The Suns might just have found their Mikal Bridges replacement

In this era of Phoenix Suns' basketball - which for the sake of simplicity we will say started a decade ago with the drafting of Devin Booker - few players in The Valley have had a better connection with the fans than Mikal Bridges.

Alongside Cameron Johnson, the pair were beloved as much for what they could do on the court as how they interacted with fans off of it. Of those two, Bridges was by far the better player. He was one of the key guys in the run to the 2021 NBA Finals, and will get a chance to get back there with the New York Knicks this coming season.

But it looks like the Suns have finally found his long-term replacement.

Whisper it quietly, but rookie Ryan Dunn looks like he could be everything to this version of the team that Bridges was a few years ago. Comparing a player who has yet to play a competitive game for the organization to one of the best individuals they've had in the last 10 years - and probably their best individual defender - seems ridiculous, but not if you've watched him so far.

Dunn is approaching these games like a man possessed on the defensive end, and is already way ahead of schedule. Head coach Mike Budenholzer now having a genuine dilemma on his hands as to what to do with the former Virginia player, who is already pushing for a role beyond simply filling out the second unit.

There's a maturity both in the way he plays and speaks to media - and as has been mentioned on social media by a number of fans - he appears to have that dog in him that everybody waited and waited to see from Deandre Ayton. That level of defensive play so soon after landing in the league can't be ignored for very long if you're the Suns.

Even more so because the introduction of point guard Tyus Jones has made the starting group easy to pick on if you have a bit of size and can score efficiently from different positions on the court. That was also the case last season - before Jones even arrived in Phoenix - as the Minnesota Timberwolves swept them out of the postseason.

Exactly who would make way for Dunn to get more playing time is another, much larger issue, but the two-way play so far has been reminiscent of Bridges in his heyday. During his five seasons in Phoenix, Bridges was a 37.6 percent 3-point shooter - and while it looked like Dunn would never be able to reach those heights - he's hit the ground running.

Despite taking less than one attempt from deep in his two seasons in college, and making just over 23 percent of them, Dunn was a scorching by his standards 6-of-11 in the recent preseason victory over the Denver Nuggets. The result here is obviously not what matters, but the fact he could make so many shots against a team of their calibre is very promising.

The beauty of Bridges was that he could lock down so many elite scorers, but also kept his own defenders honest by doing just enough on the offensive end to be a threat. The hope with Dunn was that as the season unfolded, he could collect some minutes playing high-level defense to see out some games.

But we're already miles past that, with Dunn looking like one of the steals of the draft. Bridges will always have a soft spot in the hearts of The Valley Faithful, as he should. It didn't look like the team could find another young player to potentially come in and recapture some of what they had before - and which they lost in the Kevin Durant trade - but Dunn's sudden emergence changes things.