SAN ANTONIO
The Phoenix Suns will play their fourth preseason game Wednesday night with almost the entire top of the rotation in street clothes. Devin Booker, Jalen Green, Miles Bridges, Dillon Brooks, Collin Gillespie and Oso Ighodaro are not expected to play against the San Antonio Spurs at Frost Bank Center, according to the Arizona Republic's Duane Rankin — the six did not participate in the full morning shootaround ahead of the 5 p.m. MST tip, which airs on Arizona's Family 3TV.
Sports Illustrated's Suns coverage, working from Rankin's report, noted this is the first time all preseason that Phoenix has sat nearly all of its top players at once. Booker also rested Saturday's home game against these same Spurs, and Bridges has now missed two straight with the right ankle he tweaked last week in Chicago — the injury we covered when it happened in our report from the Bulls game.
The Rest Night Ott Promised
None of this is improvised. Head coach Jordan Ott said after Saturday's 102-98 win over San Antonio — a game Phoenix took without Booker and Bridges — that the plan was to rest the starters for one of the two remaining preseason games, and that the staff would use the days in between to decide which one. Wednesday in San Antonio is the answer: the road game, on the Spurs' floor, in the middle of a three-game week, with the finale at home on Friday.
azcentral's account of the morning added the detail that matters for Friday: all six players were at the arena shootaround, just not full participants — the profile of a planned rest day rather than a new injury list. Bridges is the one genuine health file in the group. Ott said after practice on October 12 that the forward's ankle was recovering well but that the team would not press him into the next preseason game, and Wednesday's absence follows that script exactly. Booker, meanwhile, gets his second straight night off after playing the first two road games in Detroit and Chicago; his preseason shooting line — 11 points on 3-of-14 against the Bulls — is precisely the kind of October stat line nobody in Phoenix intends to lose sleep over.
So Who Actually Plays?
The opportunity rolls downhill to the players fighting for the rotation's back half. With Mark Williams already out following surgery to repair a torn labrum, and Ighodaro joining the rest list, second-year center Khaman Maluach figures to carry the heaviest load of his young career at the five — a role the organization has been preparing him for since Williams went down. Booker said at media day that Maluach had taken the biggest leap of anyone on the roster over the summer; Wednesday is the kind of night those leaps get measured.
On the wing, Ryan Dunn and Rasheer Fleming have been locked in a camp battle for minutes behind Brooks and Bridges, and both get extended run with the veterans out. Luke Kennard's shooting — brought in to replenish the spacing Phoenix lost when Grayson Allen and Royce O'Neale departed — gets a featured look as well. San Antonio, for its part, has its own regulars listed as resting on the injury report, so the rematch projects as a deep-bench game on both sides: less a preview of the season series than a last long audition.
Reading the Preseason So Far
Phoenix arrives in San Antonio at 1-2, and the shape of the three games explains the rest strategy. The Suns opened on the road with a two-point loss at Detroit, then lost at Chicago in the game Bridges hurt his ankle, then came home and beat these Spurs on Saturday with Booker already resting. That is two road games, a cross-country swing and a home game in the first week of camp season — the exact workload curve that makes a coaching staff circle one game and empty the bench for it. Wednesday's result will say almost nothing about the Suns' season; Friday's finale, with the regulars back, is the dress rehearsal that does.
The absences also reshuffle the depth chart questions Phoenix still has to answer. Gillespie's night off opens the backup ball-handling minutes to the guards on the camp bubble; Brooks' absence takes the starting group's defensive edge with it, which puts Dunn and Fleming's perimeter defense under a brighter light against a young, fast Spurs team. Even Ott's rotation experiments benefit — lineups that would never share the floor in November get real minutes to show whether they should.
The Week Ahead
The Suns close the preseason Friday night, October 16, at home against the Utah Jazz at Mortgage Matchup Center, where the regulars are expected back on the floor for a final tune-up. The games that count start Wednesday, October 21, when Phoenix opens the regular season on the road against the Portland Trail Blazers. Wednesday night in San Antonio is the last free look at the kids — tip at 5 p.m. MST on Arizona's Family 3TV. Follow the Suns and the rest of the league on Previously's sports hub.
