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Suns owner Mat Ishbia may not regard the trio as an indefinite experiment, as Phoenix’s Big Three of Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, and Bradley Beal were rendered inoperable during their inaugural season last season.

This week, Ishbia participated in an interview with Arizona Sports’ “The Burns & Gambo Show” in which she addressed the team’s future objectives. Although he acknowledged that the Suns are currently content with their status as a second-apron luxury-tax team, Ishbia stated that the team’s objective is to exit the second apron by 2026.

“I believe that many owners use the second apron as a justification to avoid resigning critical players,” stated Ishbia. “The second apron will only affect you if you participate in it for three of the four years.” We are committed to the upcoming two seasons. In order to prevent our selections from being halted, we will endeavor to exit the situation during the third year.

The second perimeter has been established at $189 million for the upcoming season, following the recent implementation of the NBA’s new collective-bargaining agreement. The Suns have exceeded that threshold, with an active payroll of nearly $223 million. This has far-reaching repercussions for the team, in addition to the exorbitant luxury tax bill. Phoenix is unable to aggregate player salaries in transactions, offer more than minimum salaries to outside free agents, and access the taxpayer’s mid-level exception as a second-apron team, among other team-building restrictions. In addition, as Ishbia also mentioned, the “freezing” of future draft picks will occur as a consequence of spending three of the next four years in the second apron. This means that the picks will be automatically moved to the very end of the first round and cannot be transferred.

All of this implies that the Suns will almost undoubtedly be required to disband their Big Three by 2026 in order to exit second-apron hell by that date. The 27-year-old Booker is the youngest of the three, is the indigenous franchise player, and is still under contract until 2028. Consequently, it is likely that he will remain. However, Durant, who is 35 years old, will be a free agent in 2026, and Beal, who is 31, will be entering the final year of his contract in 2026, which will make him more amenable to trade.

Phoenix is currently seeking to rebound from an underwhelming inaugural season of the experiment, in which the Booker-Durant-Beal triumvirate was eliminated in the first round by the young Minnesota Timberwolves. Despite the Suns’ successful minimum-salary acquisitions this summer, Ishbia may be suggesting that the Big Three era will only last for two more years.