Suns smartly trade up for ideal fit, local product Koa Peat

The Phoenix Suns know what their biggest weakness is. If you need any proof of that, look at their last two NBA Drafts.

After selecting 7-foot-2 center Khaman Maluach 10th overall in 2025, they executed multiple trades in the second round to select 6-foot-11 forward (with a 7-foot-5 wingspan) Rasheer Fleming 31st.

And a year later, once 6-foot-8, 245-pound power forward Koa Peat began falling at the end of the first round, Phoenix moved up to 30th overall to snag the Arizona Wildcat, per Arizona Sports’ John Gambadoro.

For a roster that lacked a whole lot of athleticism, size and length, Phoenix has now drafted three players in two years that score well in those areas.

They also did what they have done a fair bit over the last two years — taking a chance on talent and upside.

The Suns did so in the Kevin Durant trade by acquiring the pick to take a raw Maluach, a package that included the tantalizing ceiling of Jalen Green. They also used that philosophy in trading for Mark Williams. Ditto for selecting a more undefined prospect like Fleming instead of a specialist. They have to unearth a great player out of these slim pickings, and they’re really trying. For an asset-deprived franchise that is looking to win with Devin Booker, it had to happen and has to keep happening.

It has this summer with Peat. In a range of the draft littered with four-year seniors and guys mostly from 22-24 years old due to NIL keeping players in school, Peat is a one-and-done 19-year-old with lots of developing left to do. Don’t get me wrong, it’s stretching to the highest possible outcome in Peat’s development, but there is All-Star potential in there.

This was a guy that was projected to be a mid-to-late lottery pick at the start of the college basketball season.

The price is insignificant. The Suns moved up 17 spots from 47th overall, giving up second-rounders in 2029 and 2033. While those picks have a chance of landing in the 30s, where they do hold some value, if simply one of them lands in the back-half of the second round, the Suns win that value trade-off.

And even if it winds up that the Suns don’t, Peat is the type of talent you get aggressive with.

Peat is a unique prospect.

His game is refined, yet raw at the same time, an imbalance that speaks to the volatility of his draft stock. The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie ranked Peat as the 16th-best prospect in this class, and Peat was generally placed in the range of the high teens to the mid-20s. There were still some extremes, though, in his evaluation for some. The Athletic’s John Hollinger went as far as placing him 37th.

While Peat’s inconsistent freshman season clearly turned some teams off, his track record coming into his time at Arizona (which still wasn’t half-bad!) sat up there with anyone’s resume in his draft.

He won four straight state championships at Perry High School in Gilbert, where he was born, winning Gatorade Arizona Player of the Year in his last three seasons. Peat also competed in amateur FIBA competitions for Team USA, winning four different gold medals over the U16, U17 and U19 levels.

We define guys as “winners” often. But this dude is a freaking winner. He arrived in Tucson with the nickname “Mr. Arizona” for a reason.

Let’s be honest. This guy winding up as a Sun is pretty freaking cool! And if he can live up to that nickname in some capacity as a Sun, even cooler. That’s not a reason to draft him. But still cool!

With that said, Peat in high school did look like a youngin’ who was physically mature way beyond his years. How would he look against grownups in college?

Well, at least initially, Peat dominated. In his first-ever collegiate game, he eviscerated Florida, the defending champs with a returning frontcourt that was deemed the best in the country. Peat was so fantastic that college basketball experts wondered if the Big Four of this draft was a Big Five.

Instead, he regressed.

Peat’s elementary offensive game that heavily relied on quick dribble pull-ups in the midrange and straight line drives to the rim was quickly identified by elite competition. With the hope that Peat would become the No. 1 option offensively, he instead faded into a third or even fourth option behind Arizona’s reliable guard duo of Jaden Bradley and Brayden Burries, plus freshman wing Ivan Kharchenkov and the best frontcourt in the conference comprising Peat, Motiejus Krivas and Tobe Awaka.

In that role, Peat wasn’t able to be a spacer, because he can’t shoot. He drew a lot of attention in the predraft process for reworking the form on his jumper, a necessary adjustment that’s going to take a while to sort out. If he’s ever a semi-decent 3-point shooter, don’t expect a quick breakthrough.

What Peat did in the meantime was contribute in key areas, because again, dude is a winner. He was one of the Wildcats’ best defenders, switchable on a few different positions and really locked in as a team defender off the ball.

I’m confident that he will be a good NBA defender fairly quickly, as long as the learning curve doesn’t knock him on his ass. The steal and block numbers weren’t all that great, but the tape speaks to a guy that knows how to function as a key member on the string of a team defense.

While on a team with two behemoths in Krivas and Awaka, who vacuumed up any offensive rebounding opportunities Kirby-style, Peat still grabbed more than two a game. He started to get better throughout the year as a cutter and off-ball mover to make up for how he was defended. As a screen-setter, Peat has to improve, but as a short-roller he is a more than capable playmaker. Peat, without much shake in his handle or much diversity in the way he attacked an on-ball defender, had 93 assists and 58 turnovers.

He took 4.5 free-throw attempts per game with OK usage, a testament to how often he bumped through defenders to get to the foul line. How Peat can maintain that downhill mentality as a scorer will be the key to him bringing value as an offensive player while the ball-handling and shooting improve.

Does his strength still hold up against a NBA power forward? Can he still be a bully?

Those two questions will determine a whole lot. You’d think it’s unlikely but did you see Dylan Harper stuffing OG Anunoby under the rim? Maybe Peat is like that too.

Ultimately, with a raw prospect like Peat, the decision to draft him comes down to how much belief there is in the kid himself, that he is the right type of worker to unlock what is untapped.

Peat has been around professional athletes and presumably gotten ready to eventually become one his entire life. All six of Peat’s siblings were Division I athletes, including his older brother Andrus, an 11-year NFL veteran who made three Pro Bowls as an offensive tackle. Peat’s dad played for six years in the NFL as well.

There is no other way for Koa Peat to go about his business with his athletics but in a professional manner given the household he was in. The Suns will have no doubt that Peat will maximize every practice and every rep he gets on the way to growing into the player they need him to be because of how he was raised.

Five-year collegiate players like Collin Gillespie and four-year collegiate players like Oso Ighodaro will ensure Peat gets all the extra lessons he missed out on by skipping his last three years of school. If anyone is going to come into that practice facility and focus on the meticulous details of how Booker’s preparation and training turned him into the player he is, it’s Peat.

And if there is a coach that will help bring along a player with clear deficiencies and maximize him in the meantime, it’s Jordan Ott.

This could not be a better fit, and that applies just as much to the Suns as it does to Peat. Fit, though, only matters so much, and time will tell if Phoenix is really onto something with what it has built and what it can produce because of that.

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