Toumani Camara will always be the one that got away for the Phoenix Suns. Traded away by the franchise before ever playing a game for the team outside of some Summer League play, he quickly established himself as a defensive menace with the Portland Trail Blazers. Last season, only his second campaign, saw him make All Defense second team, a huge achievement.
Suns keep Camara quiet in win over Trail Blazers.
Tuesday night the Suns finally exacted a small measure of revenge on the guy they packaged with Deandre Ayton in order to add Jusuf Nurkic, a sentence that still hurts to type. Phoenix running out of the late tip-off 127-110 winners, with Cleaning The Glass daily report having Camara as the only player who underperformed based on expectations.
Toumani Camara’s regression this season is incredibly hard to believe because he just felt like a guy that would continue to get exponentially better season after season. I can understand the shots not falling but the defense falling off this badly is very strange.
— Brady Clark (@Brady12Clark) November 19, 2025
His six points and two rebounds - to go with four turnovers - giving him a minus 17 on the night. That was only the second worst game rating of the Portland starters, which at least shows that it was not Camara alone who struggled. Thanks to the Suns' defense, which has been a major building block this season, they were able to keep the Trail Blazers and Camara quiet.
Camara has been exactly what both this current version of the Suns - as well as the one that featured Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal - have desperately needed. Had he been around last season, his defending alone would have made them more competitive and surely would have ended with them winning more than 36 regular season games.
One of the main knocks on that group was how little they appeared to care, but we know Camara cares. If he has in Phoenix now, he would be the perfect player for head coach Jordan Ott's vision of having many forwards who can implement his defensive vision.
The Suns have cracked the top 10 in defensive rating having been as low as 29th to begin the season, and Camara would make them even better. Although beating him in one game can't bring him back or undo the Nurkic trade, it is still nice to get one over every so often instead of being locked-up by his fantastic defensive skills.
The cherry on top here is how Oso Ighodaro played in the win. He's a streaky player, going from an obvious long-term solution at forward to somebody who can't even start, but in this one he was at his best. His own 14 point performance judged to have been the biggest overachievement, with his game score of plus seven the best of any bench player. A small victory, but a win all the same.