into no-man’s land. Such would be the case if the Suns even had any assets to deal in the first place — their stock of assets has already been drained into oblivion in constructing this roster.
Alright man, so what about the game?
Right. Sorry. I got a little too caught up in the fact that, five years from now, whatever Suns team ends up taking the court is going to make the mid-2010s Los Angeles Lakers look like the ‘96 Bulls.
It’s hard to imagine the Suns losing this game, given the raw offensive firepower Durant and Booker possess. The two will get to feast on the Wizards’ league-worst defense anchored by Jonas Valanciunas and 19-year-old Alex Sarr.
I’d like to see what Bilal Coulibaly can do guarding Booker. Considering the Wizards really don’t have much beyond Durant and Booker to worry about defensively, I would strongly advise coach Brian Keefe to give Coulibaly the reps guarding Booker, who is one of the craftiest scorers in the game.
The Wizards’ path to victory virtually requires a Poole Party. Jordan Poole is at his best when he’s launching from downtown and making them, so I would consider a “Poole Party” a game in which Poole launches seven or more threes and makes at least half of them. By that definition there have been seven Poole Parties so far this season, including an insane 8-for-13 performance.
The rebounding battle between these two teams is basically dead even. Both teams average virtually the same number of defensive rebounds per game (33.2 for the Wizards and 33.1 for the Suns), but the Suns are near the bottom of the league in offensive rebounding while the Wizards are closer to the middle of the pack (though this is likely padded by the Wizards’ uncanny ability to miss shots).
For better or for worse, the Suns will likely be without Nurkic versus the Wizards. Nurkic is the only Sun averaging over 6.5 rebounds per game, so in his absence the Suns are likely to get torched on the glass. Expect a big rebounding game from Sarr.
Conclusions
The Suns and the Wizards are the perfect examples of the two types of bad teams. The Suns are a failed experiment that’s due to set the franchise back a decade; two future Hall of Famers in Booker and Durant are now doomed to either wilt away on a .500 Phoenix team or experience success outside of the Valley.
The Wizards, meanwhile, are an eyesore in the best possible way. They’re absolutely putrid, but there’s actually a lot to like both on the roster and in the way the team plays. This roster just predictably doesn’t translate to wins — as it shouldn’t.
Suns at Wizards tips off at 7 p.m. on Thursday night.
All stats in this article are accurate as of noon on Jan. 14.