When the Phoenix Suns took part in a three-team trade to acquire NBA.com):

As you can see, only the Bledsoe and Thomas combination of point guards has yielded a positive net rating for the Suns to this point. This is particularly interesting, considering the Suns hold a net rating of plus-3.1 as a team on the season as a whole.

Whenever the Suns play two point guards together, their defense is the main thing that suffers (as evidenced by a more bloated defensive rating in each scenario). The Suns currently rank 10th in the NBA with their overall 102.1 defensive rating, but both of the combinations that contain Thomas above would rank in the bottom six of the league, for instance.

Keep in mind that Thomas - on his own - has one of the better defensive ratings on the team at 100.2. The disparity between that number and the defensive rating of the two lineups that include Thomas above (106.0 and 110.1) seems to suggest that the team does significantly better (at least on the defensive end) when playing Thomas by himself at point guard and letting the other two rest, rather than forcing the two-point-guard idea beyond the starting five. Hornacek conceding to play Thomas as a lone point guard during the majority of his time on the floor, of course, would mean having even fewer minutes to go around between his best and highest-paid players. As you can imagine, that isn't exactly an ideal scenario.

As for the offensive end, which is considered to be the whole reason for having two point guards play together in the first place, it's noteworthy that only the Bledsoe and Thomas combination has resulted in an increased offensive rating. The advantages of the Suns playing two point guards at the same time simply aren't as immediately apparent this season as they were last year.

All Three Together

What about the idea of playing all three together? As NBA scribes and media members questioned how exactly the Suns would make this whole thing work this summer, talk began to emerge that all three point guards could somehow play together. The Suns have played different lineups that contains all three guys in eight different games so far this year, for a total of 23 minutes of action. The results have been - to put it lightly - horrendous:

Yikes. Sure, it's a small sample size, but there's nothing there to suggest that any lineups including all three guys should be an option for the Suns going forward. There are very few teams in the NBA that you can guard one through three when you have three point guards on the court together on the defensive end and the combination doesn't appear to do anything positive for the Suns' offense either.

Two On, One Off

It should be noted that all the two-man lineup data from NBA.com listed above is negatively skewed by those 23 minutes the trio played together at the same time. That is because the lineup data on the website shows how the team did with any and all lineups that include the given players, but it doesn't exclude anyone.

In order to compare how the various point guard combinations did when two were on the floor and the other was not, we can look to nbawowy.com - a very useful tool for such inquiries. Here's how those same combinations did when two of the players were on the floor and the other one was on the bench exclusively, compared to the Suns' performance overall this season.

PPP=points per possession
PPS=points per shot
eFG%=effective field goal percentage (weighted twos and threes)
AST Ratio=team assists per 100 possessions

As you can see, without the 23 minutes of the trio playing together, things don't look that bad. The Bledsoe and Dragic pairing is more or less on par with the team as a whole, but the difference between Thomas playing with Bledsoe versus playing with Dragic is still worth noting. The Suns are notably more efficient at shooting and passing when Bledsoe and Thomas play together, whereas they're noticeably worse when Thomas is paired with Dragic instead. This will be interesting to monitor moving forward, as we see if Hornacek starts using Thomas more on his own or exclusively with Bledsoe and perhaps fewer Thomas/Dragic pairings.

Just as a reminder and for comparative purposes, here are those 23 minutes of the trio playing together as seen through the nbawowy.com looking glass:

Again, gross.

What This Means for the Suns Going Forward

Dragic hits unrestricted free agency this summer and has already expressed that he will test the market. If these early-season trends continue, perhaps the Suns letting him walk would be the best option for both sides.

Yes, they're 9-6, and there's not enough evidence to hit the eject button on this experiment just yet, but it won't be long before the fear of losing Dragic for nothing in free agency starts rearing its ugly head and forces Phoenix to evaluate the situation in a hurry - perhaps by the trade deadline if the Suns can't keep up in the West and contenders come knocking for his expiring services.

If Dragic were to leave the Suns this season or during next summer, he would have the chance to re-establish himself elsewhere and build off last year's All-NBA campaign - one that was built mostly during the time Bledsoe missed due to injury. Meanwhile, the Suns could use Thomas and Bledsoe as their two-point-guard pairing going forward, focus more of their attention on Tyler Ennis' development, and use Dragic's money to address one of their more pressing needs, like an effective scoring or rim-protecting big man.