CJ Huntley
Forward/Center, 6’11”, 211 pounds, 23 years old, Rookie
He looks the part. Broad shoulders, long frame, the kind of silhouette that makes you pause for a beat and think, “Yeah, that could be an NBA player”. CJ Huntley has the body, no doubt. And sure, he lumbers. Every big man does. It’s the trade-off of carrying that much frame through a hardwood battlefield built for speed demons and sharpshooters. But he does so with enough athleticism that it creates a raised brow.
Huntley isn’t riding into Phoenix
on a white horse, ready to tilt the balance of the Suns’ rotation. He’s not that guy. He’s stepping into the same lane Jalen Bridges did a season ago. He’s a two-way contract, a developmental experiment, a G League crucible where dreams are either sharpened into weapons or shattered into dust.
So no, don’t hang your hope on him like a jersey in the rafters. Don’t pencil him into your 10-man rotational doodles. Huntley is not for the dreamers; he’s for the watchers. The ones who understand that this league is built on margins, and sometimes the smallest margin grows into a monster before anyone notices. He is a blip on the Suns’ radar. Tny, maybe forgettable.
But still glowing. And blips have a way of becoming something more, if you keep your eyes on them.
College Career Recap
CJ Huntley is the kind of player who makes you rethink the whole notion of timing. A five-year man at Appalachian State, he didn’t kick down the door early. He eased it open, step by step, until his senior season, when the light finally hit him full in the face. That year he played all 31 games for the Mountaineers, averaging 15.7 points and 8.1 rebounds, good enough to land him on the First Team All-Sun Belt. A late bloomer, sure, but sometimes the best stories take their time.
What makes him interesting isn’t just the box score, though. Huntley found some rhythm from deep in that final year, hitting 35.6% on 3.8 attempts a night. Across his entire 153-game career, the number dips to 33.8%, a reminder that while he isn’t a full-blown floor-spacer, he’s also not the guy you can leave wide open without consequence. Call him a stretch four with training wheels, maybe a shade more reliable from outside than someone like Oso Ighodaro, and the potential is there if he keeps chiseling at it.
Contract Details
CJ Huntley isn’t here to crack the starting five or shake the rafters at PHX Arena anytime soon. He signed on a two-way deal, which means he’s got 50 games of NBA oxygen available to him if the Suns decide to pull that lever.
He is more likely to spend his time down in the Valley, where the G League affiliate will adopt him as their new darling.
Strengths & Weaknesses
When I look at his strengths, the secret sauce is his hands. Get him the ball, and it doesn’t slip away. He hammered home 44 dunks last season, according to Synergy. Combine that with the fact that he’s surprisingly agile for his size, able to switch onto the perimeter and not look completely out of place, and you’ve got a player who can tease coaches with possibilities.
Weaknesses? The biggest issue is spacing. In Summer League, it was clear he knew what he wanted to do, had a vision of where he wanted to go, but that vision didn’t always mesh with the collective offense. He’d cut when the lane was clogged, float to a spot that disrupted flow, or hold the ball a beat too long, and suddenly the possession felt like someone dropped a wrench in the gears.
That’s not a knock on his effort. It’s a knock on timing and understanding. NBA spacing is a language, and right now Huntley’s still translating it in real time. The discombobulation that comes with those misreads is fixable, but it’s the difference between being a curiosity in the G League and carving out meaningful NBA minutes.
One Key Factor
It’s tough to pin down a single defining factor for CJ Huntley, but if you had to circle one word in Sharpie, it’s “opportunity”. Not in the “Suns are counting on him to change the season” sense, because if that’s the case, things have gone sideways in Phoenix. No, his opportunity is going to live in the G League, where minutes are currency and mistakes don’t bankrupt you.
For Huntley, the challenge is almost existential: he’s got an NBA body, but he still has to figure out how to live inside it. Where to be on the floor, how to carve out space, when to let the athleticism take over instead of forcing it. If he learns that, if he understands how to marry his frame with the geometry of the game, the rest begins to flow. His hands, his finishing, his flashes of stretch-four potential; all of it starts to look like something real.
That’s the tightrope of a developmental player: opportunity is everything, but knowing how to seize it is the trick. Huntley has the tools. The next step is finding the map.
Prediction Time
If you make your way down to Tempe, step through the doors of Mullett Arena, and catch a Valley Suns game or two, I’ll make you a prediction: CJ Huntley will pop. That’s the stage tailor-made for him. The G League runs like it’s plugged into a different voltage. It’s faster, looser, more chaotic, with every possession a chance to prove you belong. It’s basketball stripped of politics and rotations, a place where raw tools and effort show up immediately.
And that’s where Huntley will thrive. The athleticism, the hands, the late-bloomer confidence; those things translate in a hurry when the pace quickens and defenses aren’t fully formed. You’ll see the dunks, the blocks, the flashes of a stretch-four jumper, and for a moment you’ll let yourself wonder.
But the NBA isn’t built on flashes. Huntley’s contract makes him a two-way, and sure, that means up to 50 games with the Suns if the stars align. More likely, he’ll get a couple of call-ups here and there. Maybe when injuries pile up, maybe when the season drifts toward its finish line and experimentation sets in. Nothing more than that, at least not yet.
Stat Prediction: 5 games played, 2.1 PPG, 0.2 APG, 1.9 RPG
Final Thoughts
That’s the beauty of having a G League affiliate again is it gives you room for dreams that don’t have to cash out right away. Last year it was Jalen Bridges, and I’ll admit, I thought he might turn into something more than he has so far. There’s still time, of course. The story isn’t written yet. But that’s the lesson: development is a slow burn, not a spark.
CJ Huntley slides right into that same narrative.
He’s got the NBA frame, no question. What he doesn’t have yet is the NBA opportunity. And that’s okay. The G League is the bridge. It’s where a body like his learns how to become a weapon, where raw athleticism gets married to spacing, timing, and professional rhythm. That’s where he has to make his bones.
So do I like him? Yes, objectively. Do I have high hopes that he’ll become a difference-maker in Phoenix? Not yet. He’s not the guy you circle on a roster sheet and expect to swing a game. He’s the reason the G League exists, the kind of player who can turn opportunity into growth if he takes advantage. And honestly, I hope he does. Because it’s in stories like his, the late bloomers fighting for a foothold, that you’re reminded why the grind matters in the first place.
