👋 GOOD MORNING — Happy Monday! It’s the start of another week, which means we’re one week closer to college football season (40 days, to be exact) and NFL season (the Cardinals’ first preseason game is in just 19 days). In fact, Cardinals training camp gets underway this week. We’re so, so close.

Meanwhile, yesterday’s weather in Phoenix had me feeling like it’s fall already! Overcast skies? A drizzle? A high of 94? More of that please.

On to the show!

— Leah Merrall

The Suns finished 2025 NBA Summer League 2-3, but it’s not the record that matters.

Summer League isn’t training camp or preseason, but it does have multiple aims. It allows recently drafted rookies, G League players and other young players to showcase their skills, develop and potentially earn roster spots. It lets teams evaluate their prospects and experiment with different lineups and strategies.

This summer’s Suns roster included recently drafted Khaman Maluach (10th overall), Rasheer Fleming (31st overall) and Koby Brea (41st overall) as well as recently signed CJ Huntley and second-year players Ryan Dunn and Oso Ighodaro, to name a few.

The real evaluation of these players won’t come until fall. Until then, though, these are the biggest takeaways from the 2025 Summer Suns.

1. Ryan Dunn Looks Ready To Take a Step

This was Ryan Dunn’s second Summer League since getting drafted 28th overall by the Suns in 2024. The one year of experience in the NBA showed. In three Summer League games played, Dunn averaged: 

Erik’s take: “What you saw out there showed the building blocks for what could be a very important piece for the Suns’ core.”

Gerald’s take: “I don’t know if a second year leap is coming necessarily, but he’s improved in some pretty key areas like ball handling, like being more aggressive, like the fact that he just looks so confident offensively against what he knew was lesser competition. It looked like he carried over what he learned from his rookie year, what he’s been improving in the offseason over to an environment where frankly you want to see a second-year player dominate and he did that.”

2. Khaman Maluach Needs More Time

Khaman Maluach is the Suns’ only first-round draft pick from this year. Unlike Dunn, the 7-foot-1 center from Duke showed that he’s still very much a rookie. Granted, Maluach didn’t even start playing basketball until 2019, but he’s an exciting young prospect for a Suns team that just a month ago desperately needed a center. In three Summer League games played, Maluach averaged:

Gerald’s take: “He is still a project, this was a good reminder of that. He’s 18 years old, he’s going to take some time. We knew that going in, we hoped that he would be a little bit more ready than he looked, but I think a lot of it is just getting stronger with this ability to handle the ball.”

3. Oso Ighodaro Is One to Watch

Oso Ighodaro, like Dunn, is a second-year player. Ighodaro was drafted 40th overall by the Suns in 2024 and has an entire season in the NBA under his belt. In four Summer League games played, Ighodaro averaged:

Gerald’s take: “The Suns need to find minutes for Oso. He is too fascinating, he does too many things well for you to let his limitations hold him out of the lineup. I think pairing him with Maluach, at least defensively, was a very interesting look because Oso is still very quick, he’s stronger than he was last year, he does a lot of facilitation things. I know that the lack of a jumper kind of hinders him in a way, but he does too much positive for you to take him out of the rotation like we saw last year.”

4. Koby Brea Could Be a Rotation Player

Earlier this month, 2025 second-round pick Koby Brea signed a two-way deal with the Suns and will play with the team’s G League affiliate Valley Suns with the chance to fill in a roster spot with the NBA squad. In three Summer League games played, Brea averaged:

Erik’s take: “Koby Brea can be a rotation player. Will he be this season? I don’t know. I think he will be, though, at some point in his career soon if not this year.”

Gerald’s take: “Koby Brea could earn a standard contract. It’s important to remember he’s still on a two-way. They will have potentially one or two open roster spots after Beal, but as encouraged as I was from what I saw from Brea, the third game was a reminder that this guy still has a ways to go.”

5. Take Everything With a Grain of Salt

The truth is, Summer League isn’t necessarily the most organized way to evaluate a team. Sometimes, players are in roles that they’ve never been in before or won’t be in on the actual team. Plus, these are all players from different backgrounds coming together for the first time. The biggest takeaways come from glimpses of skills that can be translatable to the NBA or skills that can be developed or built upon. So don’t fret if someone disappointed you, and don’t get too excited if someone impressed you. The real evaluation is yet to come.

For more, the PHNX Suns crew gave all of their thoughts on the Suns in Summer League.

Get Out the Brooms: The Diamondbacks swept the Cardinals this weekend for the first time since 2007 and are finally back to a .500 record. Eugenio Suárez homered twice in two consecutive games and now leads the National League with 35 homers, one more than Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani. The D-backs look to continue the momentum in their three-game series against the Houston Astros (57-42) that kicks off tonight.

All-Star Champ: Alyssa Thomas had just six points in Team Collier’s 151-130 win over Team Clark in the WNBA All-Star game, but she sure was efficient. Thomas was 3-from-4 from the field, had four rebounds, four assists, and was plus-14 in 13 minutes of play.

Points on the Road: Phoenix Rising claimed two points out of three against El Paso Locomotive on Saturday in a match that likely ended the team’s chances of progressing in the Jägermeister Cup. An early own goal from Kofi Twumasi gave Rising the lead, but El Paso responded with two goals of their own. Darius Robinson tapped home a rebound off of a Charlie Dennis free kick to force a penalty shootout in which Phoenix prevailed. Rising’s next match is next Wednesday, July 30 against Orange County FC.

New Bling: Members of the 2024 Sun Devil Football team received their Big 12 Championship rings on Friday. Later in the day, head coach Kenny Dillingham posted a photo of the ring on his Instagram story with the caption: “Nobody cares, 29 teams have won the Big 12, only one program has done it back to back.”

Are the D-backs back???

Me when I walked outside to the weather yesterday: