The purple and orange brightened what has been an otherwise gloomy July with a strong signing right out the blue.

With the Suns supposedly looking at names like Devin Brown and Devean George to fill depth at the wing position, Phoenix general manager Steve Kerr produced Matt Barnes — who many figured would be far beyond the reach of a team with only a veterans minimum salary to offer.

As a player entering his sixth year in the league, Barnes will earn $998,398, and the Suns are responsible for only $797,581 of that total, with the rest paid from a league fund set up through the collective bargaining agreement. That’s less than the Suns were waving at Tyronn Lue last week for a player with the possibility of having a big impact (likely off the bench because Phoenix still likes the idea of starting Grant Hill at the small forward).

Barnes is hoping one season with the Suns will raise his value in the league. In return, Phoenix gets an athletic wing who provides insurance for Grant Hill, can run the floor and be a 3-point threat if he can duplicate the 36.6 percent shooting effort from 2006-07 that got even better in the playoffs.

Add to that Barnes’ fully earned reputation as being a pesky, hard-nosed defender who has had his fair share of cheap-shot fingers pointed in his direction over the years.

Barnes gives the Suns the flexibility of going back to a smaller, quicker lineup by playing some 4 (similar to the lineup that featured Amare Stoudemire at center and Shawn Marion at power forward) if Shaquille O’Neal is sidelined by either foul trouble or injury and defends well enough in the half court at the small forward to play with the bigger lineups as well.

In a year marked by the death of his mother, Barnes struggled with the Warriors last season and fell out of the rotation at times. But he is known as a good teammate, even if his wild play (overzealous turnovers) needs to be reined in. He is a hard worker on the court and has gone from a player known as a poor shooter to one who can knock down shots consistently enough to help the Suns with their all-important spacing issues.

As far as the Summer League goes, the Suns were pleased with the play of rookie Robin Lopez (14 points, 7.8 rebounds), although he didn’t have the impact of the player taken right before him on draft night — Golden State’s Anthony Randolph. Randolph put up 20.8 points a game, matched Lopez’s rebounding stats and was the most impressive rookie of the week this side of Jerryd Bayless’ 29.8-point, one-man-show effort.

The player taken after Lopez, Philadelphia’s Marreese Speights, was also very strong, averaging a double-double (18.2 points, 10.2 rebounds). But neither one of those guys is 7-foot or fills the defensive void that Lopez should handle well for the Suns.

Both of Phoenix’s second-year players, Alando Tucker and D.J. Strawberry, had little trouble scoring in Vegas, and they needed to score on a team with very little to offer beyond the top three players.

But they also did little to put to rest the concerns in their games — defense for Tucker and shooting and floor generalship for Strawberry. Tucker has a guaranteed deal, although the Barnes signing knocks him back a peg in the rotation, while Strawberry will have to watch and wait to see what the Suns do with the backup point position.

If Goran Dragic winds up in Phoenix — and Suns officials remain cautiously optimistic that will be the case despite his comments to the contrary to a Spanish newspaper — the team will likely have to come up with another veteran point to cover themselves. And even if Dragic stays in Europe and the Suns sign or trade for a veteran to back up Steve Nash, they could choose to sign a third pure point guard or an injury/project (like Shaun Livingston or Allan Houston), leaving Strawberry on the outside looking in.

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