Adonis Arms was on his way to lunch with his girlfriend in the Phoenix area when he received the call of his life.
“I was literally opening the door and letting her out first (of an Airbnb) when my phone started ringing,” Arms said. “(His agent) was like, ‘What are you doing?’ I’m like ‘I’m going to lunch.’ He’s like, ‘You have to cancel this or take it to go because you have to go to the Suns practice facility.'”
Eh?
“I was like, ‘What’s going on, why, what’s up?'” Arms said. “He’s like, ‘What do you mean why? They want to sign you. Come over there. Practice with them.’ I was like, ‘Oh okay, let me get my shoes and my ball and I’m out of here.'”
The Suns ended up signing Arms and fellow local talent Saben Lee as invitees to training camp on Tuesday and also waived Frank Jackson.
“I said to my girlfriend, ‘I’m sorry, I have to do this, my dream is on the line, so I have to go,'” Arms continued. “She was like, ‘Get out of here. Goodbye. Let’s do this.’ So she came with me and she was sitting in the lobby. I was like dang, this is crazy. This is how God works.
Lee played at Corona Del Sol High in Tempe where he was a first-team All-State his junior and senior years while Arms graduated from Desert Vista High after moving from Milwaukee to Phoenix at age 12. .
“I was really excited,” Lee said of the phone call he received about signing with the Suns. “I was really looking forward, excited. This is my home. I was anxious, excited. Just happy to get up here, work and get things done.”
The Suns now have 19 players on their roster, including Jae Crowder, who did not participate in training camp because the team tried to trade him.
Phoenix is to have its standard roster until 3-5 p.m. ET Monday for opening night. Ish Wainright and Duane Washington Jr. fill the team’s allocated two-way slots.
The Suns open their regular season Oct. 19 against Dallas at the Footprint Center.
Lee played last season for Detroit where he averaged 5.6 points. The 6-2 guard, born in St. Louis, was part of Bojan Bogdanović’s trade that sent him to Utah in the offseason before the Jazz later waived him.
Utah drafted Lee out of Vanderbilt with the 38th overall pick in 2020.
Arms went undrafted in 2022 after a season at Texas Tech to cap a college career that included stops at Mesa Community College, Northwest Nazarene and Winthrop. The 6-5 guard played for the Nuggets in the 2022 NBA Summer League in Las Vegas.
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Averaging 9.4 points in the summer league, Arms was on Denver’s roster before being waived.
The Suns had again invited to the camp Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot, who played their last two preseason games, before the last preseason game Wednesday against Sacramento.
The 6-7 forward had seven points and five rebounds against the Los Angeles Lakers in Las Vegas and eight points last Monday in Denver.
Luwawu-Cabarrot played six NBA seasons as he did with the Atlanta Hawks last season.
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Jackson also saw action against the Lakers and Nuggets. The 6-3 guard didn’t score in either game after averaging 10.6 career points for Detroit last season.
Like Luwawu-Cabarrot, Jackson was also a guest at Suns camp.
Phoenix was without starting forward Cam Johnson (sprained right thumb) and point guard Cameron Payne (sprained right finger) due to hand injuries they suffered against the Lakers.
They didn’t play in Denver and were absent against Sacramento.
The Suns were also without Landry Shamet (left hip strain) and Dario Saric (personal reasons) for their second straight preseason game on Wednesday.
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Do you have an opinion on the current state of the Suns? Contact Suns Insider Duane Rankin at [email protected] or contact him at 480-787-1240. Follow him on Twitter at @DuaneRankin.
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