The Phoenix Suns entered this season with title aspirations, but unfortunately, they were swept in the first round by the Minnesota Timberwolves. While it’s obviously a disappointing season, it bears startling similarities to that of the Miami Heat team in 2010-11. How similar are their big three philosophies?<\/p>\n
Both teams brought together players with overlapping skill sets. In this year’s regular season, only six teams had three players make at least 60 mid-range field goals: the Brooklyn Nets, Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Milwaukee Bucks, and Phoenix Suns. Kevin Durant<\/a> and Devin Booker<\/a> finished first (251)<\/a> and third (184), respectively, in the NBA on this list. For context, no other team had two players in the top 15 in mid-range field goal makes.<\/p>\n When the Miami Heat assembled the trio of Chris Bosh<\/a>, Dwyane Wade<\/a>, and LeBron James<\/a> in the 2010-11 season, they ranked between 13th and 16th in the league in mid-range shots made the prior year. They made 593<\/a>\u00a0mid-range<\/a>\u00a0shots<\/a> that year. When they banded together to go on their Avengers arc, they made 597\u00a0mid-range<\/a> shots in the 2010-11 season.<\/p>\n Both teams were dedicated to the concept of a star trio, to the extent that they were prepared to structure their entire financial framework to support it.<\/p>\n The Suns started the 2023-24 season by paying their big three around $130 million of their 136 million dollar cap space<\/a>. They had three players earning between mid-level contracts from an off-season trade including\u00a0Grayson Allen<\/a>,\u00a0and Nassir Little<\/a>. Jusuf Nurki\u0107<\/a>\u00a0was the only member outside of the big three making more than 10 million dollars per year. While the rest of the roster was comprised of minimum-contract players they signed. At the trade deadline, they aggregated a couple of minimum contracts to get a fourth mid-level contract (Royce O’Neale<\/a>). They finished the season with salaries just north of $190 million<\/a>, well past the first and second tax apron.<\/p>\n The 2010-11 Heat devoted $43 million of their $58 million cap to their big three. That meant they could only afford to pay three players with salaries above the minimum: Joel Anthony<\/a>, Mike Miller<\/a>, and Udonis Haslem<\/a>. That put their salary commitments at roughly $67 million<\/a>, just a tad short of the luxury tax line of $70.3 million for that season.<\/p>\n Both teams had to fork over a haul of draft picks and valuable players to assemble their big three.<\/p>\n The Suns traded Cam Johnson<\/a> and Mikal Bridges<\/a>, in addition to four first-round picks and a first-round pick swap, to the Brooklyn Nets to acquire Kevin Durant in early 2023. They gave up four first-round swaps to the Washington Wizards for Bradley Beal<\/a> this past summer.<\/p>\n The Heat gave up two first-round picks apiece for James and Bosh in sign-and-trades. They traded all their players not named Joel Anthony to create the needed cap space to add them.<\/p>\n Seasoned NBA insider Bill Simmons<\/a> had concerns about the Suns because they didn’t have a traditional point guard. The Suns never tried to resolve that issue. They instead chose to delegate all of the playmaking duties to their big three. The Miami Heat had a similar big three, lacking a traditional point guard.<\/p>\n Edmund Burke once said, ‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.\u201d Given the manner of their first-round exit, the Suns would have been pleased to repeat the 2010-11 Miami Heat’s ‘disappointing’ NBA finals loss.<\/p>\n Unfortunately for the Suns, the Miami Heat existed in a different era. An era that was less punitive on super team construction and allowed them to add depth over the subsequent years. The addition of Shane Battier<\/a>, Ray Allen<\/a>, and Norris Cole<\/a> would help them win two championships. Additionally, Miami’s core big three was much younger and their initial success was far greater.<\/p>\n The Suns won’t be able to do that with the restrictive punishments put in place by the new Collective Bargaining Agreement<\/a>. It will be interesting to see the moves the Suns make in the coming months to put themselves in a better position<\/a> to succeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Phoenix Suns entered this season with title aspirations, but unfortunately, they were swept in the first round by the Minnesota Timberwolves. While it’s obviously a disappointing season, it bears startling similarities to that of the Miami Heat team in 2010-11. How similar are their big three philosophies? Phoenix Suns 2023-24 and Miami 2010-11: Similar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5018,"featured_media":75602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1608,2,16,28],"tags":[4945,49186,311,275,352,296,69,38],"class_list":["post-75493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","category-basketball","category-featured","category-heat","category-suns","tag-2023-2024-season","tag-2024-nba-playoffs","tag-bradley-beal","tag-chris-bosh","tag-devin-booker","tag-dwyane-wade","tag-kevin-durant","tag-lebron-james"],"modified_by":"Eamon Cassels, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5018"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Top-heavy Rosters<\/h3>\n
Price to Pay<\/h3>\n
Going Against the Status Quo<\/h3>\n
The Last Word<\/h3>\n