By the numbers: Where the Suns fall statistically at the midway point of 2024-25
Jan 21, 2025, 1:30 PM
The Phoenix Suns may be expensive, but the product on the court remains precisely .500.
They’re 21-21 at the halfway point of the 2024-25 season and weeks ahead of the trade deadline.
You’ve probably watched their games and diagnosed Phoenix’s problems that are beyond the box score. You probably realize the issues go beyond the skillsets that were supposed to make a team led by Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal an offensive juggernaut.
The Suns fall in the middle third of the NBA in quite a few categories, including net rankings. Here is what they’re starring at (top third) or struggling at (bottom third), courtesy of NBA.com and Second Spectrum.
Phoenix Suns stats at the midway point of 2024-25
18th
Phoenix is 18th in net rating this year, and bucketing it by the end of the floor, they’re 11th in offense and 23rd defensively.
The season began with a 9-2 record, which was misleading as Durant’s clutch play especially helped the Suns’ winning percentage get a boost compared to the team’s efficiency standings.
To understand where the season has taken a turn for the worse, let’s look at this:
23rd
The Suns rank 23rd in net rating in the past 15 games, with the offense (18th in that span) falling off worse than the defense (24th). That’s a troubling sign for a team built around its perimeter trio.
5th-worst
Of 53 five-man lineups across the NBA that have played greater than 100 minutes together, the Suns’ former starting lineup of Durant, Booker, Beal, Tyus Jones and Jusuf Nurkic ranked fifth-worst with a -17.1 net rating. The issues were mostly defensive in nature.
Only two lineups from Portland, one from Washington and another from the Miami Heat rated worse than Phoenix’s starting group.
Hence, the Suns’ decision to move Nurkic and Beal to the bench.
7th
Kevin Durant is seventh in the NBA by scoring 27.3 points per game. He’s shooting 52%, 37.6% from 3 and 82.5% from the foul stripe.
Teammate Devin Booker is 13th at 25.5 points per game.
29th
Ranking second-to-last in the league with 85.2 field goal attempts per game helps explain why having a decent offense doesn’t mean much.
21st
On the other end of the court, the Suns allow 89.9 shot attempts per game to opponents. Valuing possessions has not been a strength for this version of the Suns, nor last year’s.
28th
The Suns for the season are 28th out of 30 teams in defensive rebounding rate, grabbing 2/3 of the opponents’ misses. For context, the best team in the NBA (Sacramento) rebounds better than 3/4 of its opponents’ misses.
That translates to 14.5 opponent second-chance points per game, 19th-fewest in the NBA.
28th
Opponents turn the ball over just 12.8% of the time against Phoenix, the 28th-lowest rate. That, the Suns’ own turnover issues and the poor defensive rebounding help explain why teams get more shot opportunities regularly.
26th versus 4th
While the Suns rank 26th in shot attempts per game in the restricted area, they are fourth in the non-restricted paint area, a sign that they don’t have rim-attacking bigs or wings. They’ve only managed to get close-up looks in the much less efficient area.
In the true mid-range, they are neither taking many shots relative to their identity nor making many (39%).
6th
So where do the Suns excel? They are shooting 37.6% from 3-point range, which is sixth-best in the NBA. They are 16th in 3-point attempts per game with 36.7 taken this season.
Phoenix is third-best in the NBA by hitting 39.5% of catch-and-shoot triples, highlighting their strength.
But they don’t play to it: The volume has notably dipped to a third-fewest 32.9 attempts per game over the past 15 outings.
1st
It’s no surprise Phoenix leads the NBA in hitting 49.7% of its pull-up 2-point field goals and 43.7% of its total field goals on pull-ups. The Suns rank second at 17.5 such 2-point attempts per game but wisely don’t take many such shots from deep.
That’s because they only shoot 31.6% on pull-up triples, a weird juxtaposition considering how good they are on 2-point jumpers.
30th
While the Suns’ defense isn’t on either end of the spectrum in terms of patrolling the paint or mid-range, for whatever reason, they have been poor at covering the corners.
They allow opponents to hit 43.8% from the corners combined, last in the league, though the good news is they rank fourth-to-last in attempts per game allowed (8.5).