Suns’ Tyus Jones signing is no-brainer value, inspires further questions

The Phoenix Suns weren’t going to wait to see if their dream girl was going to hit their line back, and three weeks after getting in a relationship, their phone buzzed. It’s like the plot of a D-tier rom-com but with free agent point guards.

Phoenix is signing Tyus Jones, three weeks after signing Monte Morris. Both players are elite at taking care of the ball, ranking at the top of the assist-to-turnover ratio leaderboards for years. Their similarities don’t end there.

Both are on the smaller side and aren’t known as scorers or high-end playmakers, instead touted for pure point guard skills. Both are trustworthy shooters off the ball, where Morris is a career 41.5% catch-and-shoot 3-point shooter and Jones’ number the last two seasons was 39.7%. Both are one-position defenders and it is not a strength of their game.

Jones is the definitively better player. Perhaps there is some exaggeration to how we opened but it certainly feels like what happened here, which is one of the many reasons why this signing is fascinating.

For one, it’s tremendous value. Jones should be making at least eight figures a year and settles for the minimum in the Valley, where he said to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski he will be the “starting point guard.” Arizona Sports’ John Gambadoro reports that is the expectation and for Grayson Allen to move to the bench. (To get it out of the way, Bradley Beal is never coming off the bench nor should he. It is a universal truth worth accepting now. Everyone will be better off for it.)

While Jones probably won’t be out there for longer than 25 minutes a night, he will greatly aid the Suns’ horrid turnovers, offensive flow and overall play during the fourth quarter from last year. Obviously, they felt this was not going to be solved by just a coaching change. Whether or not Devin Booker and Beal could have figured out running the offense now goes unanswered.

Depth in the backcourt is now a luxury Phoenix can lean on in the regular season. If injuries come for either of those two or Kevin Durant, Jones (and Morris) can take on more ball-handling duties to keep the Suns stars away from engaging in a daily superhero night at Footprint Center, like what Kevin Durant had to try and do in the first 10 games of the regular season.

Those are the benefits. The rest of this picture is muddled and we’ll see if more benefits emerge from bringing in Jones or if lingering downsides are now more pronounced.

There are now too many cooks in the guard-sized kitchen. This is a tiny team. Even if this isn’t a full point guard gambit and Morris isn’t also locked into minutes, it’s still Allen, Beal, Booker, Jones and Royce O’Neale all at under 6-foot-7. Those are five very good players that should all ideally play 30-plus minutes. But this is not an ideally constructed roster and it’s likely only two of them reaching that number.

O’Neale is the only impactful defender of the five. One of Beal, Booker or Jones is going to begin games out west defending Stephen Curry, Anthony Edwards, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, De’Aaron Fox, Kyrie Irving, Ja Morant, Dejounte Murray or Jamal Murray. Scale up to wing-sized scorers and that’s DeMar DeRozan, Luka Doncic, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard or Zion Williamson for either Durant, Booker or Beal.

Jones’ arrival did not create this issue, rather it inflates it further. The previous trade-off was having the best 3-point shooter in the league last year spacing off the Big 3. Allen and his 5.9 3s per game on a team that struggles to get them up will now play less. Jones’ point guard acumen is now the preferred booster pack to the stars. So in turn, Beal, Booker and Durant must now combine for 20 triples a night minimum and aim for somewhere more like the mid-20s. They were at just over 16 last year. Again, they must get ’em up.

Suggested answers to this dilemma include trading Allen when that becomes legal in October for a 3-and-D wing with more athleticism and size. That would be unwise.

In that reality, the Suns have lost Allen and Eric Gordon, their two volume shooters off the ball and then replaced them with worse ones who won’t be nearly as prolific. Allen was also, like, really good at basketball for this team last year and was the second-best defender last season out of those five guards. He was already going to be somewhat phased out by a full year of O’Neale on the roster and now it’s going to be a challenge finding 25-plus minutes a night.

Beal and Booker now have even further elevated defensive expectations than last season. Beal showed a desire for it through patches of injuries last year and did as good of a job as you could’ve hoped on Edwards in the playoffs. Booker regressed after showing great promise two postseasons ago and is again showing everyone in the Olympics that this is an end of the floor he can be a positive on.

It’s an incredibly small three-guard lineup. Jusuf Nurkic was the best defensive rebounder in basketball last year and can shoulder a lot of the responsibility now but a lot of onus now goes on Durant and whatever other wing plays, whether it’s Bol Bol (maybe?) or Ryan Dunn (probably not). Allen was a sneaky good rebounder last year too.

We should not breeze by Morris’ role. He was surely under the expectation he would be getting a decent chunk of minutes off the bench. Either he will still receive those as a way to make good by him, something that would be redundant and further complicate playing Allen and O’Neale enough, or Morris gets the short end of the stick.

If Morris plays, that is a lot of the ball not in the hands of Beal, Booker and Durant. Jones and Morris are not necessarily playmakers that are going to jam the pressure points of a defense. That is what that trio is here for.

So, to revisit the point guard thing one last time and speak directly to those hammering it, the argument for the necessity of one is to get the Suns organized and running the offense. OK, that’s fine. But what do you mean by that really? What is that point guard doing?

In theory, Jones and Morris are bringing the ball up and waiting for one of the three scorers to move around off-ball action until they give them the ball in that spot. Is that really something that Beal or Booker are incapable of?

This was not the main problem last year. The problem was failing to consistently run those motions and keeping the offense fresh. That is not something that Jones and Morris themselves can magically fix. It was an issue from both the previous coaches and players avoiding stagnant offensive movement.

Regardless, that puts an end to those debates. The point now becomes if whatever the point guard play is and hiring of Mike Budenholzer prove to be enough in getting this offense to the level it should be — the best in the league. It better just about be there or else this team is looking at the play-in.

Essentially, the Suns spent one year betting on having enough on-ball, initiating equity and then abruptly cashed that ticket out while it still had any value left in favor of the intrinsic value of a floor general commanding the majority of the offense. Now they have to hope their other ticket is still a winning one, the bet on overcoming a league that keeps getting bigger, faster and stronger.

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