The Suns are leaning on Collin Gillespie’s outside shooting in a postseason series against the Oklahoma City Thunder while playing without Grayson Allen, even as his production and minutes have fallen since March and he heads into the offseason as an unrestricted free agent.
Gillespie’s season began as a clear breakout. From October to February he averaged 13.5 points on 59.2% true‑shooting and 4.7 assists in 28.7 minutes across 59 games, numbers that established him as a high‑value rotation guard. That output slipped in March and April: across 21 games he averaged 10.1 points on 51.3% true‑shooting and 4.5 assists in 28 minutes. In a closer look at April, a five‑game burst showed a sharper drop — 6.6 points on 42.2% true‑shooting and 2.2 assists in 23.0 minutes.
In the Suns’ three postseason games so far, Gillespie’s role has been smaller still. He has averaged 5.0 points on 58.2% true‑shooting and 1.3 assists in 20.2 minutes across those games, a stat line that reads as efficiency with diminished usage rather than a return to his earlier scoring workload.
At 6‑foot‑1, Gillespie has been cast this season as a halfcourt, sharp‑shooting threat — the kind of player who can create immediate spacing and hit catch‑and‑shoot triples. That framing informed how the Suns have used him when Grayson Allen has not been available: a floor‑spacing guard who can relieve pressure on primary scorers and keep defenses honest from the perimeter.
There is friction between the label and the results. The efficiency number in the brief postseason sample (58.2% true‑shooting) suggests Gillespie can still score efficiently in limited minutes. But his points and assists have dropped alongside his minutes, and his recent five‑game stretch in April showed a clear downturn in both shooting percentage and playmaking. Observers have summed up the issue bluntly: his value has been described as that of a “Curry‑esque” player who needs tiny windows of open space to launch threes — and that specific threat has not been consistently visible so far this postseason.
The timing raises stakes. The Suns are using Gillespie in some of the most important games of the season while they are without Allen, and Gillespie will enter free agency this offseason as an unrestricted free agent. How he finishes this postseason will be the clearest evidence teams have when evaluating him in the open market: a player who can deliver efficient shooting in short bursts, or one whose scoring and playmaking have receded when minutes tick down.
That tradeoff—between a proven October‑to‑February breakout and a recent decline in production—frames the decision the Suns and other teams will face. If Gillespie regains the halfcourt shooting that defined his earlier stretch, he can be valued as a specialist who alters spacing and tempo. If the downward trend that showed up in March and across April persists, his free agency will be defined more by what he could not sustain than by what he once achieved.
The simple, unavoidable fact is that the remainder of this postseason and the start of free agency will determine whether Gillespie’s season is remembered for a breakout that stuck or for a late slide that reshapes his market. For Collin Gillespie, the next few weeks will decide which memory carries the most weight.
