The Phoenix Suns have had a knack for signing the less-talented brother when more than one makes it to the NBA. Here they are, ranked.
Brothers who play in the NBA are a rare thing. Throughout history, there have only been 61 sets of brothers who have made it to the NBA (or ABA) at least once. Uncanally, at least one brother in 14 of these sets has played for the Phoenix Suns. That 23% and seems like a lot. Moreover, four out of those 14 sets of brothers have been twins.
But even crazier than that, the Suns have, in nearly every case, rostered the worst of the brothers. In fact, at the bottom of this insane rabbit hole, I only found two instances where the more-talented brother played for the Suns and the less-talented one did not.
Those two cases were Brothers Lee and Brothers Bradley. Don’t remember them? Don’t feel bad.
Ron Lee played for the Suns from 1976-1979 where he averaged over 10 points per game. His older brother, Russ Lee, played for the Milwaukee Bucks from 1972-1975 where he averaged just 2.9 points per game. Ron went on to play six total seasons in the NBA while Russ petered out after those three in Milwaukee.
Then there were the Bradley brothers. The younger brother, Charles, played just three seasons in the NBA, from 1981-1984, and averaged just 3.2 points. Dudley Charles, though, had a nine-year career, from 1979-1989, where he averaged a slightly better 5.2 points per contest. One of those seasons was with the Phoenix Suns (1981-1982).
That’s it. That’s the list. Those are the only two times the Suns have had the better of a set of brothers on their team and not the worse one.
Sometimes, they had a choice and they still picked the less talented brother. Of course, they have also had two brothers on the team at the same time. That has been the case a few times.
So, let’s rank them. Here are the 12 times the Phoenix Suns have rostered the weaker option of a set of brothers ranked on my very own, “Wait, why did they sign him?” scale.
12. Tom Van Arsdale
In every single profession, I don’t care what it is, it so often isn’t what you know (or what you can do) it is who you know, or in some cases, who you’re related to. It was no different in the NBA back in the 1970s.
Dick Van Arsdale‘s #5 jersey is retired in the Phoenix Suns Ring of Honor. It was the first to be commemorated, and rightly so. He was the first true star for the organization, earning three All-Star bids in the Suns’ first three years of existence and was nicknamed The Original Sun.
His win brother, Tom, was also an NBA player and was pretty good in his own right. He also made three All-Star appearances and had a 15.3 points per game career average compared to Dick’s 16.4.
But in the last season of their careers (1976-1977), the brothers decided to pair up and what better place to do it than the team who would gain a knack for signing the lesser of two brothers, the Phoenix Suns.
The Van Arsdale twins played their final NBA season together in the desert, in what I suspect was probably a courtesy signing for The Original Sun.
11. Wesley Person
Chuck Person was a very good basketball player. As a 6’8″ small forward, he averaged nearly 20 points per game through his first seven years in the NBA, before age and a season-ending injury hampered his numbers late in his career.
So when his basketball-playing brother, Wesley Person, came along, guess which team was there waiting eagerly with pen and paper ready to continue the Person Brother NBA tradition in hopes he would be as good or better than his older sibling.
Yep, the Phoenix Suns.
Wesley actually wasn’t too bad. He played his first three seasons with the Suns (1994-1997) and averaged 12.2 points per game before playing with a variety of other teams over a long career. However, his older brother, Chuck, he was not, continuing the trend of the Suns signing the less-talented brother.
10. Gary Melchionni
We dial back the clock again with number 10 on the worst brother ranking. Big brother Bill Melchionni was a 3-time All-Star in the ABA in the early 70s after playing a couple of seasons in the NBA.
Bill’s career-high was 21 points per game, so when his younger brother, Gary Melchionni, came around, of course, it was the Phoenix Suns who jumped on him with hopes he would reach his brother’s potential.
Spoiler alert: he did not.
Gary Melchionni played two seasons with the Phoenix Suns (1973-1975), where he averaged 7.8 points per game. These would be his only two seasons in the NBA.
Because of how long ago this was, we don’t have an image of Gary in our image database, but there is a great Topps card of him on Google. Pictured above is Gary’s son, Lee, who played at Duke.
9. Markeiff Morris
In 2011, Kansas’s Morris twins were both projected to be borderline lottery picks. In nearly every mock draft, Marcus was projected to come off the board first, as he was touted as the slightly better brother.
So, of course, when the Phoenix Suns were up with the 13th pick and both brothers were on the board, they chose Markeiff instead of Marcus, who went to the Houston Rockets with the very next pick.
Just a season and a half later, in what looked like a combination of draft-regret and twins-on-the-same-team-novelty desire, the Suns traded for Marcus.
I won’t rehash all of the drama surrounding the Morris twins here, but as the years went on, it was Marcus who blossomed into a better player (as the mock drafts predicted), even though both brothers were hot trade commodities this season and ended up in Los Angeles on separate teams.
8. Robin Lopez
A few years before the Morris twins came int the league, it was the Lopez twins who were projected as lottery picks in the 2008 draft. This time, however, Brook Lopez was touted as the far superior player to his goofy-haired brother, Robin.
After Brook went 10th overall to the Nets, Phoenix couldn’t resist picking his less-talented brother, Robin Lopez, five picks later at #15 overall.
As projected, while Brook was an instant star, Robin was not, and after four seasons with the team where he averaged around five points per game, the Suns let him go.
For what it’s worth, he has since had a few decent seasons and is now known for his wrestling moves with the Bucks. The two play on the same team now, but Robin never quite managed to get to the level of his All-Star brother.
7. Seth Curry
Do you have an older sibling who can do no wrong? Someone who is smart, talented and everyone admires? And no matter what you do, you can never live up to his or her bright light?
To you, Seth Curry says, “Hold my beer.”
It has to be tough getting noogies from one of the greatest shooters the NBA has ever seen. As much as he tried, Seth has always been several steps behind his older brother and future Hall of Famer, Stephen Curry, but it wasn’t for his lack of trying.
Seth meandered in the G-League for his first few seasons of professional basketball, picking up a few 10-day contracts here and there. One of those 10-day deals, of course, came from the Phoenix Suns back in 2014-2015 after they traded off the Dragic brothers (more on them in a bit).
Curry never scored a point with the Suns in just two games played, so it would only make sense that the very next year is when he started coming into his own as an NBA player with the Sacramento Kings and has since carved out a decent niche for himself with the Dallas Mavericks.
One year too early, Suns.
6. Miles Plumlee
Duke University basketball is known to foster some of the hatable players in all of athletics. Typically, the most punchable faces have been arrogant white guards such as Steve Wojciechowski, JJ Reddick, and most recently Grayson Allen, but they have arrogant white forwards in their history like Christian Laettner to hate as well.
But there is a low-key brand of Duke players that, while aren’t as hatable as the aforementioned guys, are still super annoying. They are arrogant white centers, the most notable of which are the Plumlees.
From 2008 to 2016, three different Plumlee brothers played center for Duke and all three got time in the NBA. The youngest and least-talented brother, Marshall, only lasted two seasons in the NBA, and surprisingly it was not with the Phoenix Suns.
The Suns actually signed the second-best (second-worst?) Plumlee brother, Miles Plumlee, for a season and a half from 2013-2015. Since then, he has bounced around the league and has a career average of 4.9 points and 4.5 rebounds.
The middle brother, Mason Plumlee turned out to be the best of the bunch and in enjoying a decent career with the Denver Nuggets.
5. Jarron Collins
You could almost argue this one is a push. Twins, Jason and Jarron Collins both had long NBA careers despite never averaging more than 6.4 points per game in a single season, a number which (of course) is both of their career-highs.
Jason, however, was the better rebounder averaging one more rebound per game throughout his career than his twin brother, Jarron. Jason also played three seasons longer than Jarron.
So, which brother did the Phoenix Suns sign for their 2009-2010 season? Jerron, of course. That year, as one of the last players off the bench, Collins scored just one point and grabbed 1.8 rebounds per game.
To be fair, his brother, Jason, wasn’t significantly better than him, which is why I said this could be argued as a push, but with a better rebounding average and longer NBA career, I give the nod to Jason and thus, the Suns’ tradition continues.
4. Grant Gondrezick
Glen Gondrezick (pictured above) enjoyed six NBA seasons as a role player for the New York Knicks and Denver Nuggets in the late ’70s and early ’80s. His career wasn’t anything overly-special but he was good enough to stick around for a while.
So, when his younger brother, Grant Gondrezick came up a few years later, the Phoenix Suns saw he had NBA in his bloodline and seized the opportunity to sign the less-talented Gondrezick brother.
Grant played his rookie season with the Suns, where he averaged 5.5 points per game before he sailed off to Europe to play professionally in France. Grant returned for one more season in the NBA with the LA Clippers, but that would be his last in the Association.
3. Luke Zeller
Not unlike the Brothers Plumlee, the Zeller brothers are a trio of large goofy-looking centers that all spent time in the NBA. However, unlike the Plumlees, where the Phoenix Suns signed the second-worst brother, the team managed to sign the worst Zeller.
In fact, the Suns and the Atlanta Hawks are the only two teams in the league to roster both a Plumlee and a Zeller.
While younger brothers, Tyler Zeller and Cody Zeller have enjoyed solid NBA careers, the oldest, Luke Zeller spent just one year in the league with, you guessed it, the Phoenix Suns.
The Suns signed Luke for the 2012-2013 season, where he played in only 16 games and averaged just 1.2 points per contest.
2. Zoran Dragic
After hearing about the time the Suns signed Tom Van Arsdale as a courtesy to his brother, Zoran Dragic poked his head out from behind a bush and said, “Did someone say courtesy signing?”
Back in the 2014-2015 season, during Goran Dragic‘s second stint with the Phoenix Suns, the team decided to go all-in on point guards. I can only speculate, but my assumption is Goran wasn’t too keen on this gameplan so in an effort to appease him, they signed his brother, Zoran.
If this was the strategy, it didn’t work. Goran all but demanded a trade saying something to the effect of, “I can go stand in the corner somewhere else,” before later clarifying, “Although my recent words came out harsher than I’d intended, I did feel it was time to find a better fit for me as a basketball player.”
In response, the Suns essentially said, “Well, so much for courtesy-signing his scrub brother,” and subsequently traded them both to the Miami Heat.
Zoran only played six games with the Suns, scoring six total points.
1. Taylor Griffin
Taylor Griffin was never as good as his brother, Blake, in basketball, but his younger brother’s talent may have helped earn him shot in the NBA.
Even though Taylor was three years older than Blake, they were both eligible for the 2009 NBA draft, with Blake having only played two seasons at Oklahoma.
While Blake Griffin was the #1 overall pick in 2009, his older brother, Taylor, who graduated from Oklahoma, was still available in the second round when the Phoenix Suns were on the clock.
Unable to stop themselves in their on-going hope to find a sibling who might be as good as the more highly-touted one, the Suns drafted Taylor Griffin with the 48th overall pick in the draft. Even though he spent the entire year with the Suns, he played in just eight games and scored a total of 10 points.
This was his first and last year in the NBA.