It’s hard to miss him when you’re watching Phoenix Suns basketball.
That will be the case when Jalen Green is on the floor given his electrifying skillset, but over the course of 41 missed games this year, he’s also been the most animated teammate on the bench and has turned every immediate postgame interview into a must-watch with the tomfoolery he inspires in the background.
Despite playing five quarters for Phoenix over the last three months since arriving in the Kevin Durant trade, he could not have done a better job of making himself a part of the team.
Now the pressure is on Green to keep this thing chugging upon his return Tuesday, Suns head coach Jordan Ott confirmed to reporters pregame on Monday.
RELATED STORIES
Fans line up around Mortgage Matchup Center for Devin Booker's new Book 2s
Green’s one game played was a dynamite 29-point performance, one that included him showing a willingness to defend and make plays for his teammates. It was also just the ninth game of the season. This is not that same Suns team anymore, a legitimate threat to finish top six in the Western Conference that is trending toward at worst finishing in the top-eight.
This requires a challenging balancing act to be done by the Suns upon Green’s insertion. And it doesn’t have as much to do with his inclination for inconsistency, because anyone stepping into a major role midseason for a thriving group would be dealing with a difficult transition.
Green will immediately become option 2A in the offense alongside Dillon Brooks and behind Devin Booker. We didn’t even know Brooks would offer that option back then in what has turned into a career year for him.
Brooks is not alone. Grayson Allen, Collin Gillespie, Jordan Goodwin and Royce O’Neale are all playing their best NBA basketball at the moment. Minutes and shots are going to go down for those guys, but with that, the ask naturally becomes for Green to be at his best with the opportunity now too. Because those guys are right now.
The difference is that his best is much better than theirs. It is tantalizing to see what head coach Jordan Ott has done in maximizing everyone on his roster while knowing the full tank of upside left to untap in the 23-year-old Green, with that supply being the reason Houston was OK with letting him go in the Durant trade and drafting Reed Sheppard third overall in 2024 as Green’s eventual replacement.
Expect Ott to design a whole lot of the offense around Green and for both Booker and Brooks to defer to Green early and often. An outstanding team-building venture thus far shows that trio understands the dynamics at hand. Making Green comfortable as soon as possible will eliminate growing pains, and more importantly, allow the rocket ship to be all fueled up ready to blast off.
How do all the parts of the ship fit together?
The jigsaw puzzle of Suns’ rotation with Jalen Green back
It’s always easy to look at a problem that can be a positive and say it’s a good problem to have, especially when you are not the one who has to solve that problem.
Ott has taken every challenge in stride this year and his biggest now is utilizing a fully healthy roster for the first time all season, doing so in a way that maintains everything that has worked so wonderfully to this point in the year.
Green up to Tuesday has played in five quarters, and while his return will likely come with a minutes restriction, his absence allowed Ott to avoid the juggling of a lopsided roster. But with that freedom, players beyond the initial frontlines of the rotation emerged, creating even more for Ott to maneuver now.
The simple number to know is 198. The Suns have 240 minutes to allocate at five positions, but unless Ott changes his philosophy on small-ball and bails on having a center on the floor at all times, it’s realistically 198 minutes split between all of the non-bigs.
To start, the otherworldly job Ott has done makes potential shortcomings like positional size seem less important to the thought exercise. Phoenix has routinely played smaller lineups all year, rarely leaning on some of its larger wings in a way some coaches would see as a necessity, and maximizing its strengths enough to make it work.
The other note to jot down is the ship has temporarily sailed on youth development in lieu of a hyper-competitive group that has the Suns pushing for a top-six seed. There is a strong case for still finding a way to do so through this success but it’s clearly not one of the most important factors to the Suns currently in deciding who plays or not.
OK, 198 minutes. A note that these 198 are just brief approximations, and that the calculus of an actual rotation with who comes out when has not been applied. Don’t expect these to match up quite definitively, even if this 10-man rotation is indeed the squad Ott assembles.
Nearly half come off the board right away.
That’s the 34 minutes per game for Booker and Brooks’ 31, as well as Green’s career mark of 32 MPG. It’s inarguable that those three guys could see a decrease in their role.
There’s only room for one more of those types of firm commitments after 97 minutes are instantly zapped, and it has to be Allen. His secondary ball-handling as a playmaker, in addition to his elite 3-point shooting volume and efficiency, is a necessary presence for the offense. Allen was well on his way to a breakout year before injuries began stacking up and he’s shown in his brief return that he is still on pace for it. Let’s put his number at 28 in the fifth starting lineup spot.
That leaves 73 minutes to split between O’Neale, Gillespie, Goodwin, Ryan Dunn, Rasheer Fleming, Jamaree Bouyea, Isaiah Livers and Nigel Hayes-Davis.
To do some quick tidying up, Livers and Hayes-Davis both had stints in the rotation, with Livers standing out more than his counterpart. Neither, however, performed to the (unfortunately for them) exceptional degree required to earn consideration with everyone vying for playing time.
Speaking of! That’s exactly what Bouyea did. In 280 minutes, he has shot 56.2%. Bouyea consistently defied opponents picking on the small guy. Not only were they made a fool of when targeting him as a defender, but making stars defend him thinking it would be some easy rest time was instead met with an aggressive-minded Bouyea going at them with his scoring prowess. There’s no room for him but Bouyea should be the first name up if a ball-handler goes down again.
To go back to the mindset of guarantees and get back to dishing out minutes, O’Neale is an integral part of this team despite his weaknesses on defense and how much opposing offenses have hunted his poor on-ball defense. The 3-point volume and trustworthiness he always rewards with his decision-making as an open shooter is a key fulcrum inside the Suns improbably being a good offensive team. We will bump down his 30 MPG, but only to 25.
There is case you could make the Suns have enough offense from there and need to prioritize their strong suit of defense. It is the logical case to make.
But Gillespie has arguably been the Suns’ third-best player this season. He has to keep playing, and in a concrete role. With Green back, he will take Gillespie’s rotation spot of checking out first and subbing in around the late first quarter to bring ball-handling to the second unit, a group that has thrived all year. It’s vital for Green maintains that effectiveness, so Gillespie should be out there for some of it anyway. Twenty minutes for Gillespie.
OK. Let’s review. We are at six names on the perimeter to field a total of 198 minutes. So far it’s Booker (34 minutes), Green (32), Allen (28), Brooks (31), O’Neale (25) and Gillespie (20) making up 170 minutes.
Even with everything we said about Ott overcoming the major weakness of size, this is a tiny freaking ensemble as it is. And with that, there’s still no way Goodwin can be out of the mix given how he embodies what the Suns do.
Ott will refer to a guy as a “possession gainer” and Goodwin is the best one at it on the team. Whittling that down to a statistic by combining offensive rebounds and steals per 36 minutes, Goodwin’s 5.6 is by far the most for a perimeter player and only trails centers Mark Williams (6.3) and Nick Richards (5.6) for the most on the team. The next-best perimeter player is Fleming’s 4.7 and some of that is assisted by garbage time.
Goodwin is also playing his best basketball right this second. Thursday and Saturday were both tremendous performances, with Goodwin truly coming into his own as a confident offensive player, and that is clearly giving him even more juice defensively. He’s consistently been at 22 minutes a game this year and it’s teeth-pulling levels of anguish to take any of those away. It should only be just a few, so let’s do 16.
With that, there’s a dozen minutes left for the “10th guy” between Dunn and Fleming. It’s not easy to decide who could make more of a difference as the wing with size down the stretch when you consider how the year has gone for both of them.
Fleming got a half-dozen looks in the rotation over the last few weeks, which can be interpreted as Ott giving him one final opportunity at minutes before the well completely dries up the rest of the year. He’s shown his potential throughout these stints and also his limitations. As it goes for some rookies, Fleming is still in clear need of figuring out where he is supposed to be on the floor, and more importantly, how his athleticism can naturally blend into the flow of a game to impact it.
Dunn has regressed. He had plenty of forceful outings defensively last year in his first season, with clear points of improvement to develop into a reliably great defender. That progress has not come. Dunn’s consistency is still in the way of him reaching the heights he quite honestly should be reaching already given how much of an offensive liability he was coming out of college, and the growth he showed there stagnated too. He hasn’t scored in double figures since mid-November and is still shooting in the low 30s from 3.
This could be the nod Fleming needs to take off and bring a wave of two-way explosiveness the Suns would benefit massively from. But even though Dunn hasn’t taken off yet in his own right, he’s been out there pretty much all year for a second unit that has turned into one of the best in basketball. The last 12 minutes go to him.
Follow @KellanOlson
Hence then, the article about jalen green brings suns the vibes now he must bring the balance was published today ( ) and is available on Arizona sports ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Jalen Green brings Suns the vibes, now he must bring the balance )
Also on site :
- Yale Sets Five New Pool Records In Bulldogs’ Senior Night Sweep of Cornell
- I warned Colorado lawmakers this law was unconstitutional and now they will pay millions in attorney fees (Opinion)
- Red, white and ready: Ferrari unveil 2026 F1 race suits