How will we remember Week 7 of the 2025-26 Suns season? It is a strange one to pin down.
It was a choppy week, mostly because there were only two games on the schedule. It is the week Devin Booker tweaked that groin again. It is the week the Suns handled the Lakers, then got handled by the Rockets. That’s the elevator speech.
It feels like one of those early December weeks where the foundation has already been poured and now it is about execution night after night. I do not walk away from Week 7 with
any sweeping conclusions. It is hard to define a team when its two best players are not on the floor, so it’d be irresponsible of me to do so.
Without Booker and without Green, you are still squinting at an incomplete picture. The effort is there, and that matters. But we still have no clear read on the ceiling because we have not seen this group whole for any real stretch of time.
So maybe that is what Week 7 really was. A holding pattern. A push toward the other side of the injuries. A push toward the other side of a brutal schedule stretch. A wait for this thing to finally feel complete and show the league what it actually is.
At 13 -10, they are in a better spot than most of us expected, and that still deserves acknowledgment. Week 7 felt strange for another reason, too. I barely got to watch them. After 7 games in 11 nights, we suddenly only had 2 games in 7 nights. Perhaps that is why the choppiness exists.
Week 7 did not give us answers, but it did give us position. The Suns are standing in sturdier ground than most of us penciled in back in October. That counts. Even if the picture is still blurred, even if the best two pieces are missing from the frame. This felt like the calm before clarity. The pause before the next stretch tells us something real.
For now, the season is not tilting one way or the other. It is waiting. And so are we.
Week 7 Record: 1-1
@ Los Angeles Lakers, W, 125-108
- Possession Differential: -0.1
- Turnover Differential: -10
- Offensive Rebounding Differential: -1
Down bodies and staring at another what-now moment, the Suns shrugged and swung anyway. Booker flashed for one sharp quarter before the groin tapped him out, Green stayed sidelined, Allen stayed sick, and Phoenix still punked the West’s second seed.
Mark Williams soared in transition, Dillon Brooks cooked on turnarounds, and Collin Gillespie slammed the door with a fourth-quarter three-point barrage. It was a gut-check win, soaked in fight, grit, and defiance.
@ Houston Rockets, L, 117-98
- Possession Differential: +7.0
- Turnover Differential: -8
- Offensive Rebounding Differential: +9
Friday night in Houston was a full-blown clunker. The Suns came out with purpose, hung around for a quarter and some change, then the wheels fell off in a shower of missed threes. Phoenix shot a brutal 14% from deep while the Rockets lit the fuse with 10 triples. Kevin Durant checked back in, the shots stayed cold, and the offense lost its compass. The rest was a slow-motion skid into the night.
Inside the Possession Game
- Weekly Possession Differential: +6.9
- Weekly Turnover Differential: -18
- Offensive Rebounding Differential: +8
- Year-to-Date Over/Under .500: +3
A graphic to gaze up as you sip your coffee:
This week felt like a tale of two cities. One game went one way. The other went straight off the rails. It is hard to hang your hat on the numbers when the sample size is thin. Only two games. Two completely different stories.
In the first one, the Suns did not win the possession battle. They did not win the offensive rebounding battle either. None of that mattered because they made shots, and they turned it into a win.
In the second game, they won all three areas that usually tilt things in your favor. Possessions. Turnovers. Offensive rebounding. And none of it mattered. When you shoot the way they shot against Houston, you can stack up all the extra chances you want, and it will not save you. They had 24 more shot attempts than the Rockets on Friday and still got walked out of the building. Escorted to the car. Sent to the airport. Why? Because it is not only about having possessions. It is about what you do with them. Shooting 39% from the field and 14% from beyond the arc will not get you anywhere.
Against the Lakers, though, they cashed those extra chances in. 12 more shots. 22 Lakers turnovers. 32 points off those mistakes. That is the season trend in a nutshell. The Suns are winning the possession battle more often than they are losing it, and they sit above .500 because of it. The Rockets game feels like an outlier. Hopefully, it stays that way.
Week 8 Preview
NBA Cup time! Yayyyy! Let’s go win it!
Week 8 is one of those strange ones. I am not even running a record poll this time because there is a variable we do not have an answer for yet, and it would not be fair to ask the question without it. But note that 52% of the community was correct in predicting that the Suns would go 1-1 in Week 7.
The whole thing starts on the road in Minnesota tomorrow night. A 5:30 tip on Peacock. Because yes, if you do not have a subscription, how dare you even think about watching basketball? Then it is off to Oklahoma City on Wednesday for a 5:30 NBA Cup quarterfinal against the Thunder. That one lives on Prime Video.
So if you are keeping score at home, that is two games and two different streaming services already.
The last game of the week is either the Lakers or the Spurs, and even the city is still a mystery. That part depends on what happens Wednesday. If the Suns win, they head to Las Vegas on Saturday to face the winner of San Antonio at Los Angeles. If they lose, they travel to face the loser on Friday. And I am fully prepared for that one to land on a completely different streaming service, because that is the only way any of this continues to make sense. More platforms. More confusion. More money.
