PHOENIX (AP) — The so-called Big 3 was a big disappointment for the Phoenix Suns in Year 1.
Now the franchise hopes a little continuity for their star trio of Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal — along with a revamped supporting cast — can help Year 2 be much more successful.
The Suns gathered in downtown Phoenix on Monday morning, roughly five months after getting swept out of the first round of the playoffs by the Minnesota Timberwolves after a 49-33 record during the regular season. Booker relished the fresh start, but also said the disappointment of last season still lingered just a little.
In the four-time All-Star's mind, that's not a bad thing.
“I think going out in the fashion that we did, it's something that you just don't want to blow by it and act like it never happened,” Booker said. "It's something we have to accept and use as motivation. Experience is the best teacher.
“We have that terrible experience under our belt. Now we use it for motivation.”
The Suns were active during the offseason, adding new coach Mike Budenholzer, who replaced Frank Vogel after just one season. Budenholzer is an Arizona native and was the coach of the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021 when they rallied from a 2-0 deficit to beat the Suns in the Finals.
Phoenix has been to the Finals three times, including 1976 and 1993, but never won a championship.
“It's all talk at this stage," Budenholzer said. "I'm just like any other coach — trying to get my team ready for practice tomorrow, get ready for games and be the best we can.”
Phoenix also made some shrewd moves on the free agency market, beefing up their backcourt by adding veteran point guards Tyus Jones and Monte Morris. They also signed veteran center Mason Plumlee, who will be a backup big man behind Jusuf Nurkic.
Jones averaged 7.3 assists and just one turnover last season. He signed a $3 million, one-year deal in July that was viewed as well-below market value, but the 28-year-old wanted to join a winner and potentially raise his value for an even bigger payday next offseason.
“We got him for a steal," Booker said.
Durant and Booker had a busy summer as vital parts of the U.S. basketball team that won the gold medal in Paris. The ageless Durant — who just turned 36 years old — has a lot of mileage on his body, but has been remarkably durable over the past year.
Booker is in his prime, entering his 10th season in the NBA. He's still just 27 years old — relatively young in the NBA — but has already played nearly 650 career games between the regular season and playoffs. A few years ago, he used to tease veteran teammate Chris Paul about his extensive routines to keep his body healthy.
Now he's starting to understand.
“I'm always a sponge,” Booker said. “You see that guys have all their different ways to stay healthy and KD is one of the guys I've watched closely.”
Then there's Beal, who missed much of the first half of the season with various injuries and never quite looked comfortable in his role under Vogel. The three-time All-Star averaged 21 points last season despite those frustrations and is looking forward to a mulligan with a revamped roster.
“I feel ecstatic right now, I'm super excited, just to have a good summer,” Beal said. "I never really got off to a good start (last season). Now, I get to do that. Everybody's acclimated with each other, so we're past that phase.
“Now we can just hit the ground running.”
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Phoenix Suns guard Tyus Jones poses for a photo during an NBA basketball media day Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker poses for a photo during an NBA basketball media day Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker poses for a photo during an NBA basketball media day Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Phoenix Suns' Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker (1), center Jusuf Nurkic (20), forward Kevin Durant (35), guard Bradley Beal, bottomleft, and guard Tyus Jones, bottom right, pose for a photo for team photographer Barry Gossage during an NBA basketball media day Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Israeli strikes killed at least 30 people in Gaza, including on a home where displaced families were sheltering, according to Palestinian health officials.
Ten people were killed early Tuesday, including four children and two women, and a strike late Monday on the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed at least 20 people, including eight women and six children, health officials said. The Israeli military said it targeted a weapons storage facility from which a militant had operated, and that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
Israel has been waging a massive offensive in northern Gaza — which was already the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory — for nearly a month.
Despite growing pressure from the United States and others in the international community for a cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon, intensified Israeli strikes against the Hezbollah militant group are expanding beyond Lebanon’s border areas. Israel is also fighting a seemingly endless war against Hamas in northern Gaza.
Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in 2023, at least 3,000 people have been killed and some 13,500 wounded in Lebanon, the Health Ministry reports.
More than a year of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children. The war began after Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others.
Here’s the latest:
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said it conducted an airstrike on a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in Syria on Tuesday.
The military said the strike targeted the facility run by Hezbollah’s munitions unit in the Syrian town of al-Qusayr, near the border with Lebanon. It said Hezbollah had recently expanded its facilities in the area to step up weapons smuggling into Lebanon from Syria.
The strikes hit an industrial zone in al-Qusayr, according to Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict-monitoring group. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria over recent years, primarily targeting government-controlled areas, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses these operations. The strikes often target Syrian forces or Iranian-backed groups.
On Monday, an Israeli airstrike struck near the Sayida Zeinab suburb, south of Damascus, an area where Iran-backed groups are active. The Israeli military claimed responsibility for killing the head of Hezbollah’s military branch in Syria, whom it identified as Mahmoud Mohammed Shaheen.
For the past month, Israel has been carrying out an escalated bombardment campaign in Lebanon, aiming to cripple the Hezbollah militant group, which is allied with Syria and Iran. Israel has also launched ground incursions just across the Israel-Lebanon border, saying it aims to put an end to a year of Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Dozens of Palestinians trickled southward from war-ravaged northern Gaza, recounting how they had hardly eaten in days with aid long cut off to the area under heavy Israeli bombardment and military campaign.
Leaving the far northern town of Beit Lahiya, the families -- mostly women and children -- dragged rucksacks and satchels with belongings as they walked down a street entering Gaza City, where every building had been completely flattened or partially destroyed.
“We came barefoot. We have no sandals, no clothes, nothing. We have no money. There is no food or drink,” said Huda Abu Laila.
Israel launched a fresh offensive in northern Gaza in early October, focusing on Jabaliya, a densely populated, decades-old urban refugee camp where it says Hamas had regrouped. Other areas also hit include Beit Lahyia and Beit Hanoun, situated just north of Gaza City, like Jabaliya.
The U.N. estimated last week that some 100,000 people remain in the affected area. It has said no aid has reached the far north of the enclave for weeks. On Monday, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said that there are no ambulances or emergency crews currently operating north of Gaza City.
Israel has repeatedly issued evacuation warnings for the entirety of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, where several hundred thousand more Palestinians remain.
GENEVA — The World Health Organization says it’s working to arrange medical evacuations for more than 100 people from Gaza on Wednesday, which would be the largest such operation of its kind in six months.
Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said the U.N. health agency was helping coordinate the evacuations through the Kerem Shalom crossing based on a list of priority candidates drawn up by the Health Ministry in Gaza.
Speaking by video from Gaza to reporters in Geneva, Peeperkorn said medical evacuations have been arranged for 282 people since Israeli forces forced the closure of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on May 6.
Before the Rafah closure, nearly 4,700 people were ferried out of Gaza in medical evacuations since the Oct. 7 attacks last year, he said.
The largest one since May involved 97 people who were evacuated on Sept. 11. Thousands of people remain on waiting lists to get out.
WHO said people with chronic conditions like cancer as patients from trauma cases – injuries -- were among those to be evacuated. Peeperkorn said most would be taken to the United Arab Emirates for further care, while about 30 were to go to Romania. (edited)
ISLAMABAD — Iran’s foreign minister on Tuesday reiterated that his country does not seek an escalation in the Middle East but reserved the right to defend itself against Israel’s attack with a “measured and calculative” response.
Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking at a news conference during a visit to Pakistan, said that “unlike the Israeli regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran does not seek escalation.”
“We reserve our inherent rights to legitimate defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and we will certainly respond to the Israeli aggression in a proper time and in a proper manner in a very measured and very calculated manner,” he said.
Araghchi met with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, who called for an urgent cease-fire to de-escalate tensions in the region.
BEIRUT — The Lebanese Red Cross will send another convoy Tuesday to Wata al-Khiam in southern Lebanon to search for and remove the bodies of 15 people killed in an Israeli airstrike, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.
Paramedics accessed the site of the strike two days prior and removed five other bodies, but needed to return with larger vehicles to remove the rubble. The NNA said the deployment is in coordination with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, which is the usual procedure.
The Red Cross did not immediately comment on the news, but expressed concern in recent weeks over several instances where Israel has struck in or close to areas where they have deployed paramedics to search for wounded people and casualties.
The Israeli military said it issued warnings to the residents there in late October to evacuate ahead of strikes on Hezbollah militant targets, and told ambulances to avoid the area.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip has killed at least 20 people, mostly women and children.
Hossam Abu Safiya, the director of a nearby hospital that received the casualties, said the strike late Monday hit a home in the town of Beit Lahiya where multiple families were sheltering.
The dead included eight women and six children, according to a list provided by the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service.
The Israeli military said it targeted a weapons storage facility from which a militant had operated, and that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
Israel has been waging a massive offensive in northern Gaza — which was already the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory — for nearly a month. It ordered the complete evacuation of Beit Lahiya, the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, and has allowed almost no humanitarian aid into the area for over a month.
Tens of thousands of people have fled to nearby Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement in the war, which began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian officials say Israeli strikes early Tuesday killed 10 people in the Gaza Strip, including four children and two women.
One strike hit a house in the Tufah neighborhood in Gaza City, killing two children and their parents, according to the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service. Two other children were wounded, it said.
In the central town of Zuweida, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent where a displaced family was sheltering, killing four people, including a mother and her two children, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah.
Another strike hit a house in Deir al-Balah, killing two people, the hospital said.
An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the hospital morgue.
The Israeli military says it only targets militants and accuses them of hiding among civilians. It rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which says over half were women and children. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian officials say Israeli forces have killed four people in the occupied West Bank.
Two were killed in an airstrike early Tuesday near the northern city of Jenin, a flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence in recent years. Two other people were fatally shot in the village of Tamoun, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said it called in an airstrike on a militant cell near Jenin. It also said it killed two armed militants in an airstrike in the Tamoun area.
Israeli forces have carried out near-daily military raids in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the Israel-Hamas war. The Health Ministry says at least 767 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since then. Most appear to have been militants killed in battles with Israeli forces, but the dead also include civilian bystanders and people killed during protests.
Israel says the raids are aimed at dismantling Hamas in the West Bank and preventing attacks. Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis since the start of the war.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state.
Israeli army investigators arrive at the site of the early morning attack of Israeli settlers, that left at least 18 burnt vehicles, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of al-Bireh Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Palestinians mourn over the body of Naji al-Baba,16, who the Palestinian Health Ministry said was killed by Israeli forces in the town of Halhul, West Bank, during his funeral on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinians mourn over the body of Naji al-Baba,16, who the Palestinian Health Ministry said was killed by Israeli forces in the town of Halhul, West Bank, during his funeral on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinians inspect vehicles that were burnt during an early morning attack by Israeli settlers, that left at least 18 burnt vehicles, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of al-Bireh Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Palestinians inspect vehicles that were burnt during an early morning attack by Israeli settlers, that left at least 18 burnt vehicles, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of al-Bireh Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Mourners carry the body of Naji al-Baba,16, who the Palestinian Health Ministry said was killed by Israeli forces in the town of Halhul, West Bank, during his funeral on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
