The journey keeps rolling as we build out the Phoenix Suns All-time Pyramid, a thought exercise that tries to give shape to a long, complicated, and deeply personal history. So many players. So few spots.
We have three tiers left to navigate on this Phoenix Suns All-Time Pyramid and only six players left to place, which is where the air starts to thin and every decision feels heavier. Tier 3 is where things really crystallize. This is the Franchise Pillars tier. Three players whose effort, style, and basketball identity did not merely contribute to Suns history, but actively shaped it.
I genuinely feel good about this group, and that is not something I have said lightly throughout this process. I like where I landed.
One of them owns one of the purest jump shots you will ever see. Another embodies the grit and edge of the Valley itself, a player who maximized every inch of his frame and turned effort into identity. The third was the Swiss Army knife, the guy who did everything, filled every gap, and quietly held things together in ways that did not always show up in headlines, but absolutely showed up in wins. Take any one of them away, and the franchise looks materially different.
Tier 3? Revealed.
Now, if you saw all three of these guys play, your voice carries real weight here. That perspective matters. For me, I only had the privilege of watching two of them live, but those two live near the very top of my personal favorite Suns list, and that says something. That is memory. That is emotional gravity. That is bias, sure, but it is also built on longevity, production, consistency, and moments that stuck.
These are not fleeting stars. These are pillars. Players who helped define what this franchise was, and in many ways, still is.
Tier 3: The Franchise Pillars
When I sat down to construct Tier 3, there was one decision staring back at me that I knew would come down to bias, preference, and how you personally experienced that era. The Amar’e Stoudemire versus Shawn Marion conversation.
Everyone loved Steve Nash. That part was universal. Where things splintered was who you believed the second most important Sun on those teams actually was. That answer said more about you than it did about them. Did you value raw power at the rim, the force and violence Amar’e brought to the basket? Or did you value the guy who did the junkyard work, the one who filled every gap, guarded everyone, ran the floor, rebounded in traffic, and never stopped moving?
If you read the Tier 4 chapter, you already know where I landed. Amar’e Stoudemire sits in Tier 4, not because he lacked greatness, but because this came down to preference. For me, Shawn Marion did more. And the season that cemented that belief was 2005-06, the year Amar’e missed almost entirely. That was the year the question got answered on the court.
Marion stepped up in a way that felt expansive. He did not fill in. He took over. He averaged 21.8 points and 11.8 rebounds, carried the load nightly, and posted the most defensive rebounds ever recorded by a Phoenix Sun in a single season. That was dominance.
The numbers only deepen the case. Marion is number one all-time in franchise history in value over replacement, win shares, and defensive rebounds. He is second in total minutes played and the only player to appear in the top ten for minutes per game more than once. He did it three times, including an absurd 41.6 minutes per game in the 2002-03 season. He ranks second in total steals, second in total rebounds, third in blocks, fifth in total points, and seventh in games played.
I will always believe that Shawn Marion never got, and still does not get, his proper flowers for what he did on a basketball court. He played during a brutal stretch for forwards, right as the league was shifting away from being center driven or guard driven and settling into an era ruled by wings and combo forwards. This was the time of Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Nowitzki, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony. It was a murderers’ row of stars who soaked up attention, accolades, and oxygen.
What Marion did lived on the margins, and that is part of why it was so easy to miss if you were not paying close attention. He was electric in ways that did not always headline highlights. He guarded everyone. He rebounded out of his area. He ran the floor relentlessly. He filled gaps before you even realized there was a hole. And in several of those peak years, he was the third best player on his own team, which meant the spotlight rarely found him the way it should have.
As a result, the recognition never quite matched the impact.
He finished his career with only two All-NBA selections, and that number still feels wrong every time I say it out loud. He easily could have had two more, maybe even more than that, if the league had been better at valuing what he actually brought to winning. Shawn Marion did not fit neatly into a box, and because of that, history has been a little slow to fully appreciate just how important he really was.
Eight and a half seasons. A walking double-double. And when you read through that résumé, it becomes clear that Shawn Marion did not do one thing well. He did everything well.
Yes, Amar’e was the exclamation point on the Nash pick-and-roll, the punctuation that rattled the rim and shook the building. But Shawn Marion was everything in between. That is why he was The Matrix, because he was doing things that made you blink twice. The second pogo step. The quick bounce back up before defenders even realized the play was still alive. The shot looked strange, sure, but it went in, and it kept going in. He flew around the floor, covered ground nobody else could, and as a fan, I fell hard for his game during his rookie season.
And that is where the preference and bias live. Because I loved Amar’e too. Let’s be clear about what we are actually debating here. Two players who both sit near the very top of the Phoenix Suns All-Time Pyramid. There is no disrespect in this conversation, none at all. It simply comes down to taste. Which flavor speaks to you?
For me, it has always been the guys who defend, who work the margins, who make a team better in ways that do not always scream at you from the box score. The players you truly appreciate when you watch night after night, possession after possession, and slowly realize how much harder everything would be without them.
That was Shawn Marion.
Kevin Johnson was my first love as a Suns fan. He arrived in Phoenix right as I started watching basketball, around six years old, and from that moment on he had my attention.
KJ was electric in a way that felt impossible, the smallest guy on the floor doing things that made no sense to a kid trying to understand gravity, speed, and fearlessness all at once. If you were a young fan in the late 80s or early 90s, you gravitated toward Kevin Johnson naturally. Because he looked like someone who should not be able to do what he was doing, and then he did it anyway.
As time went on, we learned the cost of that style. You cannot play that fast, that violently, and that relentlessly without paying for it. Injuries became part of the story, especially as the team transitioned into the Barkley era.
Still, when you step back and look at what he did over 12 seasons and 683 games in Phoenix, the résumé is staggering. He averaged 18.7 points and 9.5 assists per game, numbers that hold up in any era. His 1988–89 season remains a landmark, when he dished out 12.2 assists per game and set the franchise record with 991 total assists in a single season. That same year, he also set the single-season turnover record with 322, which honestly tracks when you understand how much of the offense lived in his hands.
Reading through his career numbers, you start to appreciate how much he packed into that frame. He is second all-time in franchise win shares, second in assists per game, second in total assists, and second in triple-doubles. He ranks fourth in total points, fourth in total steals, fifth in total minutes played, and sixth in games played.
What stands out most to me is that he is first all-time in free throw attempts in Suns history. Longevity plays a role there, sure, but the number itself tells you exactly who Kevin Johnson was. He was an attacker. A guard who lived at the rim, who sought contact, who created chaos by forcing defenses to react to him over and over again.
It is hard not to imagine what he would look like in today’s NBA. He was Russell Westbrook before Russell Westbrook existed, minus the rebounding totals, but with that same sense of urgency and that same refusal to slow down. Watching him was an experience, not an exercise in efficiency, but a constant surge of pressure.
He also sits firmly in the category of great Suns’ “what ifs”. If he could have stayed healthy through the heart of the Barkley years, things might look very different in the history books.
Everyone remembers the 1992–93 season as a turning point for the franchise, and it was. For KJ, it was also a year defined by frustration. He played only 49 games that season, constantly in and out of the lineup, never quite able to find rhythm.
He had moments, like that unforgettable triple overtime win in Chicago in the NBA Finals, where he scored 25, but his lone Finals appearance ended up feeling underwhelming relative to what we knew he could be. He averaged 17.2 points and 6.5 assists during that run, solid numbers, though not the peak version of KJ.
Even so, he remains third all-time in Suns postseason history in assists per game at 8.9. No has logged more postseason games (105, number two is Thunder Dam at 83), postseason minutes (3,879), or assists (935) in a Suns uniform than KJ.
For me, though, the numbers only tell part of it. Kevin Johnson is the foundation of my Suns fandom. He is the player who made me care, who made me believe basketball could feel like that, and whose imprint on this franchise goes far beyond any single season or playoff run.
If there were a pyramid for best nicknames in Phoenix Suns history, Walter Davis would be sitting comfortably near the top, and honestly I think I may have talked myself into another entire series while writing this. Damn it.
The Greyhound. Sweet D. The Candyman. The Man with the Velvet Touch. You do not collect nicknames like that by accident. You earn them by playing the game in a way that feels smooth, controlled, and almost effortless.
Walter Davis had one of the most fundamentally sound and beautiful jump shots this franchise has ever seen. When you are talking about someone who Michael Jordan called his favorite player growing up, you are operating in rare air.
Davis was selected fifth overall in the 1977 NBA Draft out of North Carolina and made an immediate impact in Phoenix. His rookie season remains his offensive peak, and it was loud. He averaged 24.2 points per game, won Rookie of the Year, earned All-NBA Second Team honors, finished fifth in MVP voting, and made his first All Star appearance. That was the first of six, which is tied for the most All Star selections by any player in Suns history.
Statistically, his imprint is everywhere. He is first all time in field goals made, second all time in games played, and second all time in total points. He held the franchise scoring record for 28 years, finally being passed in 2025 by Devin Booker. He ranks third in total steals, fifth in total assists, and sixth in win shares. That kind of consistency over that kind of span is not accidental.
Davis spent 11 seasons in Phoenix, and while those years were not defined by deep playoff runs or sustained team success, that does not diminish what he was as an individual player. From 1977 to 1988, the team record sat at 517-467, solid but unspectacular. He excelled regardless. Night after night, season after season, he delivered.
If you are building a Phoenix Suns All-Time Pyramid, Walter Davis has to be on it. Where, however, is highly subjective.
He might be the most complicated placement in Tier 3, not because of on court production, which clearly belongs here, but because history asks you to acknowledge the full picture. The 1987 Suns cocaine scandal remains one of the darkest chapters in franchise history, and it will always be tied to his name. That cannot be ignored.
And that opens up a bigger question. How much do the things that happen off the court bleed into how we remember what happened on it? At what point does context reshape legacy?
Walter Davis sits right in the middle of that tension. His on court résumé is undeniable, but the full story is heavier, more complicated, and harder to compartmentalize. That is what makes him such a difficult evaluation, and why this tier, and his place in it, carries more weight than most.
Still, when you isolate the basketball, the production, the longevity, and the impact, it becomes very difficult to find many players who performed at his level for as long as he did in Phoenix. Walter Davis was a pillar of this franchise, and his place on this pyramid is earned.
What re your thoughts on Tier 3? Are these the right guys? Who should be higher? Lower? Let us know in the comments below.
