Which 2nd-round draft prospects are the best culture fits for Suns?

We’ve reviewed who the Phoenix Suns should target if they trade up all the way into the first round, as well as some targets if it’s just a handful of spots in the second round.

What if they stay put?

For that, we will return a concept from last offseason of looking for the Gregory Grinders, the prospects that best fit Phoenix’s new culture under general manager Brian Gregory.

You know Gregory’s alignment spiel by now. Toughness, heart, “care factor” and so on. You must have this much grit to get on the ride.

So who’s got it? How about these three fellows:

Tamin Lipsey, PG, Iowa State, 23 years old

Measurables: 6-foot-2, 200 pounds, 6-foot-2 wingspan
Stats: 13.5 PPG, 3.9 RPG, 5.1 APG, 0.0 BPG, 2.3 SPG, 1.5 TPG, 45.9 FG% (10.8 FGA/G), 31.6 3P% (3.9 3PA/G), 65.6 FT% (3.6 FTA/G)
Big board rankings: ESPN: 69, The Athletic (mock draft): 33, Yahoo!: 37, The Ringer: 20

Lipsey is one of those folk hero guards of college basketball, the names that’ll fade in memory for even the reasonably invested fans.

But the real ball-knowers will randomly rattle off their names many years later, to the amusement of those around them. Or at least that’s what I’m thinking those around me feel when I toss a Joe Young or Allan Ray out there.

Lipsey started all 137 games he played for the Cyclones. He, along with head coach T.J. Otzelberger, were the culture drivers behind what has now quickly been re-established as a signature program in the sport. Iowa State is known for incredible energy defensively, using physicality and tenacity to the absolute limit. That is all Lipsey.

He made so many winning plays that the team stopped referring to them as “winning plays” and instead as “Tamin plays.” Lipsey was the first four-year player since T.J. McConnell to reach 500 rebounds, 600 assists and 300 steals, per Stathead. That tracks!

The similarly-undersized floor general plays a fantastic combination of smart and hard, with enough skill as a playmaker to set up his teammates consistently. There is a craftiness to how he operates that suggests he’s a step ahead of the defense.

in 137 career college games, tamin lipsey posted a 25.8% assist rate with a 2.4 assist-to-turnover ratio. reflective of his on-ball passing talent and sturdy decision making.

plenty of NBA PGs (jerome, pritchard, FVV, TJM, nembhard, etc), hit those passing thresholds in college pic.twitter.com/D51fUVlKav

— Ben Pfeifer (@bjpf_) April 13, 2026

Lipsey is wonderfully effective as a defensive pest, refusing to give ball-handlers an inch and benefitting off how they know he is going to rip the ball away if given any window to do so. (Forgive me for using clips from a two-year-old game but allow me to blame Twitter’s horrific recent search engine changes for it.)

Dominant first half from Tamin Lipsey against Houston. Had a huge impact on the game defensively despite his smaller size and had a nice offensive half as well

Houston’s pressure and hard hedging ball screens in the 2nd half made things a bit more difficult for him pic.twitter.com/wvJFIU4czx

— Zach Milner (@ZachMilner13) January 12, 2024

The reason why I like the McConnell comparison the most is because T.J. does just enough as a ball-handler to bring a lot of value on that end. He’s undersized, has no vertical explosiveness and the only way he scores is touch shots while outsmarting enough defenders to get open at the rim for layups. It’s incredibly unique, and Lipsey doesn’t do it to McConnell’s level, but he’s got his own version to score enough so defenses have to take him seriously. Point is, he has enough game to be a supplemental lead guard.

How Lipsey overcomes not being a shooter (career 33.5% on 2.9 3PA/G) on offense and OK athlete at a small size on defense is the path to him becoming a quality backup point guard and perhaps more. He’s going to have the best chance at it by surrounding himself with likeminded individuals. An alignment, if you will.

The Suns don’t really need another small guard beyond Collin Gillespie, and Jamaree Bouyea on a non-guaranteed deal for next year did just fine last season in emergency duty. But if they’re sniffing around for a more defensive-minded guard to join Jordan Goodwin, Lipsey would be a perfect protege.

Nick Martinelli, F, Northwestern, 22 years old

Measurables: 6-foot-8, 224 pounds, 6-foot-10 wingspan
Stats: 23 PPG, 6.2 RPG, 2 APG, 0.4 BPG, 0.8 SPG, 1.4 TPG, 51 FG% (15.9 FGA/G), 41.7 3P% (3.3 3PA/G), 80.9 FT% (6.7 FTA/G)
Big board rankings: ESPN: 53, The Athletic (mock draft): 54, Yahoo!: 46, The Ringer: NR

Like Lipsey, Martinelli was a three-star recruit that became a beloved figure as a four-year player at the same school, a player Northwestern fans will remember fondly amongst their favorites across the program’s history.

Like Lipsey, Martinelli likes to thump. A physical scorer in the mid-post and as a downhill threat, Martinelli was the first forward to average 20 points per game or more in back-to-back Big Ten seasons since Glenn Robinson 30-plus years ago, per Stathead. He took over six free throws a night across the last two years.

Martinelli combines the bruising off-the-dribble game with smooth touch and good instincts for where to get his shots. That shows in his fantastic efficiency. Despite taking nearly 16 shots a game, Martinelli shot 51%, including 53.3% on his 2s. That was nearly twice as many shots as anyone else on the roster, so it was all him for self-created buckets.

Nick Martinelli records his 25th 20-point game of the season 💥

He is @NUMensBball‘s all-time leading scorer in @bigten tournament games with 114, passing Michael Thompson who has 99 💪 pic.twitter.com/CqZWCacx5b

— Big Ten Men’s Basketball (@B1GMBBall) March 12, 2026

The major jump in his 3P% this year north of 40% isn’t all that surprising, and he should grow even more into a reliable shooter as more of an ancillary scorer in the league.

Martinelli has been a productive offensive rebounder throughout his collegiate career, and while his assist rates are low, so are his turnovers. A lot of these elements in his game are giving Tony Buckets, our old friend T.J. Warren.

The question marks are fairly standard for a player of Martinelli’s caliber. He has to prove how well he can guard NBA athletes, and how much he can create space against them. There’s really not much else in his way to becoming a rotation player beyond that. The skill, motor and size are all there.

Phoenix clearly likes guys with a little bit of (expletive) to them, and Martinelli’s got it, with some on-ball talent the Suns could use as well. If you even want to call a pick in the 40s a “gamble,” Martinelli is a great one given how he can score the ball with room to grow elsewhere.

Aaron Nkrumah, G/F, Tennessee State, 24 years old

Measurables: 6-foot-7, 188 pounds, 6-foot-10 wingspan
Stats: 17.7 PPG, 5.5 RPG, 3 APG, 0.5 BPG, 2.8 SPG, 2.4 TPG, 43.8 FG% (13.4 FGA/G), 35.1 3P% (4.6 3PA/G), 78.6 FT% (5.5 FTA/G)
Big board rankings: ESPN: 75, The Athletic (mock draft): NR, Yahoo!: 56, The Ringer: NR

It’s amazing that with all the access to information we have and technological advancements through video, guys in the draft are still slipping through cracks.

An archetype we previously covered when looking at the first round is late risers, guys that were almost nowhere to be seen on the draft landscape a year before the draft.

This applies to other portions of the draft, like the workout stages. Last year, Penn State center Yanic Konan Niederhauser showed out at the G League combine to earn a late invite to the official NBA one. He rode this momentum to getting picked 30th and played great for the Los Angeles Clippers before a season-ending injury. He looks like a steal.

Nkrumah is taking a similar path, albeit much lower down the rankings. He wasn’t even invited to the Portsmouth Invitational, a combine like the G League’s that allows lower-tiered players a chance to go through their own version of the combine. Nkrumah got a last-minute invite to the G League combine, where he hooped, earning the coveted last-minute invite to the NBA’s combine and again showed out, per Yahoo!’s Kevin O’Connor.

Nkrumah, like 2025 No. 11 overall pick Cedric Coward, recently played Division III basketball. He played at two different schools before getting his two final years of eligibility in at Tennessee State, and let me know if this sounds familiar, fully took advantage by winning Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year this past season.

Based on just that story alone, we wouldn’t even have to talk much about his game to already flag him as someone Phoenix likes. Gillespie and Goodwin are two examples, whether it was Gillespie’s path as a professional or Goodwin’s path to becoming a professional, that the Suns love this type of journey and the characteristics required to succeed on it.

It’s not an earth-shattering projection for Nkrumah’s role.

He is in a 3-and-D type of mold, where his 2.8 steals per game stand out with his terrific hand skills around the ball and ability to generate bumps while defending ball-handlers. The shooting over two years landed at 32.3% from deep, a major concern obviously. This year, however, Nkrumah was at 35.1% on 4.6 tries a night, and the tape showed a guy with full confidence in his jumper. There wasn’t much hesitation, and while the form on his jumper has a few inconsistencies below his shoulders that will get cleaned up by the pros, it’s a quick trigger.

Tennessee State’s Aaron Nkrumah made the most of being the last player invited to the G League Combine, dropping 22 points on 12 shots in yesterday’s scrimmage.

The Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year measured 6’5 barefoot, 189 pounds, with a 6’10.25 wingspan. pic.twitter.com/nw2HX5HnOP

— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) May 10, 2026

I understand this might come across as coping for a weakness in his profile but the largest point of optimism for Nkrumah sits within what he could look like in a year or two in a professional strength and conditioning program. With a shoutout to the Tigers and their facilities in the OVC, the hope would be Nkrumah bulks up on that 188-pound frame to add some real strength to a playstyle that already lends itself to physicality. He’s got some quickness, and that’ll expand with proper offseason work.

His size is already in a good enough spot to put him on the wing, so if the weight lets him push around defenders more, that’s where Nkrumah can do more as a driver. That is going to be imperative, because Nkrumah has a good free-throw rate and can really pass. He tries a lot of risky ones, unafraid to snap it through a tight window. In the half-court, once a defense is in rotation, he can punish them.

Over the years, we tend to highlight top scoring options more so for their ability to do this than splashy assist-to-turnover numbers, because his role will be significantly reduced on the ball. The playmaking numbers for Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson didn’t sing in college but their play showed they would be good connective players, and they were.

Again, with the type of selection we’re discussing in the back-half of the second round, it’s all about believing in prospect worth taking a chance on despite a handful of red flags that suggest he won’t stick in the league. Nkrumah is easy to believe in.

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