The injury bug is biting the Phoenix Suns early and often throughout the 2025-26 season.
From Jalen Green’s hamstring and Devin Booker’s groin to Dillon Brooks’ broken left hand and now Mark Williams’ stress reaction in his foot, first-year head coach Jordan Ott has had to be malleable with his playing rotations as guys frequently find themselves in street clothes.
The silver lining to the Williams injury, however, is that rookie big man Khaman Maluach is finally getting more minutes to prove himself.
Still just 19 years old, the No. 10 overall pick of the 2025 draft is showing the potential to be a beast as it relates to rim protection.
In a 118-116 win over the New Orleans Pelicans on March 6, Maluach notched a career-high 20 minutes of action. In those 20 minutes, he blocked five shots. That was the most blocks in a game by a Suns rookie since 2017 (when Marquese Chriss did it twice). In the process, Maluach also became the youngest bench player since 2013 to record five blocks in a game, according to the Suns via Instagram.
Throughout Suns’ lore, the center position hasn’t been a position of strength.
Deandre Ayton showed flashes as a former No. 1 overall draft pick, but never reached the hype. Shaquille O’Neal made his way to The Valley and nicknamed himself “The Big Cactus,” but he was reaching his twilight years at the time and wasn’t a great fit alongside Steve Nash’s uptempo offensive style. You have to go back to the 1970s when Rookie of the Year, All-Star and Suns Ring of Honor member Alvan Adams was holding down the center position year-to-year to find any meaningful sort of continuity at that spot for Phoenix.
So, can the Duke product develop into a center Suns fans want to brag about?
Khaman Maluach’s shot-blocking prowess is a rare trait in franchise lore
Maluach followed up his career-best five-block effort by swatting two more shots in 20 minutes of action March 8 against the Charlotte Hornets.
It shows a continuation from Maluach’s performances in the G League, where the big man averaged 16.5 points, 12.8 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game in 11 games played (Tip-Off Tournament and G League regular season combined).
That 2.5 blocks per game average would be tied for the second-best mark in Suns history if sustained over the course of an NBA season with Andrew Lang, who averaged a career-high 2.5 blocks per contest with Phoenix during the 1991-92 season.
The franchise leader in blocks per game in a season is former Slam Dunk champion Larry Nance, who swatted 2.6 shot attempts per game in 1982-83. He also holds the Suns’ single-season record with 217 total blocks that season — a mark that has now stood for more than four decades.
On a per-36-minute basis, Maluach is averaging 3.0 blocks across 30 games played as a rookie. Given how inconsistent Maluach’s playing time has been throughout his first professional season, it’s impressive that he’s been able to sustain that type of shot-blocking output.
The sample size remains small, but the underlying analytics are extremely promising.
Suns opponents have an offensive rating of 114.3 points per 100 possessions when Maluach isn’t on the court. When he is, that mark plummets to 108.6. The Suns’ team block percentage with “Man Man” on the court is 11.4% — that dips to 7.6% without Maluach.
Now, Maluach in a lot of ways is still a raw talent. He needs more time to develop his game and gain confidence that he can compete consistently above the G League level.
But at just 19 years old (he won’t turn 20 until September), the big man from South Sudan is flashing potential in a statistical category Suns fans have been starved for for decades.
As he grows and matures as a basketball player with more seasoning, that's a skill that will continue to translate and alter games for the better in The Valley.