Collin Gillespie shined this past season for the upstart Phoenix Suns. Early in his second go-around with the team, the former Villanova guard helped fill the void of an injured Jalen Green. He thrived in a larger role, so much so that he maintained a meaningful presence in the Suns’ rotation the rest of the 2025-26 campaign.
The 6-foot-1 guard, who embodied the grit that made Phoenix a surprise playoff team a year after it said goodbye to Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal, more than doubled his scoring average, clocking out with 12.7 points, 4.6 assists and 4.1 rebounds per game as a third-year NBA player.
The Suns reportedly aren’t letting one of their spark plugs get away in free agency. Gillespie intends to sign a four-year, $48 million deal to return to Phoenix, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on Saturday.
Another NBA insider, Jake Fischer, reported Saturday that Gillespie’s long-term contract is fully guaranteed. It’s reportedly arriving after the soon-to-be 27-year-old backcourt scrapper played this past season on a minimum salary and his first three seasons out of college on two-way deals.
Once undrafted, Gillespie is now a valued part of the Suns’ future.
Before this past season, Gillespie had appeared in a total of 57 NBA games. He started only nine of those.
This time around, he appeared in 80 regular-season games, 58 of which he started, and then averaged 28.5 minutes per contest in the Suns’ first-round playoff series against the Oklahoma City Thunder. OKC swept Phoenix, but the Suns emerged from the 2025-26 campaign with plenty of reasons for optimism.
Gillespie was an ingredient in Phoenix’s unexpected success, right from the jump. He made a team-leading 232 3-pointers for a 45-37 Suns squad that wound up with the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference. Gillespie finished as one of five NBA players who averaged 2.9 or more 3s per game while shooting at least 40% from deep this past season. The others in that group? Jamal Murray of the Denver Nuggets, Kon Knueppel of the Charlotte Hornets, Duncan Robinson of the Detroit Pistons and AJ Green of the Milwaukee Bucks.
But Gillespie isn’t a one-dimensional scorer, nor is he a one-way player. He’s showcased his effort all 94 feet since he was at Villanova, where he won a national championship in 2018 with Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges and Donte DiVincenzo.
Gillespie suffered a serious left knee injury during his senior season with the Wildcats. But he came back for a fifth year and led Villanova to the last Final Four appearance of Jay Wright’s tenure as the program’s head coach.
Gillespie’s first regular-season NBA action came with the Denver Nuggets. He played 24 games for them amid the 2023-24 campaign. The Suns then landed him on a two-way deal in July 2024. Gillespie, after averaging 5.9 points in 33 outings across the 2024-25 season, received a one-year contract last summer.
A year later, his already upward trajectory in Phoenix is reportedly soaring to new heights.
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