overtime thriller against the Orlando Magic<\/a>, Goodwin remained mostly healthy throughout the regular season, playing in 70 games. At the end of the season, he started a few games after Collin Gillespie started to struggle and the team was struggling. He started in both play-in games and in Game 1 of the playoffs against the Oklahoma City Thunder but was sidelined the rest of the series after going down early in the contest with calf soreness.<\/p>\nHis best game of the year? His career-high 26-point contest against the Thunder back in January when the Suns rallied from down double digits to defeat the defending champs.<\/p>\n
Contract and Roster Context<\/p>\n
Goodwin inked a three-year $19 million deal with a player option for the final season to return to Phoenix in June. The contract increases in value by year and starts at 3.55% of the cap up to 3.72%, an important metric to be paying attention to in the second apron era of the NBA salary cap. The deal is the largest and longest of the veteran\u2019s six-year career.<\/p>\n
He can\u2019t be traded until January 15th, 2027.<\/p>\n
Jordan Goodwin is the Suns version of the Thunder\u2019s Alex Caruso or the New York Knicks\u2019 Josh Hart. No task is too small for him, and he\u2019s comfortable playing any position from shooting guard to power forward. He helps keep Devin Booker and Jalen Green fresh on offense by taking on the other team\u2019s best perimeter scorers and is able to battle inside to secure offensive rebounds at an elite rate for players his size. He ranked 42nd in the entire NBA in total offensive boards. Amen Thompson and Dyson Daniels were the only guards ahead of him.<\/p>\n
Another reason Goodwin has become so valuable to the team? He\u2019s finally hitting threes consistently. Knocking down more than 37% of his triples on nearly 4.5 attempts per game. When he shot 5.6 triples per game in February, the most attempts per game he shot in any month of the season, he hit the deep ball at a 40% clip. His ability to space the floor is what makes him more valuable to the team than he was in his first stint on the Suns when he hit just 29% of his threes.<\/p>\n
It would be in the Suns\u2019 best interest if Goodwin could become a consistent ball handler and playmaker. With Grayson Allen now in Charlotte, the team lacks any strong ball handlers off the bench outside of Collin Gillespie. After bringing in sharpshooter Luke Kennard this offseason, the main objective of the team\u2019s second unit should be to get as many threes up as possible.<\/p>\n
Goodwin started his career playing point guard, and he\u2019s listed as one on Basketball-Reference, but in most lineups he played in last season, he was not the team\u2019s primary ball handler. When he was with the Washington Wizards and in his first stint with the Suns, he had point guard responsibilities, but his second stint in Phoenix has had him playing mostly the two-four spots. It\u2019s definitely something he is capable of.<\/p>\n
I expect a similar year from Goodwin a season ago, but with increased volume. Last year, he averaged 22:27 minutes per game; I expect that number to jump up to closer to 25-27 minutes per game. The team knows what they have in him, and their trust in him clearly increased as the season went on.<\/p>\n
Look for a small statistical increase and a larger impact on both ends.<\/p>\n
Stat Prediction: 74 Games, 9.4 PPG, 5.2 RPG, 1.3 APG, 43\/39\/71 shooting<\/p>\n
Jordan Goodwin is an important part of the brand of basketball that the Phoenix Suns are trying to build. He\u2019s someone a lot of the league had doubted (even the Suns did) and proved people wrong. Now there\u2019s no proving people wrong; he\u2019s gotten paid. The team clearly believes in him. With higher expectations and a contract after a career year, it\u2019s time for his impact to increase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every day, we\u2019ll take a closer look at another member of the 2026-27 Phoenix Suns, examining what they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3791],"tags":[7,6,2065,472,4045,604,98705,4054],"class_list":["post-840176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-phoenix-suns","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-phoenix","tag-phoenix-suns","tag-phoenixsuns","tag-suns","tag-suns-player-previews","tag-suns-roster"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117307402108800030","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}