3 statistical areas the Suns will improve next season

The Phoenix Suns had a season to forget in 2023-24 but if you looked past the poor ending, there were actually segments of the campaign to like. The franchise had a pair of seven game win streaks en route to winning 49 games, and Bradley Beal looked like he was figuring his role out by the end.

The summer away in Paris for Devin Booker and Kevin Durant looks like it did them the world of good, and they will be returning to The Valley with an even clearer vision of how they can help this team win. The Suns even went and got not one but a pair of point guards in Tyus Jones and Monte Morris, to fix the terrible error of having no floor general when the game slowed down last season.

All of which contributes to the fact the Suns are going to improve in some key areas next season.

Central to this will be new head coach Mike Budenholzer, the Arizona native who won a championship with the Milwaukee Bucks as recently as 2021. His beaten opponents in the NBA Finals? The Phoenix Suns of course, so there is no doubt they will benefit in ways they simply didn't when Frank Vogel was at the helm last time out.

3. Pace

We'll begin with an area that doesn't necessarily need to trend upwards, but which is likely to anyway. Having three stars on your team means that offensively there can sometimes be no great rush to get into your sets. When you've got Durant and Booker around to bail you out of basically any possession, pace isn't something to worry about.

But that very malaise is exactly what coach Budenholzer is going to want to move away from. Last season the Suns sat 15th in pace, at 99 possessions per game. Contrast that with the Washington Wizards who topped this area at 103.7, and that's over four extra chances per game they were getting to try and score.

Luckily for the Suns they are not the Wizards either, and are much more likely to convert on at least two of those extra possessions if given them. It is fair to point out that Durant is 35-years-old and that speed isn't how Jusuf Nurkic plays the center position either. But the introduction of Tyus Jones as point guard will lead to a higher pace of play.

He's very willing to get the ball out of his own hands when teammates are making runs and cuts, which just so happens to be something Grayson Allen and Royce O'Neale are very good at. So too is Booker when he's off the ball. Oh, and coach Budenholzer's title-winning group of 2021 had the second highest pace (102.8) during that regular season. Get ready to see the Suns run.

2. Turnovers

As one number goes up, another is surely going to come down in the process. By far one of the biggest issues the Suns had last season was a failure to take care of the basketball. To watch them play on any given night was to see on average two or three turnovers that were mind-boggling in their carelessness. The ball wasn't being stolen, it was being flat out just thrown out of bounds.

The addition of Jones and Monte Morris is going to help here, and it has to because the Suns sat 25th in turnovers per game last season, at 14.9 each night. Every team below them selected in the top 10 in this year's NBA Draft, while unsurprisingly they didn't make the playoffs either. That is not the company this team wants to be in.

It's not just that Jones and Morris "because they are point guards" are going to fix this situation. During their brief playoff experience that was ended by the Minnesota Timberwolves, only the New Orleans Pelicans and Orlando Magic turned the ball over more. With no actual point guard on the roster, it was up to Booker and Beal to split the duties between them.

They did their best - Booker had a career high in assists at 6.9 - so passing and creating wasn't the problem. Rather it was when the game alowed down, or in the case of the regular season once it had settled into a rhythm, the ball didn't know who to stick to at the start of possessions that weren't fast breaks. This resulted in miscues and miscommunication, but that will improve in 2024-25.

1. 3-point shooting

As you're likely already away, Allen led the entire league in 3-point shooting last season, at 46.1 percent. Obviously that's a great place to start if you're talking about the Suns improving from beyond the arc, even if that number fell horribly to 20 percent for Allen in the postseason (an ankle injury likely the reason why).

The Suns shot an impressive 38.2 percent from deep last season, good for fifth in the league. It is hard to see how that number can be improved upon, but leaning into this shots is exactly how the Suns are going to take the jump to the next level.

This roster is built on the shot-making and space created by Booker and Durant, so it is not on them to take a ton of 3-pointers. Rather everybody else has to improve around them. O'Neale shot 37.6 percent once he landed in The Valley, while Durant's 41.3 percent was his highest mark since 2020.

The real key here though is Beal - who despite playing only 53 games as a result of various injuries - knocked down 43 percent of his looks from deep. Not only a career high and only his fourth time going over 40 percent in his career, but the sixth best output in the entire league. If he can replicate that form across a whole season mostly injury free, the Suns can top this category.