Suns Have Easy Answer to Their Biggest Question

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns move into the 2026-27 season with several questions surrounding their team.

Individually, the Suns' star trio has to find different ways to elevate their games. What role players will take the next step? How can head coach Jordan Ott improve in his second season leading Phoenix?

As a team, there's also several other questions to answer after a surprise run to the playoffs last season. Yet their biggest question can also provide their easiest answer.

Suns' Biggest Question

Bleacher Report asks: What's Phoenix's Realistic Ceiling?

"The Phoenix Suns were surprisingly competitive last season, winning 45 games in a tough West before trading for Miles Bridges to become the team's new starting power forward," wrote Greg Swartz.

"The Suns are good, but can they be anything more?

"The 'Big 3' of Devin Booker, Dillon Brooks and Jalen Green only had a net rating of plus-1.1 together last season. Trading for Bridges adds another potential 20 point-per-game scorer to the lineup, but the Suns had to give up two of their best shooters in Grayson Allen and Royce O'Neale to get him.

"This is a talented roster, although with little future draft picks to trade and some doubts if Devin Booker can be the best player on a championship team, how high is the ceiling in Phoenix?"

Phoenix's Answer

The Suns can certainly go further. The cool thing about making the playoffs last year? That's now the expectation moving forward.

Phoenix can handle that, as even with a pile of injuries the Suns reached 45 wins last regular season.

The Suns have a few expectations entering 2026-27. The playoffs are the minimum now, and the next step is getting a top-six seed and avoiding the play-in tournament. Perhaps winning a round in the postseason is the expectation.

Yet in terms of ceiling, this rests more on who else is in the Suns' path as opposed to Phoenix's current slew of talent.

It's tough to envision the Suns getting past either of the San Antonio Spurs or Oklahoma City Thunder. That's more of an indictment on how incredibly fine-tuned those respective teams are when compared to Phoenix. The Suns would have needed to drastically improve this offseason with San Antonio and Oklahoma City suffering significant losses.

Neither happened.

Even the next tier of teams in the West (Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves) would truly give the Suns fits in a playoff series, though defeating those two squads feels more realistic.

Phoenix's ceiling fits closely to their floor. The Suns should very much again crack the postseason, though making the conference finals would be shattering their ceiling.