I found myself mowing the lawn on this pleasant October morning, AirPods jammed in my ears to muffle the whir of my battery-driven mower. Yes, battery-driven. I abandoned the gas guzzler this past summer, not because I suddenly cared about saving the planet, but because the old beast was unreliable. Sure, I could’ve fixed it. It’s probably a fuel pump issue, but why wrestle with combustion when lithium-ion offers quiet obedience? Too much information? Probably. But bear with me. I promise there’s a point.
So there I was, pacing back-and-forth across the yard, juking around my 90-pound tortoise who believes lawn equipment is the enemy, when my brain did what it always does: reran last night’s Suns game on loop. A meaningless preseason tilt, yes, but one in which Phoenix dismantled the Lakers 103–81. The kind of game you’re supposed to dismiss, yet impossible to ignore. Because in a city starved for cohesion, even a flicker of teamwork feels like a revelation.
Amid the hum of the mower and the reptilian death-charge of my tortoise, my “The 90’s Rocked…Here’s Why” playlist shuffled to something that intrigued me: The Impression That I Get by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. A ska-punk anthem that sparked a nostalgic swing movement in early 1997.
Have you ever been close to tragedy
Or been close to folks who have?
Have you ever felt a pain so powerful
So heavy you collapse?
Why yes, Dicky Barrett, I have.
Last year for the Phoenix Suns was no quirky ska anthem. It was a funeral dirge, a season so heavy it threatened to crush us under the weight of its own disappointment. We all carried it, every fan, every hopeless optimist who thought they were buying into something real. And what we got instead was tragedy in sneakers, a collapse that redefined the word “underwhelming”.
But pages turn, even when they’re smudged with failure. This year is different. It has to be different. And last night, preseason be damned, we caught a glimpse of a team that may not conquer the league, may not overwhelm the standings, but might actually fight. Possession by possession. Game after game.
And after what we endured, those small sparks of effort, cohesion, and intent feel like oxygen in a room we’d long thought was sealed shut.
Have you ever had the odds stacked up so high
You need a strength most don’t possess?
Or has it ever come down to do or die?
You’ve got to rise above the rest
Is that Tim “Johnny Vegas” Burton on the sax?
And that’s where we are. The deck is stacked like a Vegas poker table with the dealer winking at your bad hand. The over-under is parked at 31.5 wins. Bleacher Report, in its infinite wisdom, has the Suns limping to 26. And some of the fine, jaded folks on this very site? They’ve got Phoenix scraping the bottom with fewer than 20.
So I did the only rational thing a man can do on a Saturday morning when faced with apocalyptic projections and a belligerent tortoise: finished the lawn, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and sat down to write out the impressions that I got.
Never had to knock on wood
It wasn’t the headline moment of the night, but seeing Khaman Maluach on the floor flicked a switch inside me. Hope, or at least the early draft of it. I found some wood, and I began a-knockin’.
The kid is enormous. 260+ pounds, 7’2”, and somehow only nineteen years old. Yes, he played with a certain tentativeness, the kind you’d expect from a teenager suddenly squaring off against grown men, but there was also something else: fluidity. He wasn’t lumbering. He wasn’t awkward. He was colliding, moving, attacking space with a kind of raw athleticism that made you lean forward in your seat.
It all culminated in a slam dunk late in the game, sure, but the true story was found in the in-betweens. The half-rolls instead of full ones. The missed box-outs where his size should have swallowed smaller bodies whole. These are the rookie wrinkles, the growing pains, the moments you file away rather than judge.
It’s preseason, game one, his first taste of NBA gravity. This is the opening paragraph of his story, not the epilogue. You don’t hang a conclusion on that. You savor the fact that, for a night, he looked like he belonged. And there’s real value in that.
As for Rasheer Fleming? His offensive awareness is still being mapped out, much as it was in Summer League. The timing, the spacing, the instinct of when to cut or float. It’ll take time.
But defensively? He stretched out across the court like a condor, wingspan swallowing passing lanes, closeouts disrupting three-point shooters before they could even commit. He made opposing shooters think twice. You could see it. The hesitation, the recalibration. That’s impact.
Will he change the course of the season? Probably not. But if he can carve out a role where his offense is steady enough to keep him tethered to the floor, his defense might well be the thing that cements his place.
And I’m glad I haven’t yet
I’m glad I haven’t yet seen the team betray the promises the front office made. Because imagine if they had. Imagine if this first preseason glimpse was flat, disconnected, lazy. Imagine if all that talk about hustle and grit turned out to be another round of corporate spin. The backlash would’ve written itself.
But instead, what we got was a team that actually looked like it had a pulse. Full-court pressure. Active hands on both ends. Relentless rim attacks. All the philosophical bullet points we were spoon-fed this summer actually showed up in real time. And through one meaningless game in October, you walk away feeling…confident? Maybe not about wins, but about intent. And intent matters.
The most telling difference, though, was sound.
Last year’s team was silent. A mute, anxious collection of individuals who either didn’t know how to communicate or didn’t want to. Fear of being wrong, fear of confrontation, fear of stepping outside their own bubble. It all added up to a team that played in whispers.
Last night was different. There was chatter, constant and unapologetic. Rotations barked out. Switches called. A team sounding like a team. And maybe that doesn’t guarantee victories. Maybe the win total still lands south of respectable. But basketball history has a simple truth: teams win games more often than collections of players.
And for the first time in too long, Phoenix looked like the former.
Because I’m sure it isn’t good
It’s not going to be good for opposing teams this year when they line up to play against Dillon Brooks.
I knew I was going to love him. Not the box-score stuff, not the highlight-chasing junk food, but the subtler art in the way he plays. Those little disruptions that change the temperature of a game without anyone noticing on first watch. The man is a floor-lifter, and it was obvious from the jump. Yeah, he’s knocked on wood.
There was a possession where he was guarding the weak-side perimeter player, but sagged into the paint to give a sneaky tug to Deandre Ayton, just enough to derail this movement. He then sprinted back to smother his actual man on the perimeter. Off-ball defense shouldn’t be this entertaining, but with Brooks, it feels like theater. He is a disruptor in every sense of the word.
It reminded me of the joy last season when Ryan Dunn started making his presence known, forcing turnovers, creating havoc. That joy was fleeting, though, because the Suns as a whole were allergic to disruption. They allowed opponents to waltz (or perhaps West Coast swing) their way through games. Brooks doesn’t allow that. With him on the court, and with teammates taking their cues from his approach, the vibe changes. The standard changes.
Even in the huddle, he was there. Pulling players in, locking eyes, echoing Coach Ott, making sure everyone was awake. You can dismiss a dive for a loose ball in the third quarter of a meaningless preseason game if you want. But in Phoenix, where we’ve been starved for sweat equity, that shit matters.
And when I tossed this take on Twitter, it caught fire. The responses poured in, especially from Rockets fans. You could feel their ache through the replies. They know exactly what they lost. They know Dillon Brooks wasn’t just a player; he was connective tissue, the kind of guy you don’t miss until he’s gone.
And in Phoenix, he’s the kind of guy we’ve been waiting for.
That’s the impression that I get
We’re in for a far more engaging brand of basketball this season.
Last year will always hang in the background, the scorned ex-girlfriend who refused to communicate, who let us down at every turn. And this year, this season, it’s the new relationship. The one we’ll constantly and unfairly compare to the last.
But I’ve got butterflies again. Yes, yes, it’s one effing preseason game. And I know disappointment will hurl me back to earth like gravity because of my Saturday morning optimism. But there’s going to be joy in watching this team this year. Joy in the hustle, in the small details, in the connective tissue of basketball that last year’s group refused to provide. That team gave us no joy; even their successes felt transactional, the bare minimum, the rent check sliding across the counter.
This year feels different. There’s a chance for a culture shift, a chance for basketball that’s not only played but enjoyed. It might not cash out into wins. But it could cash out into something Phoenix hasn’t felt in too long: the thrill of loving the game again. And that’s the impression that I get.