How Josh Okogie is carving out his role in Suns' star-centric vision

The Phoenix Suns are a constellation of stars, three All-NBA scorers who plan to light up the desert and jumbotrons across the league this winter. There are many buckets to get and pull-ups to launch. And so Phoenix plucked Jusuf Nurkić from the three-team web that pinned Damian Lillard in Milwaukee, viewing Portland’s former center as a connective passer within its three-headed storm of Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal all sharing the perimeter. If 2023-24 serves as a season-long audition for head coach Frank Vogel’s fifth man, then Josh Okogie has the inside track.

That was the lineup Vogel started for Phoenix’s preseason opener against Detroit on Sunday. The Suns erupted for 46 points and a 17-point advantage after the first quarter. Okogie was Okogie: 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds, smothering Cade Cunningham and poking the ball away for a runout jam. On the replay you could spot Vogel howling in approval as the sixth-year swingman rocketed downcourt. Okogie, 25, would later scoop a loose dribble from Durant and bounce Nurkić an easy dime through the lane.

“Every time you have a team there’s a couple holes that need to be plugged, and I feel like I try to fill in those gaps,” Okogie told Yahoo Sports.

Vogel has praised Okogie's ability to guard one through four, particularly point guards and lead ball-handlers such as Cunningham — an aspect where Phoenix's talented roster is noticeably quite thin. The Suns are banking on Durant, Booker and Beal's brilliance as playmakers, to the point they won't need a table-setter from the same cloth as Chris Paul. But Phoenix will need someone to hawk those opposing creators, so none of its own offensive engines are forced to skirt around high-screen actions as often as they're tasked with running them.

Okogie wants that assignment. He’ll take any assignment, really.

“I like to be that guy who, whatever you need,” Okogie said, “I got you.”

“Josh will do what a lot of the others don’t want to,” said Julian Swartz, an assistant coach during Okogie’s two years at Georgia Tech.

Okogie's career has gravitated around stars from the very beginning, whether it was snuffing out James Harden's isolation as a rookie, or paying close witness to Jimmy Butler's dramatic exit from Minnesota.

Butler took a liking to Okogie. After one preseason contest against Milwaukee, he went back to Butler's house after the veteran invited him to watch film. The cagey All-Star pointed out particulars on screens. Do this, don't do this. "He knows that people don't know him for that, but he's a really great dude. He pays attention to everything. He cares about the little guys," Okogie said. "He was helping me how to navigate. Taught me a couple things on how to guard and how to play the game in his short time there."

All this sage counsel was coming from a mentor who'd already requested to be traded. That Bucks game was Oct. 7, a few months after the Timberwolves selected Okogie at No. 20 overall in the 2018 NBA Draft. Three days later, before Minnesota's final preseason affair, Butler marched into a Wolves practice full of intrasquad scrimmages that now lives in infamy and podcast lore.

How Okogie recalls things: The rookie wing was playing for the Timberwolves’ second unit that afternoon. Okogie’s team first knocked off the starters featuring Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins. Next, Butler wrangled Minnesota’s third team together, and beat Okogie’s second group with ease.

“And then they played the starters and just threw them out the gym,” Okogie said. “It wasn’t even close.”

Butler attempted only one shot the entire practice. “He was just creating, facilitating, yelling at his teammates to shoot. He’d pass the ball to a guy and he’d be like, ‘Shoot it! Shoot it!’” Okogie said. “And the guy would shoot it. He might have missed all but a couple shots all of training camp. But that day, I’ve never seen anything like it. The amount of energy, he put like a battery pack on everybody on his team, and they were just rolling.”

This was not the ACC. This was the business of basketball colliding with the sport in real time. “It gives you an eye opening to what the league could be,” Okogie said. “It made me grow up really quick.” His four seasons with Minnesota spanned three different head coaches. He thrived as a complementary defender and helpside hustler, then Wolves staffers told Okogie he’d get more on-ball opportunities as a sophomore. He had possessions thrust into his hands during two summer stints playing for Team Nigeria. But for all his toughness and work ethic, national team coaches always came away feeling Okogie was cosplaying out of his position. It’s hard to hold the rock if you’re not a threat from distance.

That tug-and-pull can clutter a prospect's pathway to NBA longevity, as much as it can bolster his skill development. While Minnesota head coach Chris Finch watched Okogie run point during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Timberwolves coaches were already envisioning him instead as more of a rolling small, similar to how Brooklyn and later Denver utilized Bruce Brown. Then after Minnesota’s slow start to the 2021-22 season, the Wolves saw their lineups starring Anthony Edwards and Towns post historic plus-minus numbers with Jarred Vanderbilt in Okogie’s place along with Patrick Beverley, and the youngster faded into Minnesota’s background.

“He lost that confidence factor,” said Josh Pastner, Okogie’s head coach at Georgia Tech. “I told him he’s gotta get back to finding the joy again.” Multiple efforts, diving on the floor, winning every 50-50 ball. “From there, the offense will take shape.”

That’s how Okogie spring-boarded into a first-round pick in the first place, just how his Yellow Jackets teammate, Jose Alvarado, has carved a scrappy niche with the New Orleans Pelicans. Okogie hosted Alvarado for his campus visit. They later became roommates. Although injuries prevented the future NBA tandem from taking the floor together, Okogie still refers to Alvarado as “my brother” and has video saved of the duo playing credit card roulette following an IHOP breakfast. It’s a memento from the bottom, before they reached the top basketball league in the world.

“I didn’t want to pay. He didn’t want to pay. We were both running low on funds,” Okogie said. “We probably each had $70 in our bank account and we went out to eat …” Okogie proudly claimed victory in their game of chance.

Phoenix reached out a couple of days into last summer’s free agency. The Suns needed defense off the bench, Okogie was told, especially when Booker came to the sidelines. Okogie flashed a stronger shooting stroke — a career-high 33.5% from three — as he rehearsed dating back to early Team Nigeria practices, but still found inconsistent minutes under head coach Monty Williams. The final three games before Phoenix traded for Durant, Okogie received three straight DNPs.

He was back home in Atlanta, readying for sleep before the Suns played the Hawks, when reports broke that the Suns had dealt Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson as part of their blockbuster package for Durant. Then Dario Šarić was moved to Oklahoma City, and Okogie recognized another door was opening. “I’m like, OK, if those three guys aren’t playing tomorrow, I probably need some rest,” Okogie said, “because I’m gonna be playing tomorrow.”

He started the final 25 games of the regular season. Then five of Phoenix’s six bouts against Denver in the second round. After landing Beal this summer, the Suns may be even thinner when it comes to proven postseason experience, to the point part of Phoenix’s motivation for swapping Deandre Ayton for Nurkić, league sources told Yahoo Sports, was to add greater depth with Grayson Allen and Nassir Little joining Okogie in the Suns’ stable of wings.

Phoenix will soar as high as Durant, Booker and Beal can lift the franchise. Maybe to its first championship under an aggressive owner in Mat Ishbia. The Suns looked at the predicaments of overspending under the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement and simply shrugged. Then after landing Beal, the front office rushed out of the gates of free agency and furnished the rest of its roster with inventive two-year minimum deals that hold second-year player options. The team is flush with back-of-the-bench salaries for players to clear the few holes Phoenix’s starry trio leaves behind.

Okogie has the tools to tighten those wobbly screws. Will he deliver when called upon? When the ball swings his way in the corner, when a cutting lane materializes, or when he’s stranded on an island against the game’s best?

Okogie will certainly try and try and try, just as his nickname advertises.

“That’s why we call him ‘Nonstop,’” Pastner said.