Clever early season move already paying off for the Suns

Even the most pessimistic of Phoenix Suns fans has to be happy with how their season has started. They've hit the ground running, and beaten some good teams in the Western Conference in the process. Four of their first five games may have come against both teams from Los Angeles, but you can only play what is in front of you.

Head coach Mike Budenholzer is also off to the kind of start that the organization envisioned when they hired him during the summer. His desire to shoot 3-pointers at an above league average clip has already been evident, with even their best player getting in on the act.

But it is another area where Budenholzer's tinkering is paying off.

It would be fair to say that last season the Suns didn't have much of a second unit. When you're relying on Drew Eubanks and Josh Okogie to make up part of that group - while hoping that Bol Bol can pop for a couple of weeks at a time - you're lacking the depth required to challenge at the top level.

Not only was this badly exposed in the postseason, but the inability of Bradley Beal to stay healthy for stretches only highlighted this painful reality even more. It is clear coach Budenholzer has much more to work with this time around - Ryan Dunn in particular has been a revelation - but that doesn't make what he's doing with his rotations and roster any less clever.

As the always fantastic Duane Rankin of The Arizona Republic has pointed out above, the Suns have already used a whopping 69 different lineups - featuring 13 players - across only four games played. The second most in the league behind only the Memphis Grizzlies. Last season that may have been viewed as a bad thing, but not this time out.

Whereas in the past it felt like coach Vogel was searching for something - anything - to try and stick and give his team some juice, there's much more method to the way coach Bud is approaching using so many players in the early goings of the campaign. Crucially, the style of play doesn't change massively either, with one of their three star players generally out there at all times.

This allows them to still take more 3-pointers than before, while then having the release valve of a Beal, Devin Booker or Kevin Durant to take the kind of shots that frustrate the hell out of Lakers' head coach JJ Redick. Even centers Jusuf Nurkic and Mason Plumlee have similar games in how they use their larger frames, although Plumlee has more burst around the rim on both ends of the court.

Trying to find minutes for Dunn and fellow rookie Oso Ighodaro has also proved an exciting challenge, as the pair already look capable of actually helping this team win games. Coach Budenholzer likely didn't expect to have to change up his rotations to accommodate both, but he's also smart enough to realize that is the right thing to do.

This bodes extremely well as the regular season unfolds, as last year it felt like this group were leaning on their trio of stars and hoping to just skip to the playoffs. There's still plenty of input from their stars, but the ball and the minutes are being shared in the early goings, even if Durant should be playing less than the 40 minutes per night that he currently is.

Some nights a role player is going to go off, while the likes of Grayson Allen and Monte Morris have failed to really get a proper look in yet either. This again speaks to the improved depth, and the way in which coach Budenholzer is managing this right now is one of the many reasons the Suns went out and got him this summer. He's crushing it.