There are plenty of things in life that give people anxiety. For me, it’s being late. Or even the threat of being late. Perhaps it’s the military man in me, somebody who made the mistake of showing up late to formation during basic training and paid for it in the front-leaning rest position, beads of sweat dripping off my nose and forming a puddle beneath me on the warm pavement at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, one June morning. If you’re not early, you’re late. That’s been my mantra ever since.
Unfortunately,
that familiar anxiety is beginning to build regarding the Phoenix Suns. This team is 12th in the Western Conference standings after starting 1-4, something we’ve seen before. At this point last season, the Suns were also 1-4 and were 13th. The difference then is they were only 3.0 games out of first, and due to an odd scheduling start for the Suns and the fact that they have played the fewest games in the NBA, they are 4.5 games back of the top team in the league. That team? The Rockets…
These slow starts create a significant barrier between the Suns and a proverbial train that’s already leaving the station, headed toward the postseason. That’s right, the Suns are in danger of being late for that train. Anxiety! Because with every passing day and every loss that accumulates, they find themselves falling further and further behind, making it increasingly difficult to hop on board and reach their desired postseason destination.
A season ago, we found ourselves in the same predicament, but the feeling surrounding the team was much different. A big part of that came down to expectations. Nobody really expected the Suns to be a team that could compete at a high level. The prevailing thought was to let the season play out, sell off assets around the trade deadline, and begin building toward the summer of 2026.
Following that 1-4 start, the Suns began putting things together. The sloppy basketball we’d witnessed early in the season became more organized, and the effort that was evident through those first five games finally started translating into wins. I had this to say after they lost 114-113 to the Grizzlies a season ago:
Losing still stings, but this team isn’t miles away. The execution needs tightening, and these are the aches that come with learning how to win again.
It’s tough to find moral victories in Game 5 when you’re sitting at 1–4, but I’ll say it anyway. I was entertained. Disappointed, sure. The ending wasn’t what anyone wanted. But maybe this year isn’t about wins and losses. Maybe it’s about how they respond to nights like this.
The feeling this year is different, however. Locally, expectations were higher, even if the national perception remained relatively unchanged. The roster construction was clunky, but you could at least see the vision of what this team wanted to become. Regardless, those expectations change the reality of your situation. While the effort has certainly been present, its consistency has begun to wane, and the execution remains frustratingly inconsistent.
Last season, we could talk ourselves into believing thatDillon Brooks and Jalen Green’s absence due to injury was a significant reason for the team’s struggles. And perhaps this year, we’re doing the same thing with Mark Williams. But the feeling isn’t the same. The reality of the situation is slowly sinking in, and it’s one in which hope is becoming increasingly difficult to find. This is a team that doesn’t control its own draft picks, so finding itself stuck in the middle of the standings is essentially a death sentence.
When you consider the anti-tanking rules that will be in place this year, there’s a very real possibility that the Suns could find themselves among the teams with an 8.1% chance of landing the number one overall pick. And how “Suns” would it be for Phoenix to benefit from not being completely horrendous under the league’s new draft lottery structure, only to have to hand that pick over to Houston?
Are we there yet? Are we seriously thinking about this already? (I am) When you start 1-4 and look around the standings at the other teams with only one win, seeing the Kings, Nets, Jazz, Bulls, and Bucks alongside you, it’s difficult not to get a little frazzled. Because those are the teams that were projected to be bad. It’s why we’re running to the trade machine trying to find fixes, because you have no room for a down season when there is no benefit to being bad.
I think back to a season ago and the turnaround we witnessed. What the Suns accomplished was impressive, climbing out of 13th place in the Western Conference and playing some incredibly good basketball along the way. For one fleeting night on January 22, 2026, the Suns had fought their way all the way back to the fifth seed in the Western Conference. After starting 1-4, they went 26-13 to reach that point. That is going to be incredibly hard to replicate.
Can this team reproduce any aspect of what we witnessed last year? Can they put together another impressive run that allows them to hop aboard that train headed toward the postseason?
There is hope if you look hard enough. Through their first 5 games a season ago, the Suns had a 120.5 defensive rating (28th) and -9.8 net rating (27th). This season, they are at 124.0 (30th) and -9.8 (25th). After their 1-4 start a season ago, the Suns posted a 112.3 defensive rating (8th) and a +2.1 net rating (13th). It is possible. We’ve seen it before.
Psst…I’m saying the quiet part out loud…that team can rebound the damn ball…the worst team in rebound percentage last season was the Washington Wizards at 47.1%. The Suns are currently at 45.7%…
We’ve got a long trip ahead of us, my fellow Suns fans, and we’ll spend much of that journey wondering whether this team can recapture any semblance of what it was a season ago. We’ll look for solutions in every corner, talking ourselves into the viability of overpaid players like Domantas Sabonis or Dejounte Murray as mediocre saviors. But with so many red flags surrounding the roster construction, it’s difficult to shake that familiar feeling of anxiety from being late building in the pit of your stomach.
