Franchise Opportunities in Phoenix, AZ

The Suns have approached a fork in the road for better or for worse to begin 2023. But their collective mentality is to go straight according to their game plans, and believe they're still an elite team despite losing nine of their last 14 games since December.

Phoenix (20-20) is in their second five-game losing skid this season after being ousted at home by the Miami Heat on Friday. The Suns haven't had a .500 record in January since they were 8-8 that month during the truncated 2020-21 season, in which they turned things around and made their run to finals.

It's been a steep drop from atop of the Western conference to ninth in the standings since their first five-game losing streak between Dec. 5-13, which began in Dallas.

Following their 25-point blowout home loss to the West's second-place Memphis Grizzlies on Dec. 23, Suns coach Monty Williams told the media that they've "got to get back to chasing something and right now I feel like the prey and I don’t like that feeling," and the Suns have "got to get our edge back."

Players and coaches aren't using excuses about being short-handed due to a series of injuries to starters (All-Stars Devin Booker and Chris Paul, Cameron Johnson, Deandre Ayton) and key players off the bench (Landry Shamet, Cameron Payne, Duane Washington Jr.). Nor or they talking about being down one roster spot from their veteran power forward and defensive specialist Jae Crowder remaining on the trade block since training camp.

During the Suns' pregame media availability on Friday, Johnson's starting four spot replacement Torrey Craig said they aren't panicking, nor is morale lowered from their recent struggles.

“Coming out in the first quarter and making a statement, setting the tone early," Craig said.

"I think that’s been our identity these past couple of years to be coming out, get off to a run and get going and everybody feels confidence and we’re able to walk away and win games. So we’ve been lacking that these last couple of games and we’re gonna be back to our winning ways.”

Craig doesn't know if he agrees with Williams' notion from a few weeks ago about being hunted by other teams. He believes they're still one of the West's top teams despite losing eight of their last nine.

“I don’t really know. I don’t really look at the standings but I know it’s not too many games that separate guys from seventh and eighth and first, second, third, so it’s too early to speculate,” Craig said.

“I think teams still look at us as a team to beat in the West. Like I said, we just gotta come out and execute in that first quarter and stick with the game plan a little better and come up with some wins.”

Suns forward Ish Wainright concurred with Craig during their Saturday practice.

“I stand by him. We all stand by him. We’re still one of the teams that everybody wants to beat," Wainright said. "Nobody likes us, we’re OK with that. We’ll take whatever teams throw at us and we’ll get back on track soon. ...

“Don’t get me wrong there’s a lot of great teams in the West. But we’re still one of the top teams that everybody is trying to get to. I say we gotta stay the course, trust the process, trust our coach, trust the game plan and let’s get some things going.”

Craig is correct that it's still too early to envision the playoff picture. Teams often turn a new leaf around the start of new year, which is the 82-game regular season's technical midpoint over a month before the All-Star break.

The divergent fates of the Boston Celtics and the Brooklyn Nets are a good example of that.

Through Jan. 8 last year, the Celtics were two games under .500 and in the East's 10th spot before they surged to a nine-game win streak, finished at 51-31, emerged as the NBA's top-rated defense, nabbed the East playoffs' second seed, won the East title and had a 2-1 finals lead over the eventual champion Golden State Warriors.

The Nets went from 24-13 on Jan. 8, having the highest odds to win the NBA title, to finishing 44-38 and having to claw their way to a seventh seed. They went through a 2-13 skid between Jan. 23 and Feb. 24.

The Nets were swept by the Celtics, 4-0, in the first round.

In addition, the West has parity thus far this season. There have been seven different teams in the top spot. Only the Suns and current leader Denver have held that spot for the longest—two weeks. Five other leaders have held the spot for a week or less.

The sixth through ninth place teams are now between six to 6.5 games out of first, and the second to fifth place teams are within five.

Craig further added that the Suns' morale hasn’t changed despite their losing streak and underwhelming performances over the past month.

“The vibes don’t change. You see guys still doing their same routine," Craig said. "Guys are still interacting, smiling, so this team don’t change no if matter if we win 20 or lose 10 straight. We kind of keep the same energy, try to stay the same. Never too high, never too low.”

Wainright said he views 20-20 as a clean slate, not rock bottom.

“It’s zero-zero, now it’s time to get going. We know what we gotta do as a team. The (veterans) have talked," Wainright said. "We believe, we trust.”

Phoenix forward Mikal Bridges does a lot well on the basketball court. However, the Suns’ wing has struggled to step up with injuries mounting, and something must be done.

Phoenix swingman Mikal Bridges is one of the prototypical 3-&-D players in today’s NBA. Bridges is strong defensively inside and out, he can rebound well for his size, and when his touch is on, he is a better-than-average spot-up three-point shooter. Unfortunately for the Suns, with injuries mounting, Phoenix needs more than Bridges has been able to give, and he is seemingly breaking under the pressure. So what is wrong with and how do the Suns fix Bridges?

Poor shooting performances hurting Bridges’ overall game

Confidence is a significant factor for all athletes, and when players are taken out of their comfort zone, their confidence can be shaken. This push beyond his comfort zone is a big part of Bridges’ struggle.

Traditionally, Mikal’s offensive game is predicated on others. Bridges scraps his way to 15 points per night in transition, through movement, and with spot-up three-point shots. Unfortunately, none of those options are consistently available for Bridges.

Bridges is doing more defending and spending more time trying to rebound than ever before, making it difficult to get out in transition. Plus, there is no transition if you always take the ball out of the basket.

Since all of the primary ball handlers for the Suns are hurt or nursing injuries, no one can beat their defender to create passing lanes for cutting players or spot-up shooters. Bridges’ movement and shooting are nullified without someone getting in the paint.

On top of everything else, teams are game-planning for Bridges, with Devin Booker and Chris Paul out. The fact that teams are planning for Bridges makes his biggest offensive weakness even more prevalent: a lack of a go-to move.

If we think about great scorers, whether it is Harden’s step-back, Jordan’s fade-away, or Booker’s midrange pull-up, players that score consistently have a way to do that on their own, but Bridges does not. Scorers, natural scorers have something to fall back on when they are not scoring; Bridges has never needed nor developed that weapon in his Arsenal.

Maybe the most consistent item in his repertoire is his little pull-up when driving left of the lane, but we have not seen that in a while; teams are planning for that move. The result is Bridges stuck mired in a terrible shooting slump, but it is fixable.

After a year in which the Valley saw the nation’s highest inflation rate for metro areas, experts say consumers can expect inflation to ease in 2023 – but warn that it’s not going away entirely.

The consumer price index for Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale in October, the most recent month for which data is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was 12.1% higher than it was in October 2021. The next-highest metro areas were Atlanta, which posted a 10.7% increase for the year, followed by Tampa-St. Petersburg at 10.5% and Miami at 10.1%.

Price increases were up across the board, with higher prices for fuel, food, clothing, and more. In Arizona, the biggest increases came in the price of gas, which was up 41% from October 2021 to October 2022 – although that recently reversed course – but experts say the biggest driver of the inflation index was the cost of housing.

Mark Stapp, a professor at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, said shelter accounts for one-third of the consumer price index, which is why Arizona is facing such high inflation rates.

“The index is a composite. One of the larger elements of that composite is related to shelter,” said Stapp, who is also the director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at the Carey School. “It can make up 30-40%, so a significant part of the estimate of what inflation is in Arizona is that shelter component.”

George Hammond, the director of the Economic and Business Research Center at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management, agreed that shelter has driven inflation in the Phoenix area.

“The major reason why Phoenix’s inflation rate is running so much faster than the national average is what’s going on in the housing market,” Hammond said. “Housing is by far the biggest single category in the price index, so it has a huge influence on what happens.”

There are several reasons for the rise, they both say. The steady increase in the number of people moving to Arizona jumped with COVID-19, creating more demand for what was already a short supply of housing for renters and homeowners. It created what Hammond described as a “recipe for really rapidly rising house prices and rents.”

“The shelter component has been very difficult to come back down because of the amount of growth that we’ve had here and the lack of supply in ownership and rental housing,” Stapp said.

While housing has been the biggest part of Valley inflation, gas prices may have had the biggest emotional punch. A gallon of gas cost as much as $5.39 a gallon in June, according to AAA. Prices started falling after the summer peak and were at $3.36 a gallon last week, almost 19 cents lower per gallon than it cost a year ago. But the spikes still had an impact.

Dennis Hoffman, an economics professor at the Carey School, said transportation costs play a large role in inflation for a sprawling area like Phoenix.

“We’re quite a commuter region,” said Hoffman, who is also director of the L. William Seidman Research Institute at the Carey School. “A lot of people commute, so they pay the costs of used cars, and cars of course need gasoline.”

Hoffman said Arizonans typically pay more for gas because there are no refineries in the state, relying instead on California and Texas for its gas. Arizona was hit hard when some California refineries shut down in September.

Another increase that hit home for consumers was the price of food, which was up by 12.6% over the year, led by a 16.4% increase in dairy products, according to the BLS.

Beth Fiorenza, the executive director at Nourish Phoenix, said that has caused the number of people seeking help from her pantry to roughly double in the last three to four months over normal levels.

“If people were already living paycheck to paycheck, and then inflation and higher expenses hit, now they’re really struggling to get by every month,” Fiorenza said.

The latest surge in inflation capped three years of steady increases, according to the BLS. It said inflation in Phoenix rose by 0.7% from October 2019 to October 2020 and then rose 7.1% from 2020 to 2021 before spiking over the past year.

But the economists believe that things may be turning around and that the high prices will slowly decrease over the next couple of months. Stapp noted that gas prices have already fallen and he expects the same should happen with housing.

Hammond agreed that housing prices should start to fall in the new year, and he thinks Arizona will likely follow the rest of the U.S. economy, which has been generally cooling in recent months.

Hoffman was more confident, saying he thinks the worst is in the past and that the economy will soon start to stabilize.

“I think we’re going to see inflation rates come down over the next year pretty dramatically,” he said.

The homes will be on display from February to May, and after the display run is over, they will be transformed into transitional housing for the homeless. FOX 10's Stephanie Bennett reports.

PHOENIX - Shipping containers that have been transformed into apartments will be placed on display near 2nd Street and Roosevelt in downtown Phoenix in February.

The company behind the idea, Steel and Spark, hopes to showcase the technology during the Super Bowl, so that others do the same.

"We have a huge housing crisis, and just having density, having housing available is something that’s important," said Steel and Spark Founder Brian Stark. "This is a concept that can drop in your backyard, and be ready to go."

Company founder showcases project

The company takes shipping containers from California, and recycle them into bars, workspaces, homes and more. Their latest venture is to create what they call a ‘Spark Box Park.’ The project is funded with a $1.2 million grant from the Arizona Department of Housing, and the City of Phoenix is letting the company use a vacant lot from Feb. 4 to the end of May to showcase the venture.

Up to 16 people can be housed in the five Sparkboxes.

"[This] is totally off-grid, with lithium batteries, solar panels on the roof. We have an incinerating toilet, gray water filtration, so it’s really, really an amazing product," said Stark.

Stark says this is the future of housing, an environmentally friendly way to address a variety of concerns, including the current housing crisis.

"Being able to not need any electricity, and all of it being and coming from the sun, I think, is our greatest resource here in Phoenix," said Stark. "The incinerating toilet saves 2,000 gallons of water, per person, per year."

Once the display is done, the Arizona Department of Housing will move them, and to be used for housing the homeless. The housing is meant to be transitional, so turnover to new residents would happen about three times a year.

Meanwhile, the company received about $3 million in funding from the city in December 2022 to turn dozens of shipping containers into homes. They plan to house around 80 people in that project.

Homeless advocate weighs in

Other organizations in town that already help the homeless say the wished the states funds could have gone towards helping the larger population.

"Since there is so little resources coming from the State of Arizona, it is imperative to ensure that those resources are used well and wisely to produce the most benefit to the greatest number of people," said Elizabeth Venable, Lead Organizer for the Fund For Empowerment.

Read More Stories on the Homeless Crisis

Already missing Devin Booker for several weeks, the Suns are finding themselves increasingly shorthanded in the backcourt.

Key reserve Cameron Payne aggravated his right foot injury on Wednesday in his second game back from the ailment and was ruled out for Friday’s contest vs. Miami. Starting point guard Chris Paul was available for that game against the Heat, but didn’t play in the second half due to right hip soreness, writes Duane Rankin of The Arizona Republic.

“It’s tough having guys in and out,” Suns wing Torrey Craig said. “Soon as you think you’re about to get guys back, somebody else gets hurt. Guys get re-injured, but it’s part of the game It’s part of adversity, but we’ve just got to figure out a way to get through all this.”

The banged-up Suns – who have also been without starting forward Cameron Johnson (knee surgery) since early November and former starting forward Jae Crowder (away from team) all season – are in the midst of their worst skid of the last few years — after a 16-7 start, they’ve lost 13 of their last 17 games, including the last five in a row. Now at 20-20 on the year, Phoenix has already lost more games than it did all of last season, when the club led the NBA with a 64-18 record.

“If you think about everything we’ve been through, we’re still .500,” Williams said after Friday’s loss, per Rankin. “We just want to win one. Our guys are hurting to win a game and that’s where as a coach, you just feel bad for those guys because you know how hard we’re playing and how bad they want it.”

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