TNT's Reggie Miller: Suns have 'puncher's chance' to win title with Booker, Durant

TNT NBA analyst Reggie Miller believes the Phoenix Suns have a “puncher’s chance” to win an NBA championship this season.

“Whenever you have Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, and then you add Bradley Beal, hopefully he can be healthy for 65, 70 games, you always have a puncher’s chance,” Miller said.

During a TNT media call Tuesday with fellow NBA analyst Stan Van Gundy, Miller called Phoenix a “sleeper” team capable of finishing in the top four of the Western Conference this season.

The NBA general managers voted Phoenix to finish fifth in the West behind the Oklahoma City Thunder, Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets and Dallas Mavericks in NBA.com’s annual GM survey.

The Suns open the 2024-25 regular season Oct. 23 at the Los Angeles Clippers.

“They have a puncher’s chance to win a championship,” Miller later said. “They’ve got to stay healthy. They addressed their biggest need to me, which was the point guard.”

The Suns finished sixth in the West last season to avoid the play-in under Frank Vogel with Booker, Durant and Beal playing a total of 41 games together. They went 26-15 in those games as Beal only played 53 games in another injured-filled season in his first year in Phoenix.

It marked the third straight season Beal has played fewer than 54 games. The Suns still made the playoffs, but they were the first team eliminated as the T-Wolves swept them. The Suns fired Vogel and replaced him with Mike Budenholzer to begin an offseason in which they added point guard Tyus Jones in free agency.

“We were screaming this all last year. Was their starting five great, yes, but they had no bench and we kept saying, 'where’s the point guard and who is going to be the facilitator?'” Miller said.

The Suns were 25 ^th in the NBA in turnovers and the worst fourth-quarter team last season. They now have Jones, who has led the league in assist-to-turnover ratio a record six straight seasons and has the highest single-season assist-to-turnover ratio ever at the 7.35 he set last season in Washington.

“It showed in the playoffs that having a floor general, a floor leader, someone who can put everyone in their spots, who can run the offense and take pressure off those main guys to give them a chance to rest a little bit,” Miller continued.

Miller noted how Budenholzer’s teams have history of launching a ton of 3s. The Milwaukee Bucks finished in the top five in 3-point shot attempts in four of their five seasons with Budenholzer as head coach from 2018-2023.

Ironically, the Bucks were eighth in the league in 3-point attempts at 37.1 a game when they won the NBA championship in 2020-21, beating the Suns in the 2021 finals. They went over that mark in the other four seasons, reaching 40.3 in Budenholzer’s final season there.

The Suns were 25th in the NBA in 3-point attempts at 32.6 under last season with Vogel, who stressed taking more 3s. Boston launched nearly 10 more a game at 42.5 in winning the 2023-24 NBA title.

Phoenix has shown so far under Budenholzer it’ll jack up more 3s under his watch. The Suns have averaging 45.7 attempts from distance their first four preseason games, reaching 51 in Sunday’s comeback win at Denver.

The Suns are expected to continue to hoist 40-plus in the regular season like Boston did last season, but Van Gundy credits the Celtics’ defense for winning a championship, not the 3.

“There were times where I think people criticized them, too one dimensional, too many 3s, but what sort of misses in that analysis is that team leans on their defense to win games,” Van Gundy said.

Boston connected on 38.8% of its 3s to finish just second in 3-point shooting percentage behind Minnesota at 38.9%.

“That’s probably the best NBA roster I’ve seen,” Van Gundy continued about the Celtics. “All five guys can defend."

The Celtics were second in the league in defensive rating. Boston’s starting five ranked in the top 40 in individual defensive win shares in Jayson Tatum (11 ^th ), Derrick White (15 ^th ), Kristaps Porzingis (32 ^nd ), Jrue Holiday (35 ^th ) and Jaylen Brown (40 ^th ).

Durant had the highest defensive win shares for the Suns at 49 ^th .

“Because of their ability to defend, Boston can win games even when the 3 isn’t dropping,” Van Gundy added.

However, Denver won it in 2022-23 taking far fewer 3s than the Celtics did. The Nuggets were 25 ^th in 3-point attempts in the regular season at 31.2 and 15 ^th out of 16 teams in the playoffs at 30.0.

Miller made a point about Golden State setting the standard for winning championships with 3-pointers being a major part of its offense led by Stephen Curry, the greatest 3-point shooter ever. The Warriors were third in the NBA in 3-point attempts when winning their fourth NBA championship in eight seasons at 39.4.

They weren’t so 3-point heavy when winning back-to-back championships in the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons with Durant. The Warriors were fifth in the NBA in 3-point attempts in 2016-17, but only launched 31.2 a game. The next season, they were 17 ^th at 28.9. Golden State won that first championship in 2014-15 taking 27 3s a game to rank fifth in the NBA.

The numbers have clearly gone up over the years with the Suns looking to enter the 40-plus 3-point club this season.

"I like it," Booker said when asked about taking 40-plus 3s this season. "Obviously you got to take what the defense gives you, but even attempting a 3-point shot, and not even making it, stretches out defenses and opens up better looks throughout the game, but we have a lot of sharpshooters on this team, too. The volume should be up."

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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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: TNT's Reggie Miller: Suns have 'puncher's chance' to win title with Booker, Durant