By Gerald Bourguet

The Phoenix Suns will have a new starting lineup this season, and although they have yet to play a single game together, there are justifiable concerns about how well they’ll mesh together.

The divisive (and ill-advised) addition of Miles Bridges, who pled no contest to a felony domestic violence charge in 2022, is one that half the fanbase is still trying to reckon with. He may represent an individual upgrade at the 4, but it cost the Suns two of their three best shooters in Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale.

The resulting starting lineup is still somewhat undersized with both Bridges and Dillon Brooks being 6-foot-7, and flanking Devin Booker with three inefficient, score-first co-stars feels like a questionable way to build around the franchise star.

Surrounding Booker with three guys who should be third or fourth options but will be masquerading as second options on a night-to-night basis — and doing so inefficiently — will most likely pigeonhole the Suns’ best player into more of a facilitator role as “Point Book,” rather than optimizing him with a better balance between “off-ball killer” and “on-ball initiator.”

Anything is possible in this league, and we’ve seen lots of players improve or adapt their games for the good of their teams. It’s hard to see any of these guys becoming 3-point snipers or changing in seismic ways overnight, but it may be possible for this starting lineup to build cohesion with a few important tweaks.

Following that line of thinking, and barring acts of God or on-court miracles, we’re continuing our weekly series that examines all five members of the Suns’ projected starting lineup with the goal of pinpointing one specific area where each player must improve in order to make it work.

Over the last three weeks, we’ve taken a look at Devin Booker’s pull-up 3 being the final missing piece in his game; the need for Jalen Green to supply more rim pressure; and Dillon Brooks’ shot selection/tunnel vision. This week, we’re diving into Miles Bridges’ secondary playmaking.

The Suns need Miles Bridges to lean into more playmaking

Aside from 3-point efficiency, one of the biggest reasons for concern about the starting lineup’s fit is the lack of playmaking outside of Booker. One could argue — and many have! — that Book is best utilized as an off-ball 2-guard whose main instruction is “go kill.”

That argument is a little reductive; it overlooks Booker’s underrated playmaking and his ability to bend defenses because of the attention he draws. It also conveniently ignores the fact that there aren’t many true point guards left in the league in the same vein as Chris Paul or even Ricky Rubio.

As we explained above, the best fit for Booker is a balance of simplifying the game by enabling him as an off-ball scorer, while still tapping into his on-ball gravity and his knack for producing open shots for his teammates. Unfortunately, surrounding him with subpar shooters who are typically most effective with the ball in their hands doesn’t exactly lean into that balance.

Someone in that starting lineup needs to pick up some of the playmaking slack so Book doesn’t have to carry the load. It obviously won’t be Mark Williams. Even if Dillon Brooks works on his passing and reduces that tunnel vision, he’s not going to suddenly be some plus playmaker.

Jalen Green seems like the obvious candidate as Booker’s backcourt partner, but he racked up nearly as many turnovers (72) as assists (91) last year. His assist-to-usage ratio ranked in the 29th percentile among wings, and out of the 35 players who attempted at least 16 field goal attempts per game, Green ranked 31st in assists and 26th in assist percentage. The year prior, he ranked dead last in assist percentage among all players who took at least 17 shots per game.

In other words, above-average passing, decision-making and court vision have rarely been part of Green’s game…which leaves us with Miles Bridges as the most likely candidate to help ease some of that burden.

It seems he’s aware of that particular need.

“I think I’m gonna be a perfect fit,” Bridges said during his introductory press conference. “There’s a lot of guys that can score and people that don’t know me or probably seen me playing with the Hornets, they probably think that all I wanna do is score, but I’m a willing passer and I wanna get my teammates involved. I wanna get my bigs going, I wanna get all the guards going, get Book his points.”

So how much can a guy who averaged 3.2 assists per game last year and 2.8 assists per game for his career actually help on this front?

For starters, Jordan Ott would have to empower him a bit as a secondary playmaker. In Charlotte, Bridges had a fairly high usage rate despite being the third or fourth option on offense (which is what he’ll continue to be in Phoenix). Bridges’ 15.4 assist percentage ranked in the 75th percentile at his position, but his assist-to-usage ratio only ranked in the 50th percentile.

Out of all the players who logged at least 40 games last year, Bridges tied for 98th in secondary assists, 91st in potential assists, 87th in assist points created and 118th in assist-to-pass percentage. Those numbers paint a pretty clear picture that isn’t some “point forward” hiding in plain sight.

The question is whether there’s enough secondary playmaking that’s scalable to his role in Phoenix.

Looking at his tape from the last two years, a lot of Bridges’ assists were pretty basic, “swing-swing” passes around the perimeter to find the open man. A significant portion felt fairly generous to even tally as “assists,” since there were quite a few scenarios where he just passed the ball to LaMelo Ball or Kon Knueppel, watched them pump fake and attack their defender, and then got credited with an assist for it:

However, the garden variety passes around the perimeter exhibit similar traits to Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale in terms of simple, quick, connective passing. Bridges is probably better in those respects than Jalen Green or Dillon Brooks, and that underrated skill is important for a group like this.

Being able to get into the paint will create passing opportunities as well. Bridges’ reputation as a source of “rim pressure” is fairly inflated, since his rim frequency and accuracy has declined in each of the last four seasons. But he does have the strength and a decent-enough handle to get into the paint, and he’s reliable from that “short midrange” of 4-14 feet away from the basket.

So when he’s able to get past the first layer of the defense, drive-and-kicks will open up:

Will the Suns be able to actually knock them down, considering that Booker, Green and Brooks have all been below-average 3-point shooters for the majority of their careers? We’ll have to wait and see, but if the Suns want to come anywhere near last year’s team, which ranked top-five in 3-point attempts and makes, they’ll need as many quality looks as they can generate.

In fairness, Bridges only averaged 7.8 drives per game last year, which tied for 69th in the league among all players who played at least 40 games, and his assist percentage (5.7 percent) barely exceeded his turnover percentage (5.2 percent) on those drives. But someone out of that Green-Brooks-Bridges trio will have to take a backseat and become more of a willing passer, and while it may vary on a night-to-night basis, Bridges seems like the only one with the mindset and actual ability to do so. 

Leaning on him to get into the paint a little more and open things up for others makes sense given the context of this team, especially if Jalen Green makes cutting a bigger point of emphasis and Dillon Brooks limits his number of ill-advised isos. A cutting Green or Mark Williams in the dunker spot could become beneficiaries if Bridges embraces that approach, since he’s a pretty good interior passer for easy dump-offs:

At this point, all three of the Suns’ big men are dependent on being set up in order to score, so Bridges can help there no matter which center is on the floor. Phoenix could also tap into his occasional post-ups, since Bridges knows how to take advantage of mismatches when he gets a smaller or weaker defender on him.

According to NBA.com, Bridges ranked in the 86th percentile in points per possession on post-ups, and he shot 61.1 percent in those situations. That means whenever he gets on the low or extended block, his strength and physicality commands attention or even a double-team from the defense.

When that happens, Bridges has shown an aptitude for finding open shooters on the backside and skipping the ball over the top:

However, we should dial back the optimism for a second: Bridges only averaged 1.1 post-ups per game, and among all players who logged at least 40 post-ups, Bridges ranked 28th in assist percentage. That isn’t bad, but it’s not some elite skill hiding in plain sight, especially on such low volume.

Maybe the Suns can utilize that attribute more often, but he’s not skilled enough in that area for Ott to drastically alter the offense just to carve out room for it. The same goes for his pick-and-roll playmaking.

Bridges averaged just 2.2 possessions per game as a pick-and-roll ball-handler last season, which tied for 86th-most among all players who met the 40-game threshold. He only ranked in the 41st percentile in points per possession on those plays, but as a passer, he at least showed he can deliver an on-target pocket pass or feed his rolling bigs with an accurate lob.

The key will be getting Bridges in motion before he receives the screen. Most of his pick-and-roll assists came on plays where the Hornets got him going downhill with a dribble hand-off first. He’s probably not a “bring the ball up and run the half-court offense” type of ball-handler or facilitator, but putting him in quick-hitting actions and letting him make plays off his on-ball gravity once he’s in the paint feels like the right way to go:

It will be interesting — and borderline pivotal — to see how much Miles Bridges can scale up this part of his game in Phoenix. He won’t have a playmaker like LaMelo Ball setting him up on a silver platter on a nightly basis anymore, and for the good of the team, he may need to take on more of a sacrificial, secondary playmaker type of role.

I wouldn’t count on Miles Bridges making Devin Booker’s life significantly easier on that front; the Suns’ best playmaker and initiator is still Point Book by a mile. But if Bridges can alleviate some of that pressure, move the ball in the right spots, feed the open man off the occasional pick-and-roll or post-up, and have a career-best year in the assists column, maybe there’s a path to this starting lineup clicking.

For more of Gerald Bourguet’s Suns work, check back with Sports360AZ on a weekly basis, subscribe to his Patreon articles and podcast at Suns After Dark, or follow him on Twitter.

The post One area where each Suns starter must improve to make it work: Miles Bridges’ secondary playmaking first appeared on Sports360AZ.

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