Three early concerns for the Suns to improve on

It is not time to significantly shift your preseason perception of the Phoenix Suns based on how they have played to begin this season. At the end of the day, three games are just three games.

This initial offering, though, has not been pretty in the slightest. If you had concerns about the Suns building off their 45-win campaign last year, those worries probably remain. Perhaps more have built up.

There is a whole lot of time left for the Suns to figure things out. We’re not anywhere close to a point of declaration on Phoenix’s inability to do that.

But everyone would agree there is a whole lot to figure out.

Here are the most pressing matters, with another disclaimer on top of the disclaimer that the numbers provided come via an incredibly small sample size and could be canceled out by one equally as good week of basketball.

Defense

Cleaning The Glass’ database that eliminates garbage time, which we will use throughout this piece, has the NBA average for offensive/defensive rating down at 112.4. There are only three teams that have reached 120 or worse on defense. The other two are Chicago (123.1) and Sacramento (123.1).

Then there is the Suns in last by a wide margin, rocking a 134.

“That’s not great. That’s terrible,” Dillon Brooks said of ranking last in defensive efficiency.

That will drop dramatically out of outlier territory, and probably fairly quickly, the further away the Suns get from the 41-point season-opening loss. Oso Ighodaro’s return from injury will help out too.

But this is more to say that the primary reason why Phoenix was a good team last year, and at times special, was because of its defense. It finished ninth in that same database last season, and at the end of January, the Suns were sixth. On the inverse, to begin this year, the primary reason they are struggling so much right now is because of their defense.

Head coach Jordan Ott said Wednesday’s practice was defense-heavy, looking at all three games as efforts not meeting their standard.

“If you didn’t walk away with a defensive message from today, I would say you weren’t paying attention,” Ott said, noting it was less about chemistry and more about proper communication.

The immediate corrections have to come off the ball.

Dillon Brooks and Miles Bridges are often in the corner, where they have a proclivity for falling asleep. Whether that’s during a backdoor cut, reacting late to an action or failing to rebound, it has been killing the Suns.

Devin Booker and Jalen Green aren’t perfect in this regard, either. Booker and Brooks started making more of these errors in that post-January conclusion to last year. Carryover of that, plus Bridges’ contributions, is a no-go and must improve.

We see signs of the Suns’ defense from last year. This is great effort from Collin Gillespie to begin, and it is extended to all four of his other teammates. And then Bridges and Khaman Maluach either fail to communicate or Bridges just snoozed, allowing an open layup.

A good example here of how damaging off-ball mistakes can be. Neutralizes a good possession and all the hard work that goes into it with an open layup. Also going to be asking way too much out of Maluach’s awareness if he has to watch for these + everything else. https://t.co/n7ouJ6ryDV

— Kellan Olson (@KellanOlson) October 25, 2026

Brooks is ready to be even more vocal, stating the importance of avoiding a slow start to the season.

“I’m gonna get more into people’s [expletive] and make them understand that good starts is what keeps you alive in the meat of the season. … That intensity, that energy needs to be every day because this season is long,” Brooks said.

Some good news! Shooting luck is a factor. Opponents are shooting 44.2% from 3 on Phoenix, nearly 5% higher than any other team. That will go down, no matter how open the shooters are.

Some more good news! Teams are shooting 59% at the rim against the Suns, the best number in the league. While it has overall been a rough go for Maluach in his first look at extended minutes, some of that can be credited to him when he has been in the right position.

Some bad news! The Suns are right around league average in opposing turnover rate this year. While the 16% mark of this year is right around last year’s 16.5%, the league average is up a good amount, so the 2026-27 mark ranks 15th instead of third like last year.

“We know we gotta do better than that,” Ott said of the turnover rate this year.

There is a chunk of this that can be blamed on the offensive struggle,s too. A bad offense makes a defense worse. A bad defense makes an offense worse. That cycle runs naturally. Fix some stuff on offense, and that’ll help out the defense. Brooks pointed this out himself.

The bad start defensively is the biggest concern, and also the area where we need a handful of games before taking out the concrete to cement the level of concern. The Suns last season established enough pedigree for us to expect to see a defensive turnaround.

If it does keep up, though, a starting lineup change will likely prioritize helping the defense over other issues like shooting. The Suns pride themselves on their identity, and it always starts on defense. Jordan Goodwin, I am looking at you as the primary candidate.

Rebounding

In numbers that are greatly inflated by the first two contests of the year, the Suns are again in their own tier when it comes to giving up offensive rebounds. A 43.4% figure is nearly 10% higher than anyone else, another huge gap.

“We’re not where we need to be for sure on the defensive glass,” Ott said, noting a lot of the second-chance opportunities for opponents have felt like “daggers.”

The engagement and focus problems alluded to previously are to blame, which is discouraging to see because of how clearly Maluach needs his teammates to help him. The 20-year-old is still developing his feel for where to be when the shot goes up andwho to put his body on. He has had problems securing the ball. He needs a few guys to crash in with him or at least box out their man.

NBA.com offers box-out stats, and per those, the Suns are last in boxout percentage on defensive rebounds. That’s 62.5%, while half the league sits at 80% or better. Last year, the Suns were sixth at 80.9%.

Phoenix ranking 18th in its own offensive rebounding percentage is a solid number that also needs to get better. The Suns’ own defensive rebounding shouldn’t be as bad as we just spoke on, but all year last year they made up for it as much as they could by getting it back on the other end. They were sixth last season in offensive rebounding.

Remember the margins they wonderfully maximized? Second-chance points do a decent job of defining that with point totals for these offensive rebounds, and the Suns are 21st with the amount they get and 30th with the amount they give up. That is untenable.

Again, blame roster construction all you want. That ain’t it. We learned last year the players can offset size limitations with hard work. We’ve seen what it looks like.

The rebounding numbers feel the most finicky and correctable. A bad rebounding night can really come down to bad bounces sometimes. Three games isn’t enough. And in Monday’s loss, the Suns won second-chance points 22-17 and offensive rebounds 14-12, a sign of progress. Let’s see if more follows.

Shot distribution offensively

The balance in how many shots the Suns’ starting scoring quartet gets has actually been great. While Booker should have a lead bigger than six shot attempts through three games, he’s at 45 while it’s Bridges with 39, followed by 37 for Brooks and Green’s 35. No one has lagged behind yet. Good stuff.

Those numbers, though, misrepresent the rhythm those guys are unable to find.

Brooks spoke on the lack of that chemistry on offense so far and if he’s surprised by it.

“Maybe a little bit,” he said. “We play against people [in the preseason] but when the lights are on, it’s a little different. Figuring out ways to get everybody involved and kind of play freely but within the scheme of the offense and trusting each other that we’re going to make plays.”

Look no further than Booker’s three points on Monday, which were the ultimate indicator of that. Even if you think Booker has declined as a player, there’s no world in which he should have three points in a full NBA game. It should be viewed as a sign of something going wrong.

The factors are fairly simple. Booker is not a good pull-up 3-point shooter, which restricts the amount of pressure he can put on a defense. Once he gets inside the 3-point line, he can bring a whole lot, but then he’s got to navigate a ton of bodies and arms thanks to him not sharing the floor with even an average 3-point shooter.

Booker has got a new cadence to discover with where to get his shots.

What gets interesting is the level of acceptance that goes into the decision-making of Brooks and Green.

Last year, Brooks in particular took a ton of bad shots and rarely set up his teammates. Dare I say it was even welcomed, though, because he was productive with his scoring and mildly efficient, while providing boosts elsewhere. If that’s what came with it, Brooks’ overall impact more than made up for it.

But with less volume, more shots that need to go around elsewhere and some of the aforementioned troubles defensively, it gets tougher to accept. He was a part of some empty possessions on Monday, and when he does it shooting 4-of-14, it hurts.

One Thing, Every Game

Gm 3 @ OKC

“Move The Ball” https://t.co/q4woy0zGxY

— David (@theIVpointplay) October 27, 2026

Brooks is going to have a tough time replicating a 20-point-per-game season with this many mouths to feed. His choices on when to seek out his shot need to better reflect that. Seeing him as a connector to manage five assists with zero turnovers was good. His assist rate was historically low last year.

Green has been the No. 2 option thus far in terms of how often he’s getting the ball to attack the defense, a wise choice considering he’s the second-best playmaker of the bunch and best rim attacker. He was very good with this on Monday, even with some possessions that went too quickly without the ball moving much.

It’s almost necessary for Green to use those drives so defenses have some sense of getting on their back feet against Phoenix. If Green can finally improve his decision-making with the reads in those moments, that and Booker’s balance are the two deciding factors that would push this offense into a manageable space despite the lineup’s weaknesses.

Bridges is the one sacrificing the most currently. While the shot leaderboard doesn’t reflect that, his shot diet does.

He’s taken more 3s (20) than 2s (19) so far. The open catch-and-shoots he’s going to have to take. The others? Not as necessary, and he’s delved into a few pull-ups already that he has shot poorly on over his career.

What has to be unlocked is his dribble-drive game. We’ve hardly seen Bridges get downhill on his own in the half-court, either to score at the rim or move the ball. His six free-throw attempts in three games reflect that. One of Bridges’ best skills is his great assist-to-turnover ratio, an attribute Phoenix needs to squeeze more out of.

“We will add layers to him as the season goes on. … We are still learning Miles, but that’s one piece for sure in the first unit that we can use a little bit better,” Ott said.

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