PHOENIX, Ariz. · Region: Phoenix
Cutdown day in Phoenix produced a decision that says more about the Suns' spreadsheet than about the player leaving. The Suns waived veteran wing Haywood Highsmith on Saturday, according to Hoops Rumors, reporting John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports 98.7. Highsmith is a six-year NBA veteran with a real defensive reputation and a recent full season as a rotation player in Miami. He is also, in Phoenix's current financial position, a roughly $16 million decision — and on Saturday the Suns decided that keeping an open roster spot was worth more than keeping him.
That framing matters because this was not a surprise performance cut. Per Gambadoro, the plan was in place all along: retain Jamaree Bouyea as the 14th man on his non-guaranteed contract, and leave the 15th spot open at the start of the regular season. Highsmith's waiver is the execution of that plan, not a late change of heart. The Suns' other 13 players on standard deals all have fully guaranteed salaries for 2026/27, which left the margins of the roster — Bouyea's non-guaranteed deal, Highsmith's non-guaranteed deal, and the empty 15th chair — as the only places the front office could actually choose. It chose flexibility.
Who Highsmith is, and what Phoenix is giving up
Highsmith re-signed with Phoenix in August on a non-guaranteed minimum-salary deal after finishing the 2025/26 season with the Suns. That finish was brief: he was limited to seven games last season following surgery on a torn meniscus in his right knee. Any team evaluating him this fall was therefore evaluating two things at once — the player he was before the injury, and how much of that player is available now.
The pre-injury version is well documented. In his last full season, with Miami in 2024/25, Highsmith averaged 6.5 points, 3.4 rebounds and 1.5 assists in 24.6 minutes across 74 games, with 42 starts, shooting .458 from the field, .382 from three and .721 from the line. Those are not star numbers, and nobody in Phoenix was asking them to be. They are the numbers of a playable wing: long, defensively versatile, able to guard across positions, able to make an open three often enough that defenses have to account for him, and experienced enough to start 42 games for a playoff organization without the role looking too big. Wings like that are the connective tissue of good rotations, and they are not easy to find in-season for a minimum salary.
That is the basketball cost, stated plainly. Phoenix is thinner on the wing today than it was on Friday, and if injuries hit the rotation during the season, the open 15th spot will have to be filled by whoever is available then — not by the veteran who was already in the building, already knew the system, and had already played the role at a high level in Miami. The Suns know that cost. They priced it, and the price on the other side of the ledger was bigger.
The $16 million minimum-salary player
Here is the arithmetic that decided this. Highsmith's deal was a non-guaranteed minimum-salary contract — cheap by NBA standards in isolation. But Phoenix is well over the luxury-tax line and subject to repeater penalties, the escalating tax rate charged to teams that pay the tax year after year. In that position, every dollar of salary carries several dollars of tax with it. Keeping Highsmith would have raised the Suns' projected payroll — salary plus tax bill combined — by roughly $16 million. A minimum player, at a repeater rate, becomes an eight-figure commitment.
That is why the open spot is the asset. An empty 15th chair costs nothing in salary and nothing in tax, and it preserves options: a midseason signing when a need is proven rather than projected, a conversion or addition shaped by who is actually healthy and playing well, or simply a tax bill that stops growing at the margin. For a team in the repeater, restraint at the end of the roster is one of the few levers left that does not require touching the core. Phoenix pulled it.
It is also worth noting what the Suns did not do. They kept Bouyea, the 14th man, on his non-guaranteed contract — so this was not a blanket refusal to carry non-guaranteed players. It was a specific judgment that one non-guaranteed wing at a $16 million all-in cost was the wrong use of the last spot, while Bouyea at the 14th was the right one. Roster building at the tax line is exactly this kind of line-drawing, and Saturday's moves draw the line clearly.
What is still to come on the roster
Highsmith's waiver does not finish the roster work. Camp invitees Kennedy Chandler and Phillip Wheeler will likely be waived as well, the expected end of the road for players brought in to fill out the preseason roster and compete for spots that, in the end, were not there. Their likely departures are procedural compared with Saturday's headline move, but they are part of the same cutdown accounting.
The more interesting move is Duop Reath's. Reath is expected to have his Exhibit 10 contract converted to a two-way deal. A conversion like that is not automatic arithmetic — it requires a two-way slot, which means cutting a current two-way player to make room. Forward CJ Huntley is the possible odd man out in that shuffle. If Reath converts and Huntley is cut, Phoenix will have traded one developmental frontcourt bet for another, choosing Reath's size and experience for the two-way spot that shuttles between the Suns and their G League affiliate.
None of those remaining moves changes the shape of Saturday's decision. The Suns will open the regular season, on the current plan, with 14 standard contracts, the 15th spot deliberately empty, a tax bill that is large but $16 million smaller than it would have been, and a wing rotation that has to hold up without the veteran insurance policy they just waived. Previously has followed the Suns' preseason roster questions in our coverage of the Suns' preseason finale and extension talks, and the full picture is in our news index.
What it means when the season starts
For Highsmith, the waiver puts a proven defensive wing on the market at the exact moment every other contender is finalizing the same math. His market will test the same tension Phoenix just resolved: his minimum-salary availability is attractive everywhere, but teams over the tax line face their own multiplied version of his cost, and his seven games last season after meniscus surgery will be part of every conversation. A team with room under the line, or a genuine defensive need on the wing, can add a player who started 42 games two seasons ago without a long-term commitment. That is a real opportunity — for someone else.
For Phoenix, the bet is now explicit. The Suns are wagering that flexibility — an open spot, a smaller tax bill, and the ability to react in-season — is worth more than a known, playable wing in hand in October. It is a defensible bet, and an expensive roster has forced versions of it across the league. But it is still a bet, and bets at the end of a contender's roster have a way of being graded in public, in the middle of the season, on the nights the rotation runs short. Saturday's cut will be remembered by which of those nights arrives first: the one where the open spot becomes the right player at the right time, or the one where Phoenix wishes Haywood Highsmith was still on its bench.
