NBA free agency 2025 - Four reasons behind the Suns' collapse - ESPN

If the latest era of Phoenix Suns basketball mostly ended last month — when they agreed to trade Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets — it reached its full conclusion Wednesday as the franchise bought out the remainder of Bradley Beal's contract, just two seasons after acquiring him.

The Suns had high hopes in 2023. New team owner Mat Ishbia was confident and aggressive. He quickly engineered blockbuster trades for Durant and Beal, who had a combined 16 All-Star appearances at the time. The price for Beal's contract didn't even seem high, because he could dictate his destination due to a rare no-trade clause, and the Washington Wizards were more concerned with shedding his future salaries than receiving a big score in return.

But Durant, Beal and incumbent star Devin Booker never meshed, and the Suns won a grand total of one playoff series after they started their starry spending spree. That was a first-round victory over the LA Clippers in 2023, before Beal's arrival. With Beal on the roster, Phoenix never won a playoff game, instead falling in a first-round sweep to the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2024 and missing the playoffs in 2025.

And now that era is over, all too soon: Durant is a Rocket, and Beal will soon be a Clipper after reaching an agreement on a two-year deal following Wednesday's buyout. Booker is once again the Suns' only star, just as he was in 2020 before the franchise traded for Chris Paul and found a path to the 2021 NBA Finals.

On the occasion of the breakup, let's remember this ill-fated period, which brought so much hope and bravado but so little tangible on-court success. Here are the four horsemen of the Suns' recent apocalypse:

The Suns' first problem was availability; the second was mediocrity,