A soft murmur kept rolling through the crowd on Thursday night as the Suns tore through the Pacers. In my section, a handful of Pacers fans were slumped in their seats, talking through their team’s latest stretch of misery. Even they were asking the same thing. “When are we going to see the kid from Duke?”
They meant the 7’2” rookie the Suns took 10th overall in the 2025 NBA Draft. The more dialed-in Suns fans had their eyes on Rasheer Fleming, the pick at 31. With the game slipping away from Indiana,
the crowd’s attention drifted toward the end of the bench. People wanted to see the young guys who have barely touched the floor this season.
It is tough to grow when all you get are practice reps. You can build habits in drills, but real development lives in game speed moments. For Malauch for Fleming, those moments have been few. 57 combined entering the night against Indiana. They need the real thing. Game lights. Game pressure. Game mistakes. That is where the progress comes from.
Up 42, and without the echoing chants we heard from the crowd last year for Bol Bol, Maluach entered the game.
On Friday night, both rookies finally had room to breathe. They made the short trip to Tempe to run with the Valley Suns, the G League crew that has become the unofficial proving ground for anyone trying to crack the main rotation. What happened there told a pretty clear story. Especially in the case of Maluach.
There is a reason he has not seen many meaningful minutes at the NBA level.
Rasheer put together a solid night. In 30 minutes played, which is almost as many minutes as he’s played in his 7 appeareacnes with the big league club, he scored a team-high 23 points on 8-of-14 shooting and 3-of-8 from deep. He also snagged 11 boards. His athleticism is out of this world. You can see the outline of what he might become once the experience catches up to the talent.
“I loved it,” Rasheer informed reporters after the game. “I’m just glad I had all my guys here, showing up to watch. Had my guys playing with me. It was great. I ain’t gonna lie. Like, I really don’t remember the last time I played that much in a real game.”
Fleming needs time, he needs structure, he needs more miles on the odometer. But the blueprint is visible. He is long, he moves well, and he had real moments against the Rip City Remix. His three point shot takes time to load. It is not a quick trigger. Even with that, he found ways to stand out.
Maluach had a different experience. You might have seen the clip floating around social media, but it was the outlier of the evening.
That was primarily it. He had a trio of quality blocks, then an overall underwhelming night. He finished with 9 points on 2-of-5 shooting and 3 rebounds in 26 minutes. The reason made sense once you watched it unfold. He was trading hits with Yang Hansen, the Portland Trail Blazers pick at 16. Hansen is a mountain. He stands 7’1” and weighs 270, and he pushed Maluach around from the opening tip.
This is why the night mattered for Khaman. He needed to feel that weight. He needed the grind, the shoving, the wrestling match that comes with real NBA size. He needed to fight through that struggle in a place without spotlights or fireworks or Weezy yelling, “Yeaahhhhhh”. Not in the Mortgage Matchup Center, but in Mullett Arena, where the official attendance was a grand total of 1,507.
That’s why the G League matters. And that’s why we shouldn’t be banging the drum to rush him into NBA minutes he’s simply not ready for. The 19-year-old center has plenty of development ahead of him, and while I don’t know how long he’ll stay in the G, every rep he gets down there is huge for his long-term growth.
I keep coming back to the developmental arc of the young players the Suns have drafted over the last decade. Marquese Chriss. Dragan Bender. Alex Len. All of them were thrown into the fire way too early, mostly out of necessity. They were tossed into losing situations and expected to figure it out on the fly. It didn’t work.
And that’s the luxury the Suns have now. They don’t need to rely on Maluach. They don’t need to force Fleming into minutes. Would we love to see them? Absolutely. But there’s no need. The team can actually afford to let them breathe, learn, develop, and make mistakes in a space that won’t tank their confidence.
Yes, the murmurs will always be there. And trust me, I’m guilty of wanting to see them early too. But this isn’t a roster that needs its young guys on the court just to soak up minutes in losing situations. The Suns finally have the chance to develop prospects without sacrificing wins, and that’s a rare, valuable place to be.
The thing you have to remember, something Brian Gregory has hammered since taking over as general manager, is that his entire philosophy starts with development. That’s where he made his impact long before he ever had the GM title, and it’s the backbone of what he’s trying to build now. If you create a structured plan with real milestones instead of just tossing young players to the Timberwolves, you dramatically increase their chances of succeeding.
And that’s exactly what the Suns have to prioritize.
They don’t have a first-round pick in 2026. They don’t have one in 2027. This rookie and sophomore class is absolutely vital to the long-term health of the franchise. Whether these guys eventually become contributors in Phoenix or turn into viable assets you can move when the time comes, the approach has to be the same: put them in positions to succeed.
Rushing them does nothing. Developing them does everything.
If you want to watch Maluach take on the Rip City Remix, Arizona Sports is replaying the game at 7:00pm tonight. I caught it last night on the Roku Sports Channel, because I’m a psycho who spends Friday nights watching the G League for fun. Do what I did: watch the game, take your own notes, and tell me in the comments what you see.
What did I see? A kid who was thinking through every possession. A step slow. Guards dragged him out, hit him with a couple jukes, and took advantage of that processing delay and lack of quick-twitch recovery.
The hope is that he keeps getting these reps, and that we keep trying to stay patient within that process. Because yeah, we all want to see him play. But we also want to see him play well.
