Kevin Durant followed up a 42-point performance with another 38, Devin Booker hit a game-winner with two seconds left, Ryan Dunn posterized Giannis Antetokounmpo, and the Phoenix Suns picked up a vital 108-106 win over the Milwaukee Bucks in Mike Budenholzer’s first game against his former team.
If you had shown that opening paragraph to a Suns fan at the start of the season and told them all that would come to pass in late March, they probably would’ve assumed this team was chugging along as one of the top teams in the Western Conference, not fighting for a play-in spot in a last-ditch attempt to salvage what’s left of the season for a sub-.500 team.
This framing is not meant to come off in such a Debbie Downer sort of way. Lord knows we’ve had enough of that this season, with most conversations in the Suns space revolving around getting off of Bradley Beal’s contract, firing Mike Budenholzer, blowing the team up, hiring a new front office, and perhaps most annoying of all, the unending (and frankly, idiotic) war between KD stans and Book stans. We really aren’t here to be pessimistic right when the Suns are finally showing signs of life, because this recent turnaround truly does feel different.
But it was striking Monday night, realizing just how long it had been since Phoenix Suns basketball had felt this fun.
Competitive, high-stakes hoops. Durant and Booker playing like superstars with helpful, two-way role players around them. Budenholzer’s players trying to help their coach get one against the organization that fired him a few years back. Big-time energy plays and memorable highlights, like Book’s game-winner, KD’s go-ahead 3 with 26 seconds left, and of course the signature dunk of Dunn’s career so far:
Much like it has over the last three games, PHX Arena felt different again on Monday, and everyone picked up on it.
“Louder,” Booker said with a smile when asked whether he sensed a difference with the home crowd lately. “It’s fun, we’re building on it. We feel it, and we just gotta stay with it. Like I said already, we’ve put ourselves in this situation, so it feels like the playoffs already. We gotta have every game.”
Booker and the Suns will be the first to acknowledge that difference in crowd activity hinges on their performance, which, as a team, has wavered throughout the year. Phoenix has played decent basketball in spurts, but they haven’t been able to sustain it for four full quarters, let alone a solid month or even a win streak. With the Milwaukee win, Phoenix’s four-game win streak is the first time they’ve compiled that many wins in a row since Nov. 8 — back when they started the season 8-1.
The fans in attendance may not have known that not-so-fun fact, but everybody in the building could feel the difference, almost like a collective crowd of 17,000 people had stirred from the slumber of the last three months, awakened by a living, breathing reminder that Suns basketball can still be fun, that Kevin Durant and Devin Booker are the shit, and that surrounding those two with energetic, athletic, defensive-minded players can lead to wins against quality opponents.
Unforgettable posters and game-winners help, but all of that context was baked into an electric atmosphere at PHX Arena.
“This felt like playoff basketball,” Dunn said. “I don’t know how playoff basketball is, and I’m excited to really see it when we get there, but this is the closest thing I’ve felt to playoff basketball. Just the way the crowd was involved, and they’ve been involved the whole season, so it’s our job to do it for them.”
Suns have turned the page, but how will this book end?
Forget about the last time the Suns won two or three games in a row (Jan. 27). When was the last time it was enjoyable watching this team play? When was the last time they defended with purpose and intent? When was the last time KD and Book were trading 40-balls, the rookies got to do their thing, the arena was rocking and the team was winning against legitimate opponents, all in the same game?
Even Budenholzer picking up a win against his former team seemed to galvanize the group, which is not something we’ve been able to say very often about this particular team under coach Bud.
“There’s a lot of history there, and so I think the most important thing is our players,” Budenholzer said of beating Milwaukee. “And if they gave a little extra for me, that would be great.”
Granted, not everyone will be jumping on the “Suns are so back!” bandwagon just yet. A four-game win streak, with two of those wins coming against the Bucks and East-leading Cleveland Cavaliers, is obviously impressive. Those who have been paying attention and actually watching the games, rather than box score surfing, know the last two weeks have felt different. The Suns are suddenly defending at a — dare we say it? — competent level over that stretch, which just so happened to coincide with Ryan Dunn and Oso Ighodaro rejoining the rotation, as well as newcomer Cody Martin and two-way guard Collin Gillespie.
Budenholzer mentioned the Suns’ defense progressively getting better throughout the game after a first quarter where they surrendered 30 points to the Bucks in the opening frame. That alone is progress, and it starts with the rookies, Martin and Gillespie helping set a tone on that end.
“It feels like the defense is getting better,” Budenholzer said of their recent momentum. “Ryan, I thought, was big in the second half. He took the challenge of guarding Antetokounmpo, and just gave us a lot of different things — offensive boards, the dunk, the 3s. Cody’s coming in and helping us defensively, I think Colin has a presence. So I think those three guys have helped give us a defensive kind of energy that’s been good for us.”
Multiple Suns players — unprompted, mind you — have pointed to Oso Ighodaro and the team finally leaning into more switching as the biggest keys to their recent turnaround. They’ve been searching for consistency all season long, and they’re actually building on it for once.
“I think we are, and I think it starts with our defense,” Dunn explained. “I think we’re flying around, we’re talking. You kind of could see it in the first half, we were kind of just very lackadaisical, and that’s when they got what they wanted. But I think in the second half, we were just able to talk and move around and be able to dissect the offense and closing out and everything like that.”
It’s regrettable it took the Suns 72 games to get to this point, and it’s impossible to avoid thinking about what could have been if Budenholzer had continued to feed his rookies ample minutes from December through early March. Watching Phoenix fall out of the play-in picture thanks to the league’s 27th-ranked defense — knowing the entire time that the theoretical answers to their problems were wasting away on the bench — is infuriating.
It was a baffling coaching blunder that may very well cost the Suns their season. It looked bad at the time, and it looks even worse in retrospect, because even if they ride this newfound momentum, hang onto one of those final play-in spots, and win a pair of play-in games to snag the 8-seed in the Western Conference, their reward will be a first-round matchup with the bandsaw that is the Oklahoma City Thunder.
But after weeks of digesting Suns basketball like Kevin Malone being force-fed broccoli, the last six or seven games have been more than just a temporary palate cleanser; they’ve been delicious, vital sustenance for a starving fanbase, and not just for this season, but potentially beyond it as well.
Devin Booker on the Suns wanting to get the ball to Kevin Durant on the big 3 he hit with 26 seconds left: “Just a reliable source” 😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/Y5l31hsxRh
— PHNX Suns (@PHNX_Suns) March 25, 2025
Unless the Suns pull off the most improbable championship run in NBA history, the front office will face some tough decisions in the offseason. After dangling Kevin Durant at the NBA Trade Deadline, can they repair that relationship with an all-time great who’s still playing at an All-NBA level, especially since he never wanted to leave in the first place? And if so, can they correctly build around their star duo of KD and Book this time?
The answer to that question is another question: How can they get rid of Bradley Beal’s contract, especially now that his time on the sidelines coincides with Phoenix’s best stretch of the season? The evidence is incontrovertible that this year’s team has been better without Beal: His -7.8 Net Rating is by far the lowest on the team, and the Suns’ record improves from 21-27 when he plays to 14-10 when he’s out. Beal’s agent, Mark Bartelstein, didn’t exactly slam the door shut on the idea of a trade when he spoke with PHNX Sports, but his no-trade clause and $53.7 million salary for next year will obviously limit the number of suitors.
And that’s before even diving into Grayson Allen being one of the highest-paid players on the team who may be on the verge of falling out of the rotation; Collin Gillespie deserving a standard contract so he can be playoff-eligible; the Suns needing to waive someone in order to be able to sign Gillespie; the potential need for an upgrade over Nick Richards or Oso Ighodaro at the starting center spot; and the way that Cody Martin has obviously played well enough to deserve a spot on next year’s roster.
Of course, all of those questions will depend on how much longer the Suns can sustain their recent momentum and build upon it, and that hinges on how Budenholzer manages his rotations once Beal joins Grayson Allen and Mason Plumlee in the active lineup.
“Everybody says having a lot of options is supposed to be a good thing, and it is,” Budenholzer said. “And so I think we gotta trust everybody on the roster, but lean into the guys that have been playing well, particularly defensively. I think we need to just try and find the right combo, find the right mix each night.”
In Bud’s defense, he was true to his word when asked about how he would approach the returns of Allen and Plumlee, given what the Suns had shown without them. Allen only played 12 minutes off the bench Monday night, and Plumlee didn’t see the court at all behind Richards and Ighodaro.
For the time being, that’s for the best. The Suns have searched in vain all season for some semblance of consistency, identity or potency. Thanks to two rookies, two former Charlotte Hornets that arrived midseason via trade, and one two-way signing, they’re finally starting to discover them. But they’re still delicate at this stage. As Durant mentioned, Phoenix is learning to hang their hat on the defensive end. If they can rely on that to carry them through the occasional scoring drought, they could make Suns basketball fun for however much longer this season lasts, while also providing crucial learning points for the front office as they try to reassemble a contender over the summer.
“Each possession, we’re communicating better, we’re scrambling better, we’re rebounding better and keeping the ball in front,” Durant said. “So we do those things, those are our core things that we do on the defensive side of the ball, and that pretty much dictates the whole game for us.”
I genuinely have no idea what to expect from the Suns team anymore. If they falter as their schedule ramps up and wind up missing the play-in, a lot of this won’t matter. But for the first time in weeks, I’m entertained by the on-court product, and I’m genuinely intrigued to find out whether they can build it into something even more surprising.
