34 games in, the Suns, and the league at large, are starting to show their cards. Shapes are forming. Tendencies are sticking. You can feel the identities hardening night by night. There is still a long
road ahead, of course. A lot of basketball is left. A lot of transactions are waiting in the weeds. Plenty of growth is still to come across the Association. But this is the point of the season where the fog begins to lift, and who you are stops being a theory and starts becoming a habit. There is plenty left to untangle with this Suns team, but what we saw last we’ve seen in the Suns’ last 6 games fits the pattern we have been watching all season. They handle the teams they are supposed to handle. They show up and compete against the good ones, then struggle to land the final punch.
The record tells the story.
Phoenix sits at 20-14. Against teams under .500, they thrive, 13-4. Against teams over .500, it flips, 7-10. So as they settle into that familiar seventh seed territory, the real question becomes this: What are they, exactly?
They are more than an overachieving curiosity. More than a fun surprise. Right now, only a few teams live at the top of the food chain. Oklahoma City. San Antonio. Detroit. That is tier one.
Right below them sit the teams with real championship dreams, the Knicks, Rockets, and Nuggets. After that, the picture gets murky. Boston and Toronto live in that gray space where things would have to break perfectly. The Lakers wear a nice record but feel flimsy, and Minnesota looks sturdier than the math says.
Then there is the tier Phoenix currently occupies. Philadelphia. Miami. Cleveland. Orlando. Golden State. Teams built to matter. Teams capable of noise. Teams that can win a round, maybe two, but still searching for the pieces that turn a season into something louder.
Here is where the optimism creeps in for Phoenix. Teams living in that third and fourth tier still have runway. Plenty of it. There is time to grow, to tighten things up, to climb a tier or even two if the back half of the season breaks right or a transaction falls into their lap (I’m looking at you Lakers. I don’t know how you will get Herb Jones, but somehow, once again, the NBA gods will bless you in a city without lakes). Some luck helps, sure, but a lot of it is self-made. Many of those third and fourth-tier teams will be aggressive buyers at the deadline.
Phoenix sits in a different spot. They don’t need to be aggressive at the trade deadline. Why? They haven’t been whole all season.
The Suns have played almost the entire season without Jalen Green, save for five quarters. Grayson Allen, the fourth-highest-paid player on the roster, has barely been available. For a roster in the middle of a transformational transition year, they are ahead of schedule. A team I would have slotted closer to tier five before opening night now has a realistic path upward.
That path is not complicated. First, get healthy. It is hard to compete with teams like Cleveland when $50.2 million of payroll is wearing warmups instead of uniforms. Second, start beating teams with better records. That is how tiers change.
The Suns will not talk about tiers, though. They never do. This season, like this weekly exercise, lives in smaller pieces. One game. One road trip. One month. Handle what is in front of you, stack progress, and let the bigger picture take care of itself. That is how Phoenix should approach it. That is how they will.
In the big picture, we all know this season has been something worth leaning into. Maybe it does not end with confetti and a parade, but the course correction of this franchise has been genuinely enjoyable. Watching a team rediscover purpose, effort, and personality beats wandering the wilderness every time.
I am grateful Phoenix did not sink into that sixth tier this year, the one occupied by the Hornets, Nets, Wizards, Pacers, Kings, and Pelicans. I spend time lurking in opposing team subreddits. Trust me. Those places are bleak. Dark. Spirit draining. Credit to the Kings, who at least meet the misery with gallows humor and self-awareness. Still, I am glad that is not our reality this season.
