Quantifying the impact of Oso Ighodaro can be a strange task. You can dig through the numbers and hunt for the statistic that captures what he has been lately, but it takes work. The truth is that the best way to understand the second-year wing from Marquette comes through the eye test. Early in the season, he was failing that test.
Here is a fun reminder. Neither of us are on the Phoenix Suns coaching staff. We do not see what happens behind closed doors. We do not know the hours Oso puts in every
day or how he connects with his teammates when the cameras are off. We get small flashes of his personality, and we saw another one last night after the win over the Portland Trail Blazers on NBC.
Dillon Brooks was in the middle of his postgame interview when his teammates wandered in to stir things up. Jalen Green cracked a comment that sent Brooks into laughter. Brooks called it an inside joke the team uses to fire themselves up. As Green drifted away, Ighodaro stepped in with a deadpan delivery that felt ripped from Vince Vaughn in Old School, told him it was not that funny, then walked off without breaking stride.
Moments like that show a group building something real. It is chemistry that comes from people, not players. And while the eye test has wobbled for Oso at times this season, he is earning more trust from the coaching staff and he has started to repay that trust on the court.
Again, it is hard to pin down what Oso brings. So let me try an analogy that wandered into my head and refused to leave.
Think about a perfectly cooked New York strip steak. The kind that sits in a dry brine for a full day, hits the grill, picks up that dark crust on the fat cap, and comes off at a clean 132°. Think about cutting into that steak, then think about the same steak with a bright chimichurri poured across the top. That is the closest way I can describe Oso. He is not the steak. He is the chimichurri. The steak can stand on its own, but once you add that burst of flavor, everything gets better. It wakes the dish up. He wakes up the second team unit when he’s on the floor.
That is the best comparison I could summon, and it fits him.
I still have a tough time wrapping my head around the archetype Oso fits. He is not quite big enough or long enough to anchor the paint as a dominating defensive center. His rebounding comes and goes. As a power forward, he does not stretch the floor in any real way. My view only goes so far though. What matters is how the coaching staff sees him and how cleanly he fits into what they want to run. That is the part of the eye test that has shifted. Oso has settled into Jordan Ott’s system, and he has made it work.
Eight games into the season, I pointed out that his field goal percentage had dipped from 64%t last year to 42.%. His net rating sat at the second-worst mark on the roster at -33. His 8.9% rebounding percentage was rough. Since that point, he has turned a corner. He is shooting 71.4%from the field in the 7 games since. He is averaging 0.9 turnovers. His net rating is a +33.2. His rebounding percentage has moved up to 11.5%.
It serves as a reminder to trust the process and keep the focus on development. We get sucked into the short view because we watch this team night after night. Growth does not happen on our timeline. It happens on the player’s timeline.
Oso is in his second season, and if he wants to become a long-term rotation player, he needs opportunities. He needs court time. He needs to see different defensive looks and learn how to respond. He needs to absorb the details that show up in those film sessions with the coaching staff. He has shown the mind for it. His basketball IQ has been obvious from the beginning, and that is the part of his game that never fits neatly in a box score. You see it in the way he moves, in the subtle work of setting a screen, in the angle of that screen, in the timing of a pass that hits a teammate right in the hands.
It can be hard to quantify that impact, but the impact is real. The Phoenix Suns have won eight of their last ten games with Oso finding his footing, and the team has caught the attention of people across the league with the way they have played.
So maybe that is where Oso’s value really lives. He is the thing you do not notice at first, then suddenly you cannot imagine the plate without it. The steak carries the meal, but the chimichurri brings it to life, and that is what Oso has started to do for this team. He sharpens the edges. He brightens the rhythm. He fills the gaps in ways that do not scream from the box score yet tilt the game in small, steady ways.
The Suns have found something in him, and if this stretch is any indication, the dish tastes a whole lot better with that extra layer on top.
