Three games into the season, the Phoenix Suns are 1-2, scoring 109.3 points a game and giving up 123.7. That is a point differential of minus-14.4, and it is not a small-sample fluke. It is what happens when a front office strips out a team’s construction and chemistry and replaces it with a sales pitch.

Basketball teams are ecosystems. The Suns spent the summer trading away the connective tissue and then acted surprised when the body stopped working.

What left with O’Neale and Allen

On June 28, the Suns sent Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale to Charlotte, with a 2033 first-round pick attached, for Miles Bridges, a 2029 first and a 2027 second. Forget the pick math for a second and look at what actually walked out the door.

Allen spent three seasons here. In 2023-24 he led the entire NBA in three-point percentage at 46.1 percent. O’Neale is a career 38 percent shooter from three who could guard up a position and keep the ball moving. Both were defenders. Both had basketball IQ. Both were the kind of veterans who know where to be before the play develops.

Game one showed you exactly what that loss looks like. The Suns lost in Portland 124-83. They trailed by 52 at one point. Portland won the first quarter 43-12. The Suns recorded 14 assists as a team, against 32 for the Blazers, and got outrebounded 68-44. Fourteen assists is not an offense. It is five guys taking turns. They have been outrebounded in all three games, 179 to 139 total, because the roster is now a collection of scorers and projects with nobody doing the unglamorous work Allen and O’Neale did every night.

Booker is a semi-elite player. Stop saying superstar.

Devin Booker makes $57.1 million this season. Here is his first week: 23 points in the Portland blowout, where he was a minus-43, the worst mark on the floor. Then 43 points against Golden State in the home opener. Then, two nights later in Oklahoma City, 3 points. One-for-seven from the floor. Seven shot attempts in 34 minutes while Miles Bridges took 17, Dillon Brooks took 14 and his own rookie center took 10.

A superstar does not disappear for entire games. Booker is averaging 23.0 points, which sounds fine until you watch how it arrives: feast against a depleted team, famine against a real one. He is shooting 22 percent from three (2-for-9). He is a very good player, a semi-elite scorer who can get hot. He is not a franchise engine, and this roster was built as if he were one.

Brooks lost his fire, and the Zen act is not working

Dillon Brooks was acquired to be the villain, the edge, the guy who makes the other team’s best player miserable. Through three games he is shooting 37.8 percent from the floor (14-for-37), averaging 14.7 points, and his disruptive defense has produced three steals total, all in one game. He spent the offseason talking about calm and Zen. Good for his personal growth. The Suns did not trade for a meditation retreat. They traded for a menace, and a mellow Dillon Brooks is just an inefficient wing who fouls a lot, nine fouls and counting, with a technical and a flagrant already on the books.

Green is average. That is the whole scouting report.

Jalen Green was sold as the elite young scorer who would grow next to Booker. He is making $36.3 million this year. He is averaging 14.0 points a game. In the season’s only win, against Golden State, he was a team-worst minus-16 with 12 points and 3 turnovers. His one decent game, 20 points in Oklahoma City, came in a loss where the game was decided before the fourth quarter. Strip away the draft pedigree and the marketing and what remains is a league-average guard who scores inefficiently and defends nobody.

Bridges is not the menace we were promised

Miles Bridges was billed as the two-way wrecking ball who would replace what was lost. He is shooting 20 percent from three (4-for-20). In Portland he went 3-for-11 with zero assists and a minus-35. In Oklahoma City he led the team in shot attempts, 17 of them, on a night when the $57 million guard took seven. That shot distribution is not toughness. It is a chemistry problem wearing a headband. Six rebounds a game and indifferent defense is not a menace. It is a replacement-level forward making $22.8 million.

Kennard is the one who works, and he barely plays

Luke Kennard is a career 44 percent three-point shooter, one of the most accurate in league history, and the direct replacement for Allen’s spacing. He did not play in the opener. In the two games since, he has scored 11 and 9 points and gone 6-for-10 from three. The man is producing exactly the skill this roster starves for, in 17 minutes a night. Somebody explain the rotation.

Goodwin is the heart. He is also just not that good.

Jordan Goodwin plays harder than anyone on this roster. Five steals in three games, constant energy, the emotional heartbeat of the team. He is also averaging 8.0 points and is a career role player being asked to matter. When your heart-and-soul guy is your eighth-best player, that is not a compliment to the roster. It is an indictment of it.

Stop telling us Oso is good

Oso Ighodaro has played in one of the three games. Fifteen minutes in Portland. He went 0-for-2 from the free throw line, because of course he did. The floater the broadcast keeps calling patented does not fall often enough to be a weapon, and a big man who cannot make a free throw cannot close games. The organization keeps insisting he is a core piece. One appearance in three games says the coaching staff knows better.

Maluach is lost, and the G League exists for a reason

Khaman Maluach is starting at center, which tells you everything about the state of the position here. He has committed 10 fouls and 7 turnovers in 70 minutes. In Oklahoma City he had 4 turnovers and 4 fouls to go with his 12 points. He is 20 years old and plays like it: late on rotations, hands everywhere except where the ball is. This is not development. This is a rebuilding team’s minutes on a roster that is pretending to contend. Send him to the G League and let him learn there.

Gillespie is the only point guard, and everyone can see it

Collin Gillespie is the only true point guard on this roster, and the Suns chose to start the season without a starting point guard anyway. The evidence is not subtle. The one game the offense looked like an offense, 33 assists against Golden State, Gillespie ran it: 11 points, 9 assists, a team-best plus-16 in 28 minutes off the bench. The opener, where the offense was Booker and Green taking turns, produced 14 assists and a 41-point loss. When Gillespie is on the floor, the team works. When he sits, it is isolation basketball and prayer.

Dunn, Fleming and the mystery of the missing rotation

Ryan Dunn still looks clueless and short on confidence: 14 total points in three games, 13.5 minutes a night, passing up looks and drifting. Rasheer Fleming showed real promise late last season. Whether it carried over is unknowable, because he has played 14 minutes and 43 seconds all season, scored one point and taken six shots. Koa Peat, the first-round pick, looked genuinely good in preseason, 10 points on 5-for-8 shooting against San Antonio, singled out as one of the top rookie performances of that night. In the regular season he has played under 10 minutes total, including a coach’s-decision DNP in the home opener. Either the young players are not ready, in which case the draft-and-develop story is a lie, or they are ready and the coach will not play them, in which case the rotation is malpractice. Pick one.

The verdict

Last season’s team won 45 games and made the playoffs. This team is 1-2 with a minus-14.4 differential, and its one win came against a Golden State team missing Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, Draymond Green, Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford. Strip that gift away and this is an 0-3 team that got run off the floor by Portland.

This team will be lucky to win 40 games. The product is hard to watch: no point guard, no rebounding, no defensive identity, a max guard who takes seven shots in a big game, and a bench full of young players the staff will not trust.

Mat Ishbia says everyone’s eyes will be on Phoenix this season. The front office says the identity is being built and the foundation is solid. Do not believe them. Believe the box scores. This team is not as good as last year’s, and three games of evidence say it is not close.