The Phoenix Suns are crawling toward the end of one of the nastiest stretches they will see all season. This thing has been a full contact gauntlet since November 21, almost a month of staring down top-tier teams with no nights off and no soft landings.
After beating Portland on November 18, the Suns sat at 9–6. Then the schedule dropped the hammer. 14 games with 13 of them being against teams over .500.
Minnesota. San Antonio. Houston. Oklahoma City. Denver. Los Angeles. Houston again. Minnesota again. Oklahoma City again. The
Lakers again. 11 games of repeated punches. The only team under .500 in that run was Sacramento, and even that never feels easy. The gauntlet is not fully done yet, but the Suns have survived it. They went 5–6 through that stretch, and that record tells you more about who this team is than any clean win ever could.
They did it without Jalen Green. They did it with Devin Booker missing three games. They did it while getting dragged into slow games, physical games, whistle-heavy games, and games that tested patience more than talent. That month-long grind is almost over.
Before they can exhale, there is still business to handle. Golden State comes up twice in the next three days, which matters since the Warriors are sitting eighth and looking up at Phoenix. Then it is the Lakers again on December 23, the third meeting in 23 days, because the NBA scheduler likes seeing my Twitter skirmishes.
After that, the air finally loosens. Not a vacation, because those do not exist in this league, but a stretch where you are not playing teams above you in the standings every single night. Two games in New Orleans on back-to-back nights. A trip to Washington. Sure, they close out the 2025 calendar year in Cleveland, but the schedule breathes once again.
What stands out is how the Suns have positioned themselves through all of this. This type of grind can break you or weld you together, and they have leaned toward the latter. During this stretch, Phoenix still leads the league in steals at 11.2 per game. That is 1.5 more than Oklahoma City, the second-best team in that category. The defense travels. The activity never dipped.
The offense has felt the weight. The three-point shooting dropped to 34.4%, which ranks 22nd in the league over this span. Assists fell to 23.5 per night, good for 28th. Playing elite competition every night will do that to you. Rhythm gets stripped away. Flow turns into survival.
But that was always the mission: survive the gauntlet. If the Suns can pull out two wins over the next three games, they finish this brutal 14-game stretch at .500. Given the injuries, given the schedule, given the opponents, that is wild.
They took the hits. They stayed standing. Now comes the part where we find out what they look like on the other side.
