Ranking the 6 worst Suns starters of the Steve Nash era

4. Shannon Brown

Now we’re getting somewhere. Shannon Brown is definitely best remembered for his time with the Lakers, were he won a couple of championships averaging 4.9 points off the bench. Brown played a single season for five organizations, and spent three years with the Lakers.

In between that was a pair of seasons with the Suns were he was actually statistically as good as he ever was. As a result of the 20 games played rule though, he makes this list because he was sometimes fine, and not much else.

Brown liked to get a bucket, and the 10.7 points he averaged with the Suns while with the team was by far and away the best mark of his career. He started 22 games in 2012-13, but this was the first season without Nash, as he had infamously gone to the Lakers. The previous year Brown played 19 games alongside the point guard though, so we’re making a slight exception here.

That group went 33-33 in a lockout shortened season, and perhaps it was the sight of players like Brown playing 23.5 minutes per night that convinced Nash to go elsewhere in pursuit of winning. Time was running out for him, and the following season, when Brown was playing just as much, the Suns went 23-57. Foreboding.

You just never got the sense that Brown was going to help winning at a meaningful level if he was a part of your rotation. It is perhaps telling that, outside of those two titles with the Lakers, where his role was limited, Brown only ever went to the postseason on two more occasions throughout his entire career. An individual who personifies the beginning of the end of a great Suns era.