By Gerald Bourguet
Everybody loves to imagine blockbuster trades and marquee free-agency signings in the offseason, but for the Phoenix Suns, this summer will likely revolve around continuity and player development.
We’ve already shot down trade rumors surrounding Giannis Antetokounmpo and Ja Morant at Suns After Dark, and as fun as it was whipping up fake trades for distressed assets like Dejounte Murray or Zion Williamson, those feel highly unlikely.
Last summer, owner Mat Ishbia and general manager Brian Gregory were transparent about the type of culture they wanted to create and how this Suns team would play, and they delivered on those promises. This summer, they were once again upfront about setting proper expectations for the offseason.
“Do we take calls about opportunistic trades and ideas? Of course we do,” Ishbia said during exit interviews. “However, our massive, massive lean is, I like this team. I like where we’re going. I like the direction of the organization. I like the culture that we’ve built. I like the identity that we have. And we’re not gonna do anything silly to mess that up.
“We’re gonna continue to lean in on that, and I think the fans will be proud of that. And we’re gonna continue to get better and we’re gonna build something special for years to come here in Phoenix. And I think this was the foundational first year.”
The Suns laid a new foundation, but that was arguably the easier part, since going from bad to good is a lot easier than going from good to great. There’s a case to be made against complacency, but no matter which avenue Phoenix takes, re-signing two or three of their key free agents will still be among their top priorities this summer.
If the goal is to keep this team intact, re-signing some combination of Collin Gillespie, Jordan Goodwin and Mark Williams is paramount. We’ve already covered what new contracts for Collin Gillespie and Jordan Goodwin might look like, so today, we’ll dive into the trickiest one of the bunch: restricted free agent Mark Williams.
If you’ve read our other two free agency primers, you should already be familiar with most of this information, but just in case, here’s a quick refresher on the Suns’ salary cap situation!
Between Devin Booker, Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, Grayson Allen, Royce O’Neale, Khaman Maluach, Ryan Dunn and Rasheer Fleming, the Suns already have eight players under contract for next season. If you include the non-guaranteed deals and team options for players that make sense to bring back, then Haywood Highsmith, Jamaree Bouyea and Oso Ighodaro bring that total to 11.
Between those 11 players, Phoenix already has approximately $162.5 million on the books. Unfortunately, they also have $23.2 million in dead money on the docket for Bradley Beal, Nassir Little and EJ Liddell, which bumps them up to $185.7 million in total salary.
The NBA’s salary cap for next season is $165 million, which means the Suns will operate as an over-the-cap team. They can go over the cap to re-sign Mark Williams because they possess his full Bird rights, which allows them to re-sign their own free agents to a higher amount without regard to the salary cap.
(Williams’ full Bird rights allow him to sign a contract with Phoenix for up to five years and any amount up to his maximum salary, which is 25 percent of the salary cap, based on how many years he’s been in the league. Conversely, the Suns have Early Bird rights on Collin Gillespie and Jordan Goodwin, which allow them to sign contracts between 2-4 years in length for a max of either 175 percent of their previous salary or 105 percent of the league-average salary, whichever is greater.
Williams is also a restricted free agent, which allows the Suns to match any outside offer to retain him, as opposed to Gillespie and Goodwin being unrestricted free agents, which means they can sign wherever they choose without Phoenix having right of first refusal.)
What the Suns will need to consider is the luxury tax at $200.5 million, the first apron at $209.1 million, and the second apron at $222 million. Mat Ishbia never blinked while staring down astronomical luxury tax bills when he believed his team was worth the investment, but if the Suns dive back into the tax next season after ducking it this year, they’ll be subject to the repeater tax again.
Fortunately, that’s an Ishbia problem, and the Suns owner has never minced words about how fans couldn’t care less about their favorite team’s tax bill. So if this organization truly is all aboard the Continuity Express, they may not have any choice but to dive back into the tax, since re-signing just one or two of their key agents could quickly push them back over that $200.5 million threshold.
The key will be making sure that if they bring back all three of their free agents, they at least duck the second apron, if not the first as well. If the Suns want to bring back all three free agents — which a source who spoke with Suns After Darkconfirms they do — the costs could escalate quickly, even if they manage to re-sign all three to relatively team-friendly deals.
Mark Williams’ first season in Phoenix was really a tale of two halves, and truthfully, this article would probably sound a lot more optimistic about his future in the Valley if it had been written in December.
In terms of his raw numbers, you can see the slight decline from 2025 Mark Williams to 2026 Mark Williams:
- Mark Williams through Dec. 31: 28 games, 670 minutes, 12.8 PPG, 8.3 RPG, 0.9 BPG, 65.6 FG%, 7.6 FGAs
- Mark Williams from Jan. 1 onward: 32 games, 746 minutes, 10.7 PPG, 7.7 RPG, 0.9 BPG, 63.3 FG%, 7.1 FGAs
But the real dividing line came in terms of his on-court vs. off-court Net Rating:
- Mark Williams through Dec. 31: +1.8 Net Rating on, -0.3 Net Rating
- Mark Williams from Jan. 1 onward: -5.6 Net Rating on, +5.0 Net Rating
What this basically means is that for the first half of Williams’ season, the Suns were 2.1 points per 100 possessions betterwhen he was on the court. But for the second half, Phoenix was a staggering 10.6 points per 100 possessions worse when he played. Williams’ -5.6 on-court Net Rating was the second-worst on the Suns’ roster, trailing only Isaiah Livers, who was a two-way player that only appeared in 20 games during that stretch.
Despite how up-and-down his season felt, there were some positives. Williams is still only 24 years old, and he just enjoyed his healthiest season yet. He was legitimately good for Phoenix when the Suns guards were capable of keeping him involved on offense, as Williams shot 72 percent at the rim excluding garbage time, per Cleaning The Glass.
Williams is an efficient albeit limited play finisher. His 136.7 points per 100 shot attempts placed him in the 91st percentile among all NBA bigs, but he only ranked in the 43rd percentile in usage rate due to the fact that he really has little to offer outside of the paint.
According to Cleaning The Glass, 73 percent of his shot attempts came at the rim, which ranked in the NBA’s 83rd percentile among bigs. That’s not inherently bad for a team that sorely lacks rim pressure, but another 26 percent of his shot attempts came from the “short midrange,” which is shots 4-14 away from the rim. In other words, 99 percent of his shot attempts came within 14 feet of the rim.
Because he has no shooting range to speak of, because his handle is subpar, and because he doesn’t really have any go-to moves in the post (outside of a turnaround hook that’s eerily reminiscent of another recent Suns big who only thrived when he did the little things), most of Williams’ offense depends solely on him doing those little things: setting good screens, rolling with intent and crashing the offensive glass.
The “Feed DA!” crowd at least understood that Deandre Ayton had a reliable midrange jumper; Mark Williams doesn’t have one, so that same group clamoring for more offense out of their center has at least dialed back their demands to “Get Mark Williams involved” rather than “Force-feed Mark Williams!” And in truth, there were times where the Suns failed to reward their big man for doing the hard work that often goes unnoticed and unappreciated among NBA centers.
The problem is Williams’ effort and focus on those fronts waned, especially in the second half of the season, when he was dealing with the stress reaction in his foot. He’s not some elite pick-and-roll big either, ranking 21st in screen assists and 20th in screen assist points among qualified players and placing in 62nd percentile in points per possession on plays where he was the roll man in pick-and-rolls.
That left dump-offs and put-backs as his most reliable source of offense, and in fairness, Mark Williams is among the cream of the crop on the offensive glass. Excluding garbage time, he rebounded 12.7 percent of the Suns’ missed shots, which ranked in the 83rd percentile among bigs.
He also ranked eighth in the NBA in offensive rebounds per game, 14th in offensive rebounding percentage, and led the league in both put-back possessions (2.2) and put-back points (2.5) per game. Granted, he was only in the 54th percentile in points per possession on those put-backs, but the sheer volume was enough to overwhelm opponents and fit right in with Jordan Ott’s philosophy of crashing the glass hard.
Defensively, Williams did surprisingly well defending the pick-and-roll at the level after spending the last two years in a deep drop, and he’s got pretty active hands for a big man, ranking third in deflections among all qualified players 7 feet or taller and placing in the 81st percentile in steal percentage among bigs.
However, he’s nowhere near as mobile as Ighodaro, and as a rim protector, Williams left a lot to be desired. Averaging 0.9 blocks per game as a starting NBA center is unequivocally subpar — especially for a 7-foot-1 big with a 9-foot-9 standing reach that is still tied for the second-longest standing reach in NBA Draft Combine history. Having limbs that long and being a 7-foot center is bound to lead to some blocks, but Williams only ranked in the 63rd percentile in block percentage among bigs.
Even worse, opponents actually shot 0.1 percent better than they’d normally shoot at the rim when defended by Williams. That figured paled in comparison to Oso Ighodaro (5.3 percent worse), Khaman Maluach (19.9 percent worse) and even Rasheer Fleming (10.4 percent worse).
Granted, Williams (357) defended way more shots at the rim than Maluach (106) and Fleming (91), but he was relatively even with Ighodaro (353), so this wasn’t a case of the numbers simply looking worse for Williams because his sample size was much larger.
We should probably also note that while Williams played a career-high 60 games this year, that still meant he missed 22 games, including all four playoff games and one of the Suns’ two play-in games.
Offensively, defensively, on-court, off-court — no matter how you slice it, Mark Williams’ first Suns season was a bit of a mixed bag. There were real advantages to having a certified, NBA-ready 7-footer in the starting role, and it’s worth mentioning that Phoenix went 34-26 in games Williams played, compared to 11-11 in the 22 games he missed.
But because of some of his warts, his injury history, the fact that restricted free agency complicates matters, what his next contract might look like, and the Suns’ future plans at center, there’s a real possibility Mark Williams’ time in the Valley won’t last much longer.
Mark Williams’ restricted free agency could unfold a number of ways, because there are a variety of factors in play outside of the Suns’ salary cap situation and Williams’ up-and-down year that ended up being marred by yet another injury.
Williams is still young, and the Suns see him as someone who could continue to develop with a full summer in Phoenix. There’s also something of a “sunk cost” here that would make letting him walk feel disappointing, since the Suns technically traded away two first-round picks in order to acquire him from Charlotte less than a year ago.
However, the sunk cost isn’t as great as it sounds; one of those first-rounders was literally the second-to-last pick in the first round of last year’s draft (Liam McNeeley), and the other is a 2029 first-rounder that will be the least valuable pick between Utah, Minnesota and Cleveland.
In other words, both of those picks could very easily wind up near the end of the first round, so if Williams’ next contract becomes too unwieldy, the Suns shouldn’t feel obligated to keep him just because of what they traded away to acquire him in the first place.
There are other matters complicating the process. Because re-signing Gillespie and Goodwin will be the Suns’ top priority, because of Williams’ injury history, and because teams almost always have the upper hand in negotiations with restricted free agents, the Suns won’t be offering some contract approaching $20 million in annual salary…which is probably somewhere close to Williams’ market value.
That could lead to a number of outcomes. The Suns could try to strong-arm him into signing a team-friendly, multi-year bargain contract, keeping flexibility alive to trade him later on, once Khaman Maluach and Oso Ighodaro are ready to take over the minutes at center.
If Williams signs an offer sheet from another team, Phoenix could match it, depending on the price. Teams typically only sign restricted free agents to offer sheets if they know the player’s incumbent team will be hesitant to match, which means it’d likely be a lucrative offer.
A source suggested to Suns After Dark that the Suns might feel inclined to just let Williams walk in the event he signs an offer sheet that would make his contract harder to move down the line, so if some outside suitor is willing to pay him upwards of $18 million, $20 million or $25 million per year, he could very well leave for nothing.
Remember, the Suns are only operating with $14.8 million of space beneath that luxury tax line, $23.4 million beneath the first apron and $36.3 million beneath the second apron. So if Gillespie re-signs for an annual salary in the $10-13 million range like we’re projecting, and if Goodwin re-signs for around $7-8 million per year, the Suns would already be back in the luxury tax, about $2.4-6.4 million beneath the first apron, and approximately $15.3-19.3 million beneath the second apron…before accounting for Williams’ new contract.
Bearing that in mind, another alternative would be a sign-and-trade, where the Suns sign Williams to a contract that his next team agrees upon while sending Phoenix something in return. The trade math gets more complicated with sign-and-trade scenarios, but it can’t be ruled out.
Still another scenario, in the event Williams’ market runs dry and there are no incoming offers, is a stalemate between Williams and the Suns leads to him playing out the 2026-27 NBA season on his $9.6 million qualifying offer. Phoenix will extend that qualifying offer to make him a restricted free agent at the start of free agency, and if Williams ultimately signs it — likely sometime near the start of next season, since that’s how long these stalemates typically drag out — he will then play out the 2026-27 campaign on a $9.6 million salary.
That salary would be highly tradeable, but signing the qualifying offer would give Mark Williams veto rights on any trade, and he would become an unrestricted free agent next summer.
There are very real advantages and disadvantages to having Williams back in the Valley next season. He’s still the best individual player of Phoenix’s three centers, he brings a size component that Ighodaro cannot match, and he possesses a level of experience and NBA readiness that Maluach cannot match.
Having him back for one more season — either on the qualifying offer before letting him walk in free agency next summer, or on a cheaper multi-year deal before trading him elsewhere — would help bridge the gap between right now and the moment when the two younger bigs are fully ready to take over at the 5.
However, Williams might not be keen on signing a team-friendly contract just so the Suns can trade him in the near future, especially when he’s coming off his healthiest season yet. There’s also the possibility he finds a lucrative offer sheet on the open market, at which point the Suns either lose him for nothing or hope the suitor in question is willing to part with some type of asset to facilitate a sign-and-trade and bypass having to navigate an offer sheet.
The Suns want Mark Williams back, but a source did suggest they believe Malauch will overtake Williams as the team’s starting center by the end of next season. That means they won’t want to pay full market value for someone whose presence only threatens to stunt Maluach’s growth. So even if Williams is back next year, at some point, the development of Phoenix’s No. 10 overall pick will take centerstage.
Maluach would obviously have to earn that role over Willliams, and even if the Suns were far better with Ighodaro on the court from January onward this season, Oso’s lack of size limits his upside as a full-time starting center.
To that end, retaining Mark Williams as a temporary stopgap could make sense, but only if the price is right. Otherwise, he could walk for nothing if he gets that lucrative offer sheet, he could be sign-and-traded to another team, or he could return on that incredibly cheap, $9.6 million qualifying offer as a last resort.
In all of these scenarios, the path to Mark Williams becoming an All-Star or even a permanent fixture at center in Phoenix feels pretty unlikely — something the Suns will absolutely keep in mind as they navigate restricted free agency for a big man that they’d like to have back but isn’t imperative to their big picture.
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.
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