PHOENIX — The Suns are looking at a thin set of nba free agents 2026 at small forward, but the bigger story may be that they already have most of the answers on hand. By the time next season arrives, Dillon Brooks will be back in Phoenix, Haywood Highsmith is under contract through the end of the 2027 season, and Ryan Dunn is being described as more of a small forward than a power forward.
That leaves only a narrow slice of the unrestricted market for a team that has said it wants continuity. The article says there are only eight players who truly fit the unrestricted free-agent small forward category, and several of the names on Phoenix’s radar are better viewed as parts of the roster puzzle than as fixes. Grayson Allen is still on the Suns roster. Royce O'Neale is probably best suited as a small forward. And the team is also considering what to do with Amir Coffey and Jordan Goodwin.
The Suns’ situation is easy to understand once the roster is laid out. They have multiple players who can cover wing minutes, and that changes how aggressive they need to be when the market opens. The frame around the discussion is not a search for a star, but a search for fit, and the fit is already complicated by the pieces Phoenix has kept in place.
That is why the market looks so thin. The 2026 unrestricted free-agent small forward group does not offer much room for a team chasing a clean upgrade, and the Suns have already built around the idea that their best move may be preserving the structure they have rather than chasing an uncertain replacement. Even the comparison used in the piece makes the point: some of the options are more like IPAs than guaranteed staples, the kind of choice that may appeal to a few but not to a roster trying to settle its rotation.
The oddest part of the story is how much of it sounds like a basketball front-office debate and how much of it reads like a grocery run. The author says he stood in front of a beer fridge at 32nd Street and Shea, then bought a six-pack of bottled Dos Equis. That detail lands because the Suns’ free-agency outlook has the same feel — a quick scan, a limited choice, and one purchase made because nothing better was waiting on the shelf.
For Phoenix, the next step is not complicated, even if the decision is. The team can keep sorting through Coffey and Goodwin while leaning on the continuity it has already assembled, and the small forward market does not look strong enough to force a dramatic pivot. In other words, the Suns are not staring at a shortage they must solve immediately. They are staring at a roster that already points them toward the safest answer.
