The Phoenix Suns weren’t about to wait to see if the girl of their dreams would come back to their line, and three weeks after they started a relationship, their phone rang. It’s like the plot of a D-rated romantic comedy, but with free agent point guards.
Phoenix signed Tyus Jones three weeks after signing Monte Morris. Both players are ball-handling experts, ranking atop the assist-to-turnover ratio charts for years. Their similarities don’t end there.
Both are small in stature and aren’t known as high-level scorers or playmakers, but rather touted for their pure playmaking skills. Both are reliable off-ball shooters, with Morris a career 41.5 percent catch-and-shoot 3-point shooter and Jones a 39.7 percent shooter over the last two seasons. Both are one-position defenders, and that’s not a strong point of their game.
Jones is undoubtedly the better player. There may be some exaggeration in the way we approach the game, but it certainly looks like what happened here, which is one of the many reasons why this signing is fascinating.
On the one hand, it’s an incredible value. Jones is expected to make at least eight figures a year and be content with the Valley’s minimum, where he told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski he will be the “starting point guard”. Arizona Sports John Gambadoro reports that this is the expected outcome, with Grayson Allen moving to the bench. (To be clear, Bradley Beal will never come off the bench, and he shouldn’t. That’s a universal truth that deserves to be accepted now. Everyone will be better off for it.)
While Jones likely won’t be on the court for more than 25 minutes a night, he’s a huge contributor to the Suns’ turnover management, offensive fluidity and overall play in the fourth quarter last year. They clearly didn’t think that problem would be solved by a coaching change. Whether or not Devin Booker and Beal would have figured out how to run the offense is anyone’s guess.
Backcourt depth is now a luxury Phoenix can rely on in the regular season. If either of those two players or Kevin Durant gets hurt, Jones (and Morris) will be able to take on more ball-handling duties to keep the Suns’ stars from going on a daily superhero night at Footprint Center, like Kevin Durant had to try to do in the first 10 games of the regular season.
Those are the advantages. The rest of the picture is confusing and we will see whether Jones’ arrival will bring further advantages or whether the persistent disadvantages will now be more pronounced.
There are too many cooks in a guard’s kitchen now. This is a small team. While it’s not a complete point guard and Morris isn’t limited on minutes, there’s still Allen, Beal, Booker, Jones and Royce O’Neale, all under 6 feet. Those are five very good players who should all ideally play 30-plus minutes. But this isn’t an ideally constructed team and it’s likely only two of them will reach that number.
O’Neale is the only impact defender of the five. Beal, Booker or Jones will start games in the West defending Stephen Curry, Anthony Edwards, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, De’Aaron Fox, Kyrie Irving, Ja Morant, Dejounte Murray or Jamal Murray. If you switch to scoring wings, you’ll have DeMar DeRozan, Luka Doncic, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard or Zion Williamson for Durant, Booker or Beal.
Jones’ arrival didn’t create this problem, it made it worse. The previous tradeoff was to have the league’s best three-point shooter last year outside of the Big 3. Allen and his 5.9 three-pointers per game on a team that struggles to place them will now play less. Jones’ point guard talent is now the stars’ favorite booster. So, in turn, Beal, Booker and Durant must now combine for at least 20 three-pointers a night and aim for a number closer to 20. They were at just over 16 last year. Again, they must lift them up.
Proposed answers to this dilemma include trading Allen when it becomes legal in October for a 3-and-D wing with more athleticism and size. That would be unwise.
In this reality, the Suns lost Allen and Eric Gordon, their two high-volume off-the-ball shooters, and replaced them with lesser players who won’t be as prolific. Allen also played great basketball for this team last year and was the second-best defender of those five guards last season. He was already going to be somewhat crowded out by a full year of O’Neale on the roster, and now it’s going to be a challenge to find more than 25 minutes a night.
Beal and Booker now have even higher defensive expectations than they did last season. Beal showed he wanted to play defense despite injuries last year and did a good job with Edwards in the playoffs. Booker regressed after showing great promise two seasons ago and is showing everyone again in the Olympics that he can be a positive player in that area of the floor.
This is an incredibly small three-guard team. Jusuf Nurkic was the best defensive rebounder in basketball last year and can now shoulder a lot of the responsibility, but a lot of the responsibility now falls on Durant and any other wing, whether it’s Bol Bol (maybe?) or Ryan Dunn (probably not). Allen was also a sneaky good rebounder last year.
Morris’ role shouldn’t be overlooked. He was probably expected to get a good number of minutes as a backup. Either he’ll still get them to catch up, which would be redundant and make the game even more complicated with Allen and O’Neale, or Morris will end up losing.
If Morris plays, it means a lot of the ball won’t be in the hands of Beal, Booker and Durant. Jones and Morris aren’t necessarily playmakers who are going to block a defense’s pressure points. That’s what this trio is all about.
So, to return to the point guard question one last time and speak directly to those who are hammering it home, the argument for the need for a point guard is to allow the Suns to organize and run the offense. OK, that’s fine. But what do you mean by that, actually? What is this point guard? TO DO?
In theory, Jones and Morris would bring the ball up and wait for one of the three scorers to move without the ball until they gave them the ball there. Is that really something Beal or Booker are incapable of?
That wasn’t the main problem last year. The problem was failing to execute those moves consistently and keeping the offense fresh. That’s not something Jones and Morris themselves can magically fix. That was a problem with previous coaches and players avoiding stagnant offensive moves.
Either way, that ends the debate. The question now is whether the point guard play and the hiring of Mike Budenholzer will be enough to get this offense to where it should be, which is the best in the league. It better do that, or this team will have to settle for the play-in.
Basically, the Suns spent a year betting on having enough players on the ball, initiating equity, and then abruptly cashed that ticket while it still had value remaining in favor of the intrinsic value of a floor general commanding the majority of the offense. Now they have to hope their other ticket still wins, betting on beating a league that keeps getting bigger, faster, and stronger.