Suns and Brothers

 sun brothers 2Last month, Phoenix traded with Houston to acquire Marcus Morris, a 6-foot-9 small forward. The deal was made, in part, to ease the anxiety the brothers felt last season when they were rookies and were separated for the first time in their lives.       

“It’s not an accident that these two guys are here,” said Lon Babby, the Suns’ president for basketball operations. “We believe their bond is special and is going to make each of them better and therefore make our team better.”       

The Morrises are only the second set of twins to play for the same N.B.A. team. The first set — Dick and Tom Van Arsdale — also played for the Suns, during the 1976-77 season. The date of Marcus Morris’s debut with his brother in Phoenix, Feb. 22, coincided with the Van Arsdales’ 70th birthday.       

“You’ve always got somebody with you to work on your game with, to watch film with, basically like another coach,” Markieff Morris, a 6-10 power forward, said of the advantages of playing with his brother.       

The pairing of the 23-year-old twins remains a work in progress on an erratic team with a 23-48 record. But team officials are encouraged to have two teammates who trust each other inviolably and need no more than eye contact — and sometimes not even that — to know what the other is planning.       

“Nobody in the league has played longer together than we have,” Marcus Morris said.

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