Suns have appeared all over undesirable list for last four seasons

If there is one thing this version of the Phoenix Suns should be good at, it is scoring the basketball. With Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and even Bradley Beal on their roster, it should be a nightmare for opponents to stop this trio from lighting it up each and every night.

On top of that, Grayson Allen managed to lead the entire league in 3-point shooting percentage last season, at 46.1 percent. Yet despite all of this, the Suns could only manage to finish 10th in offensive rating (116.8). Underwhelming given the players at their disposal, and yet it was a 12the place defensive finish (113.7) that surprised many and helped account for their 49 games won.

A worrying trend has now emerged, and it explains just why the Suns have failed to hit the offensive heights that everybody expected of them.

These days the least efficient shot - at least according to those who judge the game through the prism of a spreadsheet and graphs - is the midrange game. These longer two-point shots just aren't worth it when you can either take a few steps back and add an additional point to every made shot, or else get inside for layups that have a higher percentage chance of going in.

It might surprise you then to learn that - across the last five seasons - both former and current Suns have been among the league leaders in midrange field goal percentage. Which when looked at one way is a good thing because these shots are going in. But more and more the data suggests diversifying your offensive game to move away from these shots as much as possible.

In the last two seasons, Durant has taken by far the most shots from midrange. In 2023-24 that number was 485, and the absurd 51.8 percent of those that he made put him fourth in the league. For context though the league leader - Khris Middleton of the Milwaukee Bucks - achieved his 58.5 percent on only 193 attempts.

Worth mentioning here is Deandre Ayton - formerly of the Suns - who in his first season with the Portland Trail Blazers sat just behind Durant in fifth, at 51.2 percent on 213 attempts. Go back to 2022-23, and it was Durant tops in both shots taken (327) and percentage (56 percent).

That season also saw Booker make the list, as he finished fifth overall (49.4 percent), but having taken the second most midrange efforts at 310. Unfortunately for the Suns, that's a problem because when the playoffs start and defenders are playing at their peak levels, relying so much on these kinds of shots is a recipe for disaster. Which is partly why the Suns haven't made the Conference Finals.

Go back the two seasons previous to that, and Durant can again be found. He was playing for the Brooklyn Nets then - and although he again led the league in attempts in 2021-22 (407, next highest was Trae Young at 265), 2020-21 was an interesting outlier. Durant finished fourth (50.6 percent), but he attempted only 180 midrange efforts. The fourth highest but way down on his usual output.

Not to be outdone though, those same two campaigns also saw Chris Paul pop up on for the Suns. In fact going back to 2019-20 and his single season with the Oklahoma City Thunder (he led the league in efficiency at 54 percent that year), and Paul is all over this list. He's dropped off massively since leaving the Suns, but prior to that was a top five mainstay for those Suns contending years.

The year they went to the NBA Finals he was second in the league (51.2 percent) on by far the most attempts (382), but this also coincided with Durant's down year. In 2022 his 297 attempts (making 51.9 percent of them) was the fifth most efficient in the league. It was also the second most attempts behind... you guessed it, Durant and his 407.

So it is unfair then to say that the Suns force their star players into shooting the shot that teams have moved away from the most as frequently as they do. Rather it has just so happened that two of the best to ever do it at their respective positions use the midrange in such an elite way, that they are almost exempt from passing those looks up.

The Suns still haven't won a championship though - and while Allen's league-leading exploits from deep last season were a welcome addition - the organization will need to do a lot more in 2024-25 to be the contenders they believe they are. We'll still see Durant at or near the top of this category by season's end though, and in time we'll know if that helped or hindered this group.