Oso Ighodaro became the Suns’ main answer when the season was on the line, and Jordan Ott leaned on him after benching Mark Williams for the fourth quarter of Phoenix’s eventual loss to the Portland Trail Blazers in the play-in tournament. The move came with the Suns one win away from the playoffs.
Ighodaro played 23 minutes in the game, one more than Williams, who was pulled at the most critical point of the season. That usage was a sharp contrast with the start of the year, when Phoenix tried Ighodaro as the starting five before moving away from the experiment.
The Suns traded a pair of first-round picks for Williams, a price that made every minute of his role matter even more. But the late-game choice suggested the team trusted Ighodaro more when the pressure rose, and that view has been echoed beyond the Suns’ bench. On his most recent podcast, Zach Lowe said he trusts Ighodaro more than Williams in big moments.
That does not mean Phoenix is ready to move on from either player. Ighodaro is expected to remain an important part of the Suns’ rotation off the bench, even after the starting-five test failed earlier in the season. The balance matters because the Suns are being judged not only by what they did in the play-in, but by what they gave up to get here and what they still have to make work.
There is also a wider backdrop to the decision. The Los Angeles Lakers are in the playoffs proper, while the Charlotte Hornets continue to trend in the right direction without Williams. For Ighodaro, the strongest argument came in Phoenix’s win over the Kings, where he had his best game in a Suns jersey and strengthened the case that he belongs in the moments that decide seasons.
The Suns do not have the luxury of treating that as a small development. When a team spends a pair of first-round picks on one center and still turns to another for the final quarter of a season-defining game, the rotation is telling you where the trust really sits.
