ESPN: Phoenix Suns have NBA’s 12th-brightest future

With the NBA preseason beginning next month, the Phoenix Suns look to enter training camp with a roster where everybody is 30 years old or younger.

The youthful Suns put together a surprising 48-34 record last season, and they added young talent this summer with three first-round picks in the 2014 NBA Draft — although one (Bogdan Bogdanovic) isn’t expected to join the team this season.

ESPN released its “Future Power Rankings” last week, an Insider piece, and “The Worldwide Leader in Sports” recognized that Jeff Hornacek’s squad has one of the brightest outlooks in the league.

The Future Power Rankings are a projection of how teams will fare in the 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons, and each team is rated on a scale of 0 to 100.

Phoenix was given a “Future Power Rating” of 51.55. Although it sounds a little low, it’s actually the 12th-highest score of any club in the NBA, and the score for player talent was 21 points higher than the team received in the previous iteration of the power rankings.

Here’s what ESPN’s Chad Ford had to say about Arizona’s longest-running professional team:

It’s time to eat some crow. Last year, I — and the rest of our panel — blasted the Suns, ranking them No. 27 in our Future Power Rankings. The only thing we really liked about them was their potentially high draft position and their warm, Arizona market. What a difference a year makes.

After our rankings, the Suns went on to move center Marcin Gortat (one of their best two players) for a broken Emeka Okafor and still managed to nearly steal a playoff spot in the loaded Western Conference. It turned out Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe had career years. Gerald Green also had the best year of his career. Ditto for Markieff Morris and Marcus Morris. And Channing Frye basically made the comeback of the year.

Ford did note that the Suns’ score would likely be a little higher if Bledsoe’s (a restricted free agent) status weren’t up in the air. Ford added that the team’s score would surely go down if the guard leaves via free agency after the 2014-15 campaign.

The NBA insider also makes it known that he and the panel are big Hornacek fans, and thus bumped up the team’s management score.

Ford, however, is still cautious with his praise of arguably the most surprising group of last season.

But the biggest question in my mind then is: Have they gone from underrated to overrated? I wouldn’t be shocked to see the Suns settle into the late teens or early 20s next year.

If you’re wondering who was ranked first on the ESPN list, that honor goes to the San Antonio Spurs, aka the defending champs. Although San Antonio’s placement might be a surprise due to the ages of their three biggest stars, ESPN thinks the club can put together at least one more championship-caliber season, and the franchise is in good hands as long as coach Gregg Popovich and general manager R.C. Buford are on board.