Phoenix Suns guard Bradley Beal is out until January.

The team is not looking good without its third star on the floor.

Beal, who was expected to be a missing piece for the Suns to win a title, has only played six games. He suffered a right ankle sprain Dec. 15 against the New York Knicks.

Beal is out, so the Suns are left with Devin Booker and Kevin Durant. Even though they have two of the top-10 players on the planet, Phoenix is disconnected and frustrated.

Here is a review of the team’s first 28 games.

Beal injuries, frustrations mount

The Suns on Friday suffered their eighth loss in 11 games to the Sacramento Kings, 120-105.

Phoenix looks like a team that has a disconnect with its coaches and players. Saturday, Bleacher Report’s Chris Haynes released a story in which guard Eric Gordon, who had just two shot attempts Friday, complained about his offensive touches.

Via Haynes:

“And lately, there just hasn’t been an emphasis [to get me more looks],” Gordon told B/R. “So, it’s definitely different. Lately I haven’t been getting hardly any touches really.”

The Suns have personnel that emphasizes three-guard lineups and shooting to play with pace. Yet, through one-third of the season, Phoenix ranks No. 29 (97.45) in pace.

The Suns also rank No. 25 in 3-pointers attempted (31.3) even though along with Gordon, they have nine other players who shot at least 35 percent from three in 2022-23.

Beal is expected to relieve pressure from Booker, who is the Suns’ defacto point guard. Booker has actually been very productive from the position, but he is often blitzed and double-teamed which takes a primary scorer away from halfcourt sets.

Combined with that, the Suns do not have a set rotation, which makes things difficult to open ample opportunities off Booker being doubled.

Durant played 10 games without Beal and mostly Booker — he only played two games in that span — at the beginning of the year. But in that time the Suns did not find a continuous rotation or scheme that benefits their team and they are still trying to figure out role players’ minutes.

“We’ve got a lot of moving parts with our roster,” Vogel said. “We’re looking at different guys. We need guys to step up and I got to keep moving the pieces around in terms of how we’re using certain guys.”

Durant keeps Phoenix afloat

The Suns looked like they could have one of the best offenses ever during the preseason. With Beal, Booker and Durant available Oct. 8 in the preseason against the Detroit Pistons, the Suns blistered with a 46-point first quarter that saw their superstar trio unstoppable.

Since, Phoenix has struggled to look like the high-powered, high-scoring, high-shooting team it expected to be.

The Suns rank No. 29 in pace and at one point in the last two weeks had a slower pace than 2022-23 with Chris Paul.

Phoenix had to get through the first 10 games of its season mostly with Durant, who has only missed two games. The Suns were 4-6 but had close games that they lost in the fourth quarter, namely their two losses to the Los Angeles Lakers and once against the San Antonio Spurs Oct. 31.

Durant in 2022-23 became the first NBA player to shoot 55/40/90 (field goal/3-point/free-throw percent) regardless of games played. He is having another great year by averaging 30.6 points, 6.2 rebounds and 5.6 assists. He is shooting 51.4 percent, including splits of 47.1 percent from three and 88.6 percent with his free-throw shooting.

Without Durant, the Suns would be below .500 and perhaps out of the running for contention. He needs to be a vocal leader, communicator with the coaching staff and alpha if the Suns will save their season.

Phoenix built its 2023-24 roster with the intention of preparing Durant and Booker with a roster that will best suit it to win the franchise’s first-ever title. He has a voice that will not be ignored if he uses it well.

“We had good intentions the whole night,” Durant said following the Suns’ narrow 112-108 win over the then-four win Washington Wizards Sunday.

Durant was visibly frustrated after the Suns’ fourth-quarter blowout 139-122 loss to the New York Knicks Friday. He criticized the team’s defense for containing Quentin Grimes off the 3-point line and its performance against Jalen Brunson, who set numerous records with his 50-point game in which he made 9-of-9 threes.

It is important for Durant to use his voice collectively with the Suns and not outside toward the media.

Booker’s point guard duties

Booker is the Suns’ defacto point guard and “Point Book” might have to carry the Suns to their first-ever title as facilitator.

Suns coach Frank Vogel said he expects Booker to pass to Beal and Durant while remaining a scoring option.

“I think he’s just going to benefit from more space out there,” said Vogel, who has stressed the Suns will have a “multiple ball-handler attack” with three-guard lineups that bring “versatility.”

“Hopefully, he can use that space to be that assassin scorer that he is.”

Booker is averaging 8.2 assists and playmaking the best he ever has. Booker to some is considered a top-3 player in the league.

While that is the case, Booker needs to rein in his scoring if he is going to be the team’s go-to point guard.

Booker in 2022-23 shot a blistering hot percentage (61.7 field-goal, 51.0 from three and 87.0 percent free-throw shooting) and became the first player in a nine-game playoff stretch to have a true-shooting percentage of 70 while recording 331 points, which no other player had done. Booker became the first player since Michael Jordan in 1990 to have 330 points in the first nine games of a playoff run and in 2021 scored the most points ever by an NBA player in their first playoff run (601).

While Booker is a top scorer, the point-guard duties — if not shared — are not optimal for him. Booker is being corralled on the perimeter against two-man coverages, zones and hard hedges to force him to play off one-pass situations.

Booker is an excellent player at seeing the floor and making passes across the court. In fact, he has ranked in at least the 95th percentile in assist percentage among shooting guards, according to Cleaning the Glass, since his third NBA season. He has a career-high 37.9 assist percentage in 2023-24 and his 8.3 assists per game would be good for sixth in the NBA (he has not made the list since he has played 17 games of 26, which is fewer than 70 percent of contests).

But Booker is the Suns’ second-best scorer and must be used to be the “assassin” Vogel describes.

The Suns retained associate head coach Kevin Young for continuity on the Suns’ offense. Young is described as a brilliant offensive mind and future coach, but the Suns rank toward the bottom of the NBA in 3-point attempts (31.8) even though they have the personnel to shoot plenty of threes (10 players on Phoenix’s roster shot at least 35 percent from three in 2022-23, including starters Booker, Beal, Durant, and Nurkic).

The Suns had a great scheme in 2021-2023 and generated No. 6 and No. 3 efficient offenses in 2020-21 and 2021-22, respectively. But Phoenix has the luxury of Durant, who is one of the best iso scorers ever, and Booker and Beal, who are capable of scoring in almost every way.

Defense not meeting expectation

The Suns’ defense was expected to be serviceable with Vogel, who five times since 2012 has led a team to a top-3 defensive rating.

Here is what he said about Phoenix’s defensive potential media day.

“We have guys that really compete that are winners,” Vogel said. “We’re going to be a group that has a great scheme, a very intelligent defensive scheme that our guys will be very well-prepared from game to game. So I think the ceiling is very high at what we can be on the defensive side of the ball.”

The Suns were not a bad defensive team under coach Monty Williams, ranking No. 10 in defensive efficiency last season even after the trade for Kevin Durant. But Vogel was expected to bring some level of stability to that side of the ball with an offensively-engineered team.

Phoenix has had 14 different starting lineups this season. The Suns have had to mix-and-match players around Durant, Booker and somewhat for Beal, but they have yet to look like a competitive team defensively.

Phoenix is tied for 16th in defensive efficiency.

Championship chances looking slimmer

The Suns on media day said they felt their roster, as constructed, is good enough to win an NBA championship.

Twenty-eight games in, they do not look like a contender even though they are 3 1/2 games out of a top-four seed in the Western Conference.

Phoenix traded beloved forwards Mikal Bridges, Jae Crowder and Cam Johnson in February to acquire Durant, who is still at the top of his game. But the Suns did not advance past the Western Conference semifinals last season even though they were Western Conference favorites.

Phoenix is owned by Mat Ishbia, who has a pillar of winning that has echoed through the team. He spent top dollar and is pushing the NBA’s second apron to try to win a championship, which the Suns have never done before.

Vogel won a title with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020. Expected to be a coach who can connect with superstars and make adjustments, it appears Vogel and his staff — which includes Suns associate head coach Kevin Young, who was kept and paid the most money by an assistant in league history from Williams’ staff — is not meeting expectations.

The Suns have Durant, who is the only significant rotation player to win a championship, and need him to take leadership seriously. Booker is the Suns’ franchise player and seems to be more quiet and reluctant to take matters into his own hands.

Phoenix’s team has been questioned by fans and also Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon, who this week called the team “soft.”

Phoenix has until January to try and piece together some continuity before Beal returns. But it remains clear there are issues bigger than Beal, and Gordon’s comments could be an indicator the team is not going to meet expectation.