Phoenix Suns insider breaks down Bradley Beal contract buyout
The Suns bought out guard Bradley Beal’s contract, ending his time in Phoenix. The Republic’s Duane Rankin explains what it means for the team.
Phoenix Suns team owner Mat Ishbia isn’t putting too much stock in preseason predictions for the franchise by “the so-called experts.”
ESPN’s NBA insiders predict the Suns will win just 30 games and finish 13th in the Western Conference this upcoming 2025-26 season.
“I’m not worried about what the so-called experts think,” Ishbia quoted a tweet from Burn City Sports about the ESPN article. “They had us as a title contender the past two years and were wrong then. We’re focused on making our fans proud by playing great as a team and building a brand of basketball that’s tough and gritty.”
NBA.com ranks the Suns 13th in its West offseason power rankings out of 15 teams.
I’m not worried about what the so-called experts think. They had us as a title contender the past two years and were wrong then. We’re focused on making our fans proud by playing great as a team and building a brand of basketball that’s tough and gritty. https://t.co/o9ysQlxW6r
— Mat Ishbia (@Mishbia15) August 27, 2025
ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk dedicated one line to the Suns in writing about the “bottom five” teams in the West: “With Kevin Durant now with Houston and Bradley Beal with L.A. (Clippers), Phoenix has begun its rebuild around Devin Booker and a ton of bigs.”
The Suns fell well short of winning a championship with Booker, Durant and Beal the last two seasons.
Phoenix was swept by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the 2024 playoffs after a 49-win season under Frank Vogel. Ishbia made a bold statement afterward about the roster at the time that turned heads throughout the league.
“It’s extremely fixable,” Ishbia said at a news conference in May 2024. “Let’s just be real, although this isn’t a cool narrative, and the national media really won’t want to play it out there. Ask the other 29 GMs, 26 of them would trade their whole team for our whole team and our draft picks, and everything as is. The house is not on fire. We’re in a great position. It’s not hard to fix. It’s not we don’t have enough talent to win a championship. We have enough talent to win a championship.”
Ishbia later fired Vogel, hired Mike Budenholzer and the Suns proceeded to win just 36 games and failed the make the playoffs for the first time since the 2019-20 season, which was the last time they had a losing record before last season.
“Disappointing,” Ishbia said in an April 2025 news conference after the 2024-25 season. “Awful. I watch every game like all of you guys do. No one is proud of it. Nobody is happy with it, from me to the front office to the coaches to the players to the marketing executives to the security guards. Everyone is disappointed, embarrassed and it was a failure. We struggled. We didn’t do a good enough job.”
Ishbia fired Budenholzer, elevated Brian Gregory from vice president of player programming to general manager in replacing James Jones and hired Jordan Ott to mark Phoenix’s fourth head coach in four seasons.
Ott, 40, is a first-year NBA head coach who previously worked as an assistant for the Cleveland Cavaliers before landing the job in Phoenix.
The Suns traded Durant to the Rockets before the 2025 draft and bought out Beal, who later signed with the Los Angeles Clippers. Phoenix landed Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks and the 10th overall pick in the 2025 draft – Duke freshman 7-footer Khaman Maluach.
The Suns also traded a 2029 first-round pick (least favorable of Cleveland Cavaliers, Minnesota and Utah Jazz) to Charlotte for 7-footer Mark Williams.
The Rockets are predicted to finish second in the West behind defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder (64-18) and the Clippers are ranked fifth.
ESPN’s Tim MacMahon wrote: “Houston addressed the glaring hole on its roster – a go-to guy – by trading for future Hall of Famer Kevin Durant without compromising hopes of having a long runway as a contender.”
ESPN has the Rockets winning 54 games and the Clippers notching 50 victories. The Denver Nuggets (53-29) and T-Wolves (51-31) are predicted to finish third and fourth, respectively, and the Los Angeles Lakers (50-32) are listed sixth.
Have opinions about the current state of the Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at dmrankin@gannett.com or contact him at 480-810-5518. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @DuaneRankin.
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