Point Guard
Primary Starter: Brandon Knight
Primary Reserve: Isaiah Canaan
Secondary Reserve: Shaquille Harrison
At this point Brandon Knight is the starting point guard no matter what.
No other point guard on the roster is going to be nearly as good as he at this moment, no matter how high your hopes are for Elie Okobo, or your found memories are of Isaiah Canaan and Shaquille Harrison.
Having Brandon Knight start makes the Phoenix Suns a better team right away than they were last year because he is a better point guard than they had on the active roster since after game three of the season when Eric Bledsoe proclaimed that he didn’t want to be here.
Cannan, Okobo, and even Devin Booker at point guard does not make the Phoenix Suns a better team. In the case of either Canaan or Okobo they are lesser talent than Knight, and in the case of Booker, at that point the roster would be stretched in a direction that would tear at the team’s depth.
More from Valley of the Suns
- Ranking the Phoenix Suns’ 5 holiday games in 2023-24
- Zion Williamson gets compared to Phoenix Suns legend
- Suns player preview: Bol Bol can be the perfect role player
- Former Suns’ guard shows he is officially done with Phoenix
- NBA insider guarantees Suns’ rival won’t make blockbuster trade
While I have long been a proponent of Devin Booker as the starting point guard, in order to pull that off they would need to have another position-less ball handling player, a Dwayne Wade-type or even Luka Doncic.
But since this can’t be a thing for Phoenix this season, Booker has to stay at the two, and the optimal starting point guard must be Brandon Knight.
Having a veteran in Canaan coming off the bench is the perfect compliment to Knight, as he too has been around the block for a while, started for a short spell for Phoenix last season, and knows the team and the roster well.
While he is not as good of a scorer or distributor as Knight is, I do see him as the Negele Knight to those great old Suns teams led by Kevin Johnson.
While Negele was nowhere near as talented as KJ, he was a solid compliment and could even start in those oft periods where KJ was injured.
This will be Canaan’s role behind Brandon Knight, the right place for both of them.