Brandon Knight: 2014-15 Phoenix Suns Player Grades
Grade: C-
To be honest, an “Incomplete” is probably a more accurate grade here, but for the sake of avoiding a copout, we’ll go with a C-. It’s not Knight’s fault he got hurt and we have to take into account that he was adjusting to playing a new position…on the fly…for a team still competing for a playoff spot.
But even bearing all that in mind, Knight’s limited time with the Suns was undeniably underwhelming.
Knight posted a Player Efficiency Rating of 10.5 with the Suns (the league average is 15.0). He put up a grand total of 0.1 win shares in 11 games. He struggled to put himself in position for good shots on the perimeter and even when he was open, he just couldn’t knock them down (22.0 percent on shots where his closest defender was 4-6 feet away, per NBA.com).
Simply put, he just wasn’t very good in his short stint in Phoenix.
That being said, it’d be completely unfair to judge his future with the Suns based solely on that small window. Knight was having a career year in Milwaukee before being uprooted by a midseason trade, he’s only 23 years old and although Phoenix will have to pay anywhere from $10-15 million per season to keep him around, the salary cap is about to jump through the roof soon.
Knight is capable of becoming a nice complementary combo guard to Bledsoe and even better, he seems fully committed to being a part of a two-guard backcourt:
“I enjoyed playing with Eric, he is a great player,” Knight said. “I think we can be very dynamic and very tough to guard in the backcourt. We both have the ability to guard the ball as well. We can play off each other and are very young, with the young team we have we can be a very dangerous group.”
Restricted free agency isn’t a given, as the Suns found out with Eric Bledsoe last summer. But as mediocre as Knight seemed during his limited action here, Phoenix shouldn’t expect that to be the standard moving forward.
More 2014-15 Phoenix Suns Player Grades:
Jerel McNeal
Danny Granger
Brandan Wright
Earl Barron
Marcus Thornton
T.J. Warren
Archie Goodwin
Alex Len
Marcus Morris
Gerald Green
Reggie Bullock
P.J. Tucker
Next: Phoenix Suns: 10 Worst Moments Of 2014-15