Ranking the 6 worst Suns starters of the Steve Nash era

Steve Nash is one of the most beloved Phoenix Suns of all time. Across two stints with the organization, he helped to pilot the “seven seconds or less” era of Suns basketball, and became a two-time league MVP while with the franchise.

Nash certainly had some illustrious teammates during his tenure in The Valley, with Shawn Marion and Amar’e Stoudemire two who will be going into the Suns’ Ring of Honor this coming season. In fact Nash was unlucky not to win a championship with the team, and has the scars to prove it.

Not every teammate Nash had was a great one however, and there were some who ended up not contributing to winning basketball the way that he did.

The NBA was certainly a different place when Nash was selected 15th by the Suns as part of that iconic 1996 draft class. Yet he was gone by 1998 (some guy called Jason Kidd got the nod instead of him to run the team), before making a triumphant return to the franchise in 2004.

His first season back, that team won 33 more games than the previous season, the Suns established themselves as true contenders, the MVP awards came and the rest in history. Lost to time are some of those dodgy starters that Nash had to put up with, with the worst six making this sorry list. Fair warning though, this was actually a lot harder than you’d think.

6. James Jones

It seems harsh to land current Suns’ General Manager James Jones on this list. After all, alongside owner Mat Ishbia, he is helping to put together the roster that is giving the organization the best chance they have ever had to win a first championship. Jones the player though, was a less exciting story.

Best remembered as part of that 2011 Miami Heat team that won LeBron James his first ring, Jones was with the Suns for two seasons, and started 25 games in the 2005-06 season. That team went an impressive 54-28, and Jones appeared in 75 contests overall. He played his part.

Jones is here because the criteria to make this list has to be that a player started 20 games in any one season, and if you look at every player who Nash played alongside that meets that threshold, there weren’t that many truly awful players. Jones averaged 9.3 points that season, although he did shoot an impressive 37.8 percent from deep while playing predominantly as a small forward.

He’s here because he was a pedestrian player. Not a bad one per se, but just not an individual who was helping to move the needle that little bit further at a time when Nash was 31-years-old and would win his second MVP award. The Suns made the Western Conference finals that year, losing to the Dallas Mavericks in six games. Jones offered up 4.3 points and shot 30 percent from deep.

5. Robin Lopez

The 2009-10 season was another fantastic one for the Suns, who once again came up just short of winning it all. Stopped in six games by the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference finals, they had again gone 54-28 en route to finishing as the the third seed. Center Robin Lopez was 21-years-old at the time, and he was pretty raw.

Time has shown us that his twin brother Brook would go on to be the better player, although Robin is still in the league and has had himself a nice little career. The Suns just happened to bring the young big man who they had drafted the previous season on that little bit too quickly, and it showed.

As a rookie, Lopez has averaged 3.2 points and a pair of rebounds in just over 10 minutes of action. He appeared in 60 games that season, starting seven. In year two, the Suns gave Lopez 31 starts, although he only played 51 regular season games that year because of injury. There were times when it looked like Lopez could have an impact of sorts on both ends of the court.

But in reality he was years away from being a meaningful contributor, and it wasn’t until he got to the New Orleans Pelicans in 2012-13 that he began to find his groove. Lopez was living proof of the theory that it takes young big men longer to develop in the league and to get comfortable doing what they do.

It is just a shame that, right when the Suns were close to winning it all, they had a young big man that they relied upon that bit too much. Once the postseason started, Lopez started and appeared in only six games, thanks to a back issue. Had he been fully healthy though, it doesn’t seem likely that he would have been much help anyway. Unfortunate that he lands here, but it is what it is.

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.

3. A.C. Green

A.C. Green? As in the guy who was a part of the “Showtime Lakers”? Younger fans won’t believe this, but Green spent four seasons with the Suns from 1993-1997, and he was actually pretty good. Not quite the player he’d been with the Lakers, but then, they never would have let him go if that was the case.

The overlap came with a rookie Nash in 1996, a season where Green would start 19-of-27 games for the team (we’re again cheating slightly here…) before moving on to finish that season with the Dallas Mavericks. By the time Nash arrived, Green was still only 33-years-old.

Nash was winning MVPs in his 30s, but Green’s production had really fallen off a cliff by that point. We can blame this on the era — there’s little doubt that a player of Green’s ability at 33 in the league today would still possibly be a max player. Instead, he offered up 5.7 points and 5.1 rebounds while Nash was going through his rookie season.

In Green’s first season with the team, he’d put up over 14 points and nine rebounds per game. He shared the court with Charles Barkley and Danny Ainge and Cedric Ceballos. He started the fourth most games of any player at 55, and was a real contributor on what was a fringe contender who lost in the conference semi-finals.

But by the time Nash was playing alongside him, Green was offering very little. Like many players on this list, it is sad that Green finds himself here at all. But that is a testament to the players the Suns did have around Nash throughout his time there. Players like Marcin Gortat, Grant Hill, Matt Barnes and Raja Bell may not have been stars. But they were better than Green.

2. John “Hot Rod” Williams

If you could make a defensible case for every player on the list up to this point, that comes to an end with John “Hot Rod” Williams. A big man no doubt, he wasn’t offering the Suns much else in the center position from 1995-1998.

That he started an astonishing 154 games (and appeared in 201) goes to show the lack of big man talent in the league at the time, and where the Suns were at after the glory days of the early nineties. When it was all said and done Williams had averaged as many points per game as he had rebounds at 6.2.

Williams also appeared in nine postseason games, but as you can probably imagine, his numbers dipped. Putting up 5.2 points and 4.4 rebounds in 21.1 minutes of action was — not good. It wasn’t all bad for Williams though, as he had been not only a good big man with the Cleveland Cavaliers for nine seasons, but one who endeared himself to a lot of fans there.

It was just a case of his best days being behind him, and by the time he left the franchise for a single season with the Dallas Mavericks before retiring, Williams was 35-years-old, which was ancient for the time.

He was big and lumbering and nowhere near as athletic as he had been, and it showed. The prospect of Nash running a two-man game with Williams (he started 96 games when Nash was on the team) is unthinkable today.

1. Mark Bryant

Be honest, do you know who Mark Bryant is? If you do, and to be fair he played for a whopping 10 organizations, then you know more than a lot of fans. Bryant played two seasons with the Suns, the first two of Nash’s career.

In 797 regular season games, and no less than 79 postseason appearances, Bryant never averaged double figures in scoring or rebounding. Ever. As a player who manned the paint and also spent some time as a power forward, given his body size, this somehow doesn’t seem believable.

At his best, and that was not with the Suns, Bryant put up 5.2 rebounds per night. He broke the nine point scoring barrier twice in a career than incredibly spanned from 1988-2003, and he started 40-of-111 games for the Suns.

It is telling that, after seven seasons with the Portland Trail Blazers, a single season with the Houston Rockets and a pair with the Suns, Bryant would then play for seven teams in seven years before retiring. It seems inconceivable that not only would teams keep looking to add Bryant, but that he would start 198 games in his career and still do so little.

What makes matters even worse here is that Bryant played alongside Hot Rod for far too long if you’re a Suns fan. The organization was in the doldrums during this period, although it got much better once Nash came back and the Suns committed to building a winner around his talents. The worst starter Steve Nash ever played with.