Patience is wearing thin, but until the Phoenix Suns can string together more games with their Big 3, the struggles will continue.

-Gerald Bourguet

Like it or not, the Suns Big 3 needs more time (and reps) to turn things around

"Patience" might be the defining, most reviled term of the Phoenix Suns' 2023-24 season so far.

More so than "ankle sprain." More so than "fourth quarter." And certainly more so than "Big 3," which hasn't been able to leave its imprint on the Suns fanbase the way anyone expected.

There are myriad reasons for that, and for the team's underwhelming 19-18 record that is fueling that sentiment. Despite hiring a defensive-minded coach in Frank Vogel, the Suns are subpar on that end, ranking 17th in defensive rating. That wouldn't be so noticeable if not for Phoenix's easier schedule to start the season and an offense that should be far better than the NBA's 11th-ranked offense.

A once-lauded collection of veteran minimum role players have largely disappointed, falling into either "offense only" or "defense only" categories. But the biggest problem is the obvious reason for the Suns' struggles: Their three best players haven't been available enough.

Coming off Monday's disheartening beatdown at the hands of the LA Clippers, the Big 3 have played in a grand total of six games together -- with Bradley Beal leaving with an ankle injury four-and-half minutes into one of those. Considering the Suns are 37 games into the season, that's extremely disheartening, because even if all three stay perfectly healthy the rest of the season, they'll play at most 51 games together.

But as Kevin Durant said after Sunday's loss to the Ja Morant-less Memphis Grizzlies, nobody wants to hear excuses right now.

“Only results matter to people that's watching, and context really doesn't matter," Durant said. "So whatever it is, we know what it takes to build a good team, and expectations from the outside really shouldn't concern us. But we understand with the talent that we have, people are gonna expect so much out of us and be disappointed when we take losses like this. So we just gotta lock in and be better.”

There is more than enough talent for this to work. Durant is a top-15 player in NBA history who's still putting up a 30-6-6 stat line at age 35. Devin Booker was the best player on a 64-win team just two seasons ago and is coming off the best postseason of his career. And Bradley Beal averaged more than 30 points a game just a couple seasons ago, all while fine-tuning his ball-handling and playmaking over the last few years.

All three are three-level scorers and at least above-average passers. In a league that requires offensive initiators more than old-school, "true point guards," the lack of flow in the Suns' offense can't be blamed solely on the "Point Book" experiment.

The fact that Phoenix solely resorts to Booker operating with the ball in his hands is an issue, since he's still optimized in his normal, off-ball, score-first role. But the offensive struggles have deeper roots than just "Point Book," a necessity born from roster construction with no simple fix in sight, since Booker is by far the Suns' best point guard, and they lack the trade resources to land a starting-caliber floor general.

In other words, as much as the Suns will have trade options to tinker on the margins and improve the fringes of the roster, there is no external savior coming to fix everything. This team's turnaround will have to come about internally, which is why the Big 3's lack of reps together is so glaring.

Look, I get it: Patience is in short supply in the Valley right now. This fanbase has already waited 55 years and counting to see their first championship. Factoring in the age and contracts of Durant and Beal, this group has a 1-2 year title window. There's little time for error, and regardless of how many games all three members of the Big 3 have played together, they've still had plenty of games where at least two have been out there. That should be enough to avoid inexplicable losses to the Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs (twice!) and shorthanded Grizzlies.

In other words, the Suns should be a lot better than one game above .500.

However, two things can be true at once: There are issues that extend beyond the Big 3's availability, but more reps with those guys sure might help fix some of them!

Two examples immediately come to mind, both of which should be fresh in the minds of Suns fans.

The first is the Clippers, who started off 0-5 after the James Harden trade but have been on a tear ever since. They thoroughly demolished Phoenix on Monday, providing a stark contrast between a Big 3 that's had enough time to take their lumps and build cohesion...and a Big 3 that's still very much in the middle of that process.

The Suns' Big 3 have played a grand total of 108 minutes over their six games together. They're a +23 in that time, posting a 120.7 offensive rating and a +8.0 Net Rating. That's pretty good!

The problem is the tiny sample size. By comparison, the Clippers' Big 3 of Harden, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George have played 537 minutes together across 25 games. That's more than 400 additional minutes, in 19 more games! And they've been damn good despite a brutal start, outscoring opponents by a total of 117 points in those minutes, for a +10.6 Net Rating.

It's not just the Big 3 minutes, however. The Clippers surround their star trio with terrific role players in Terance Mann and Ivica Zubac, not to mention one of the deepest benches in the NBA. They've had time to iron out rotations and consistent lineups, and their starting five has logged 302 minutes together, posting a +104 in those minutes.

The Suns' preferred starting lineup with their Big 3, Grayson Allen and Jusuf Nurkic, meanwhile, has played a grand total of 70 minutes over five games. They're a +17 in that time, but again, 70 minutes is a microscopic sample size!

Let's pretend you don't care about the Clippers and your eyes glossed over reading about a team that isn't the Phoenix Suns. Well, how about a very recent Suns team for our second example?

Over a two-year stretch, the starting lineup of Chris Paul, Devin Booker, Mikal Bridges, Jae Crowder and Deandre Ayton became one of the best five-man lineups in basketball. They went to the NBA Finals in their first season together, won 64 games the following year, and have become a fond example of camaraderie and team chemistry for the fanbase (especially now).

But as much as that lineup represented the pinnacle of cohesion over the last two decades of Suns hoops, has everyone forgotten that they were bad to start their first season together? Not only were the 2020-21 Suns 8-8 through their first 16 games, but their starters were actually a -13 together over that stretch, posting a -3.7 Net Rating. It got so bad people wondered whether a change needed to be made.

Instead, the Suns' starters stuck with it, worked through growing pains, and went on to post a +4.7 Net Rating together by the end of the season. The +76 they posted wound up being the 12th-highest figure in the NBA of any five-man lineup that season, and the following year, they jumped all the way to the league's fourth-best figure (+122).

Why does any of this matter? Because those starters back in 2020-21 logged a whopping 200 minutes together through the team's first 16 games. Just like the Clippers this year, they had to take their lumps and work through it before they turned the corner.

So this is the part where it matters that the Suns' Big 3 have only played 108 minutes together, or that their preferred starting lineup has only played 70 minutes. How can it not be a factor when this year's Suns starters have played one-third as many minutes as the 2020-21 starters got, in more than twice as many games?

This isn't to let the Suns off the hook for their multiple failures in winnable games. It's simply to acknowledge that building chemistry with three main offensive hubs takes time. Perhaps just as importantly, it takes even longer for role players to assimilate into the proper roles around them. But none of that process can begin until the foundation is laid out, and that starts with three stars on a top-heavy roster being on the court long enough for the concrete to dry first.

There's no area where that deficiency is more glaring than fourth quarters, which have been historically bad for Phoenix:

There's no defending that. There's no defending the Suns being a +23 in first quarters (ninth in the NBA), +79 in second quarters (fourth), +54 in third quarters (ninth) and -131 in fourth quarters (dead last). There's no defending the eight times Phoenix has lost a game when entering the final frame with a lead, or their overall ranks in fourth quarters that are downright nauseating:

30th in points (24.5)
29th in FG% (42.5%)
30th in 3P% (29.4%)
30th in rebounds (9.6)
30th in assists (4.9)
28th in turnovers (3.8)
29th in steals (1.4)
30th in point differential (-3.5))
30th in Net Rating (-16.1)
30th in Offensive Rating (103.0)
21st in Defensive Rating (119.1)
30th in pace (94.54)

Again, though, familiarity and late-game reps matter. Two things can be true at once: The Suns have no business with half of their 18 losses coming in games where they led at some point in the fourth, but the Big 3 has only played 21 fourth-quarter minutes together all season. Their starting lineup has played five minutes together in the fourth. Those aren't pieces of information to just gloss over!

In the sorely limited fourth-quarter minutes where the Big 3 have actually shared the court, the offense has devolved into iso-ball once defenses take away their first action. Earlier in the season, before the Big 3 was whole, coach Frank Vogel mentioned how a KD iso was one of the best plays they could run.

“Yeah, I mean, that was some of our best offense, when Kev was going one-on-one and just slowing things down, giving him space to operate," Vogel explained.

Vogel certainly wasn't wrong, but now that the Big 3 is finally whole, the recent lack of ball movement down the stretch has become apparent. It's not a Durant problem, or a Booker problem, or a Beal problem, or even a coaching problem. It's a fundamental breakdown across the board that requires fixing, and the best teacher is experience -- especially in high-stakes situations.

“We just need to go to our next option," Booker explained. "Sometimes when the first option's taken away, like we said [with] how they're playing, just over-denying everything, it has to be an immediate next action. Go to the next person, go dribble handoff somewhere else, stop playing so slow.”

Vogel, KD and the Suns are big believers in the importance of "putting stuff on film" in order to study their shortcomings and improve as a group. Booker may disagree that they should have it down by now, but as impatient as the players, the organization and the fanbase are to fix it, their optimal lineups haven't gotten enough time to do so.

Like it or not, the Suns need more reps with their Big 3 to start living up to expectations. They're running out of time to look like legitimate title contenders, and whether they actually get there feels unlikely at the moment.

But the season still hasn't even reached its halfway point yet, and as much as Suns fans are justifiably sick of hearing that word "patience"... a little more might be required before this group can realistically start turning things around.