Suns offseason underway with deserved $48 million deal for Collin Gillespie

The Phoenix Suns offseason is underway, and it began in a way many expected, with the re-signing of guard Collin Gillespie to a four-year, $48 million deal, per ESPN’s Shams Charania.

As soon as Gillespie burst onto the scene a few games into last season, the conversation amongst the fanbase swung to his status as a pending unrestricted free agent, with the hope he would stay, and Gillespie said the Valley is where he wanted to be. He reiterated that stance in April and now has a new long-term home in a place where he became a favorite of his teammates just as quickly as he did for the fans.

The price is a logical one for both sides and the type of deal we talk about frequently for players in Gillespie’s position.

He gets to stay in a place he’s comfortable that understands how to bring the best out of his game. While he maybe did not get the highest dollar amount possible per year, he does get the security of a fully guaranteed four years for life-changing money after three years on two-way deals and another on a minimum. Phoenix gets to avoid the stress of him on the open market and the potential for a higher AAV, while locking in one of its signature examples of the new culture under head coach Jordan Ott and general manager Brian Gregory.

All told, it is quite deserved for a guy who escaped the sludge of a spot in the league many, many NBA hopefuls can’t even reach, and even if they do, they then face the impossibility of getting any further than that.

This past season, Gillespie exceeded any reasonable expectations you could have set for him, and the expectations that came with a third guard role were already pretty freaking high considering his journey coming in.

Gillespie arrived in the NBA with a proven pedigree from his days at Villanova but went undrafted in 2022. He then spent two years with Denver on a two-way contract, failing to break through in any type of real way. He got his third and final two-way contract with Phoenix in 2024, and while he had some brief flashes that got him on a contract extension for a standard deal, they were nothing to indicate he was a rotation-caliber NBA player.

Phoenix, however, went through the offseason not adding too much at guard off the bench, a hint that it knew Gillespie was ready to contribute. Cue this past season, during which Gillespie solidified his standing while quickly becoming one of the better small guards around.

Gillespie proved to be a viable offensive weapon, and did so with consistency.

His shooting percentages from deep by month from November on were 43.9%, 44%, 42.6%, 39.6% and 36.1%, with that drop-off in March signaling the wear-down effect of a full season playing 80 games was getting to him (through clear injuries that weren’t disclosed until the end of the year). He was one of the best catch-and-shoot 3-point threats in the league and his intangibles were always present elsewhere on the floor, whether it was as a smart connective passer, persistent offensive rebounder or irritable on-ball defender.

His fearlessness has been lauded by everyone on the team, deservedly so.

In Game 2 of the first round against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Gillespie shot 3-for-9 with seven points, six rebounds, six assists, two steals and two turnovers. The box score is filled up a decent bit but it’s nothing eye-popping that suggests he had a great game. But he did. Jordan Goodwin was out injured, the primary defender on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Gillespie took on that assignment while assuring his team would not get blown out of the water in the first half as it did in Game 1 with several key plays.

Awesome Collin Gillespie game last night. Brought a ton of energy and toughness the Suns needed without Jordan Goodwin that helped them settle in. pic.twitter.com/DF7NaExkOp

— Kellan Olson (@KellanOlson) April 23, 2026

Despite what you might generalize for a 6-foot-1 point guard out of Villanova with Gillespie’s makeup, he hasn’t so much been a floor general for the Suns. As a playmaker, Gillespie’s responsibilities have had more to do with getting the Suns into their actions while also running two-man games with the centers to get them involved. He’s not much of a gravitational force that makes defenses shift as the type of guy putting pressure on it, which is worth pointing out because of how much value he still brings despite not being a “traditional point guard.”

Gillespie does so with nearly a 3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio, an impressive feat when he takes a measly 8% of his shots at the rim. He created just enough of those touch shots you saw him use his physicality to open up versus OKC in order to be enough of a scoring threat beyond the shooting.

Phoenix’s challenge with Gillespie will be maximizing him while the trio of Devin Booker, Dillon Brooks and Jalen Green remains together. Once those three got healthy at the same time, Gillespie was one of a few key role players that really struggled to remain effective while hardly receiving the same amount of opportunities as he did when at least one of them was sidelined.

This is part of the case for trading either Brooks or Green, since the ease of balance that’ll create offensively includes someone like Gillespie more naturally flowing into the offense as he did in the first two-thirds of the season. For now, the Suns don’t sound like a team ready to do that just yet. And in the event they indeed do not do that, how Gillespie fares as now a long-term piece of the future will be worth keeping a close eye on.

With that said, a full year of Gillespie coming off the bench after 58 starts last year will allow him to get more comfortable in his role.

And whatever happens at center with restricted free agent Mark Williams, Ott will prioritize finding minutes for Gillespie with third-year big Oso Ighodaro. Phoenix had 30 different two-man lineup combinations reach 500 minutes last year, and of the eight that outscored teams by at least five points per 100 possessions, half of them featured Gillespie. That was with Ighodaro (6.9 net rating), Booker (7.0), Goodwin (7.5) and Ryan Dunn (7.4). The Ighodaro-Gillespie duo reached 1,232 minutes, the third-most on the team.

Expect Gillespie to lead the bench mob efforts, and for him to do so with Ighodaro while still spending a good amount of time out there alongside Booker as well.

The Suns entered the day $17.5 million under the tax, and can have Gillespie’s Year 1 number go as low as $10.7 million to dance below that line if that is desired.

Phoenix could also use part of the midlevel exception they have this year for Gillespie’s contract. We’ll see if it can even muster up handily using all of it, graded around $15 million, on the combination of both Gillespie and Goodwin, an unrestricted free agent. Goodwin at less than $5 million a year seems cheap, but maybe there’s a discount there. Gillespie was graded higher than $12 million AAV by a few experts, so perhaps that can happen again.

This now tightens the gap to the first apron too. As Suns Twitter’s The Four Point Play points out in that less than $13 million to go, taking the punishments of the tax and/or the first apron just for the same exact roster as last year with minimal change does not seem like an adequate value tradeoff.

So, if the Suns agree, does that mean Williams is gone to stay under? Or what about a move in the other direction? What changes would have to come to make that worthwhile? Remember, owner Mat Ishbia has said in the past Phoenix won’t tiptoe just over the tax or an apron. If they do go over, they’re going to go over with purpose.

Regardless, unless some unforeseen cap dump for some cap gymnastics looms in the distance, the Suns look set to be a taxpayer again.

The implications of that would be nonexistent in roster functionality, but it would further devalue the utility of the Bradley Beal waive-and-stretch since Phoenix will be unable to reset its “tax repeater” status just yet, with the “three-in-four” rule set to trigger if this does become the Suns’ third year out of four back in the tax, prior to that brief respite last season. The repeater just intensifies the tax penalty fees, so it’s just more money out of Ishbia’s pocket at the end of the day. As long as that continues to not matter, unlike for most franchises in sports, then we can shrug it away.

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