Suns Waive Koby Brea and CJ Huntley to Finalize Roster Ahead of Season-Opening Deadline

Phoenix made its final calls on Monday. The Phoenix Suns waived second-year guard Koby Brea and big man CJ Huntley on October 19, 2026, hours before the NBA's roster-finalization deadline of 2 p.m. Phoenix time, according to the Arizona Republic and azcentral. The moves came the day before the 2026-27 NBA season begins, and they close the book on Phoenix's opening-week roster picture: the standard contracts are set, and the team's two-way slots now carry the flexibility the front office wanted heading into the first week of the season.

Both players were on two-way contracts, the deals that split a player's time between an NBA roster and its G League affiliate — in Phoenix's case, the Valley Suns. Waiving two two-way players on deadline day is not a verdict on either man's future so much as an admission of arithmetic. A team may carry a maximum of three two-way contracts, and according to azcentral, Phoenix intends to use one of the opened spots on Duop Reath, the backup big man who came to camp as a training-camp invite and played his way into the team's plans. Pat Spencer occupies another two-way spot, which leaves Phoenix with room to maneuver rather than a roster locked in amber on opening night.

What Huntley and Brea showed

CJ Huntley's story is one of persistence that Phoenix itself has now interrupted twice. The 6-foot-11 big man went undrafted out of Appalachian State, where he averaged 15.7 points and 8 rebounds in his final college season — production that made him an obvious candidate for exactly the kind of developmental contract he signed. But opportunity in Phoenix was scarce. Huntley played only four games for the Suns last season and scored 12 total points, and his year followed a pattern that has become familiar for two-way big men: Phoenix waived him last season as well, he played for the Valley Suns in the G League, and then the Suns put him back on a two-way contract late in the 2025-26 season. Monday's move ends that second stint, at least for now, and returns him to a market where size and a college track record of scoring and rebounding will get him another look, whether in the G League or elsewhere.

Koby Brea's case rests on one elite skill. The 6-foot-5 guard was considered one of the best collegiate shooters in the 2025 draft class, and shooting is the currency that keeps players in NBA conversations longer than their draft position sometimes suggests. Like Huntley, though, Brea spent most of last season with the Valley Suns rather than in Phoenix's rotation. He averaged 3.8 points in 12 games for Phoenix — spot minutes, largely in games already decided — and the Suns' guard depth simply never opened a door wide enough for his shooting to walk through. A shooter of Brea's pedigree will not lack for interest; what he lacked in Phoenix was a path.

The Reath conversion, and an open chair

The clearest signal in Monday's moves is what Phoenix does next. According to azcentral, Duop Reath — a training-camp invite who gave the Suns size and a steady veteran presence behind their young centers — is being placed on a two-way contract. Sports Illustrated's Suns coverage reported the same conversion and added the detail that frames the whole day: Phoenix could keep its remaining two-way spot open, because it does not need to be filled before the season starts. With a maximum of three two-way contracts allowed, the Suns can hold that final spot as a live option — for a midseason G League standout, an injury replacement, or a player waived elsewhere who fits a need that has not revealed itself yet.

That patience is a deliberate choice, and Arizona Sports' John Gambadoro has been among those tracking how deliberately Phoenix has handled the end of its roster this fall. Deadline day in the NBA rewards teams that treat the last chairs as assets rather than formalities. A two-way spot held open in October can become, by January, the cheapest useful player a contender owns. Phoenix, which spent the summer rebalancing its roster and its books, is signaling that it would rather keep the option than spend it on a name it does not love.

A frontcourt that just got paid — and is still sorting itself out

Monday's waivers land one day after the biggest piece of frontcourt news in Phoenix this year. Oso Ighodaro agreed to a three-year, $29 million rookie extension on October 18, according to the Arizona Republic, in a deal first reported by ESPN's Shams Charania. Previously covered the agreement in full in our story on Ighodaro's extension with the Suns. The timing matters for understanding Monday: Phoenix committed real money to Ighodaro on Sunday, then spent Monday tidying the depth chart behind and around him.

That depth chart is genuinely unsettled, which is what makes it interesting. Ighodaro and rookie Khaman Maluach have been competing for the starting center job through camp and the preseason, a battle Previously has followed in our look at the Suns' starting center competition. The competition carries extra weight because Mark Williams is out with a left shoulder injury that is expected to cost him multiple months. Lose a veteran center for months and suddenly the two-way decisions at the end of the roster stop being paperwork. Reath's conversion reads differently in that light: a playable big man, already in the building, already familiar with the system, available on a flexible contract while Williams heals and the two young centers sort out who starts. It is insurance Phoenix bought at the lowest possible price.

What the finalized roster means for opening week

So the picture, as the season opens, is this. Phoenix's standard roster is set. Its center rotation runs through a newly extended Ighodaro, a rookie in Maluach with genuine believers in the building, and a converted two-way in Reath, while Williams works back from a shoulder injury measured in months. Its two-way group holds Spencer and Reath with one spot deliberately open. And two players who spent last season shuttling between Phoenix and the Valley Suns — a shooter and a 6-foot-11 big — are looking for their next team on the eve of opening night, which is the oldest story the NBA tells every October.

None of this decides anything about how good the Suns will be. It does tell you how they intend to find out: young at the center spot, patient at the margins, and unwilling to spend their last flexible contract before the season has shown them what they actually need. For the wider picture as the league tips off, see the Previously sports front and the rest of today's coverage on the news front.

Sources: Arizona Republic / azcentral; Sports Illustrated's Phoenix Suns coverage; Arizona Sports (John Gambadoro); ESPN (Shams Charania, on the Ighodaro extension, as reported by the Arizona Republic).