Welcome to ‘Inside the Suns’, your weekly deep-down analysis of the current Phoenix Suns team.
Each week, the Fantable—a round table of Bright Siders—gives their takes on the Suns’ latest problems and news. This week, we’ve chosen to focus on looking forward instead of looking back at the Suns quick playoff exit at the hands of Minnesota. While the Suns options going forward are limited due to the new CBA, they do have options, up to and including the “nuclear” option of completely blowing up the team and starting a complete rebuild.
Fantable Questions of the Week
Q1: Some Brightsiders have been down on Booker lately and have voiced the opinion that he should be traded this off-season. What are your thoughts on this?
GuarGuar: I am completely against moving Booker. He is the franchisee. I understand we have fallen short over the past few years. I understand he had tough games (1-3) in this series. But he has proven he’s a top-10 player, and that is super rare to have. He stuck with this brand through its lowest points in history. He didn’t complain and leave. And just because he had a rough playoff series for the first time, should we trade him? I don’t get it.
I understand we are very limited right now and have basically no assets. We don’t own our own picks going forward, so moving him and tanking doesn’t exactly make sense. If he wants out, that’s a different story. But I am strongly against trading books. It’s a bad look for the brand if we do, and it will hurt our image going forward. I think we will run this group another year and see what happens with some consistency.
OldAz: There has always been a contingent within the Bright Side community that is down on Booker, along with some who support him to the bitter end. This year was not a good year for that latter group, but in my view, trading him would be asinine. While he might command the most in return, trading Booker to get 2-3 good players and balance the squad leaves the Suns with an aging Beal and KD and little else. Booker is the heart and soul of this team at the moment, and he lobbied to bring in these other great players. Now it is on him to lead those other guys and make it work. Trading him away makes absolutely no sense.
Brrrberry: I can’t think of a more terrible idea at this point than moving Booker. Every great Suns player that’s played for us over the last half century plus has finally come up short and no one has gotten any closer than he has. The Minnesota series was a disaster; we got outclassed and it was a big disappointment so it’s natural to want wholesale change. Trading Booker makes us worse now and in the future, I’ll be pulling for him, ideally until the day he retires as a Sun. At this point, I can make the easy case that he’s the best player in franchise history and that his best basketball is still ahead of him.
Rod: This would be a mistake, in my view. Yes, it would net the biggest value return of any player on the roster, but you’re not going to get more than a handful of fair-to-good players back, and odds are that whatever draft picks the team gets as part of the deal would be late first rounders simply because Book is likely going to make whichever team he went to much better than it was. Late first-round picks might be better than no first-round picks, but that really depends on how well you use them. And contrary to general belief/opinion, the Suns do have first-round picks in 2024, 2026, 2028, 2030, and beyond. Many are subject to possible pick swaps with other teams, but for the most part, those are with teams that will likely not want to swap unless the Suns move Book, get worse, and have their own future 1st round picks become more valuable.
To me, it would at best be a gamble—and a big one—that trading arguably the best player ever to wear a Suns uniform could finally turn this team into a championship winner. That is, of course, possible, but I believe it’s just as possible that it could start the Suns down the road to another 10-year playoff drought, and that’s a gamble I’m not yet ready to take.
Q2: What would be your major move in free agency or through a trade to try to improve the Suns this off-season?
GuarGuar: I really want us to get a backup point guard. We need someone to run the attack when Book is on the bench. And sometimes we need someone else to handle point guard tasks when Book is on the floor, so we aren’t so one-dimensional. Beal can’t run point guard; Minnesota revealed that. If Kyle Lowry is willing to come here for the minimum, I would look into that. He’d be a great fit here. We’re so limited in what we can do this summer that it’s so hard to come up with a “major move.”.
OldAz: I don’t think there is a “major” move to be made, and I am on record that consistency is a benefit, and the starting 5 are all under contract for next season, with only one being really tradable. As for players, I would try to bring back Bol and Okogie. I am lukewarm on O’Neale after his playoff disappearing act, and I would be open to moving Nurkic if they could get a starting power forward in return that would allow KD to play more small forward. The moves the sun makes all need to be focused on getting longer and more muscular. I know a lot of people will want them to add a PG, but that just makes no sense to me when you have Book and Beal playing 70 minutes a night and Allen already signed, so there really is only room for a backup PG anyway. As bad as this season was to watch, I am not even a fan of ousting Vogel, but I would require him or one of the staff to lay out a clear offensive theory and game plan. To me, that was one of the biggest things missing this season.
Brrrberry: I’d fire Vogel and bring in Dawn Staley or Jared Dudley as coaches. Draft Mccain or Kolek; possibly trade the pick on draft night along with our 2031 pick. If we’re trading first-round picks, we’re looking for someone who can bring the same type of impact that NAW had for Minnesota, and ideally, a talent that would exceed his type of impact, but that’s unlikely as he played a major part.
Ultimately, I think Kolek is the guy from this draft who brings what we need the most. I have Tyler Smith, a 6’11 lefty from G League Ignite, as my sleeper with the most upside, so I’d be thrilled if we got him, but he’s going to have some growing pains and may not mesh with being all in, like I think is the approach we gotta keep. Run it back with Beal, KD, and a coach who’ll hold them responsible. Staley or Dudley would make a big difference with this squad, but I don’t quite trust the head decision-makers to bring in the coach who is going to be able to change the entire culture around, like I know Staley or Dudley would.
Rod: Being over the 2nd tax apron (or even the 1st) seriously limits what the Suns can do in free agency, so we can pretty much count that as a way of improving the team. Vet minimum FA deals are all they can do there, with the exception of re-signing Royce O’Neale and Bol Bol, which they hopefully can do.
Making a significant trade without sending out Book, KD, or Beal is also tough, but I really don’t believe we’ll see any of them being shopped over the summer. Once the 2024–25 season gets started, based on how it goes, I won’t yet count out a mid-season trade for one of them. Once you get past those three, Nurk is the Suns’ highest-value trade chip (but perhaps not the best one). His $18 million salary could bring back some useful assets, but it would probably necessitate an overall downgrade at the center. If the Suns could find a willing trade partner and get back at least one, probably two, useful rotation/bench players, I would likely pull the trigger on that trade. Just a reminder: while the Suns can no longer aggregate players in deals, this restriction does not apply to other teams aggregating salaries in trades with the Suns. The limit is on the sun, not them.
Grayson Allen is probably the Suns’ best trade chip, but I would hate to lose him. His $15.6 million salary would be very tradable and would likely bring back a better return than Nurkic, but he can’t be moved until 6 months after the date on which he signed his contract extension, which would be sometime in October. That pretty much relegates him to the group that could get traded during the season, but probably not before the season starts.
Nassir Little is the next best dollar value ($6.75 million) contract the Suns could trade this summer, but I don’t see him having enough on the court worth to bring back much in return. In fact, the best return value I could see for his contract might be a trade exception if someone was ready to take him on for very little in return, which might be possible. David Roddy’s salary is just too small to count on being useful in bringing back a good player, and I don’t even want to speculate on all of the minimum-salary players with player options who might or might not still be with the Suns after this season.
To sum it up, without trading Book, KD, or Beal, trading Nurk is likely the only choice for getting back any truly useful players this summer, but even that would likely be a gamble.
GuarGuar: If we stick with James Jones, I fully think we will draft a rookie who played 3–4 years in college and is ready to contribute immediately. I can’t picture drafting a project given the state of this team. I’d expect a wing or big man who is older and ready to help right now. Our schedule doesn’t line up with taking on a project or a raw player.
I would like to pick a point guard if possible. I am not familiar with this draft class, and I’ve heard mainly bad things about it. But having a young point guard would be nice, and hopefully he could grow into our future backcourt mate with Book (i.e., what Haliburton should’ve been).
OldAz: I can’t even pretend to be an expert on college basketball possibilities, but I did skim a few mock drafts for this question. I had heard that this was a down draft, so I am not sure how much we can expect from the 22nd pick, and I have no idea the rules involved with trading that pick for a player since the Suns cannot aggregate wages. I was struck by how many 19- and 20-year-old rookies are being projected in mock drafts, as that again offers little hope in the short run for the Suns. I would stick to James Jones’ tendency to select upper-classmen, and I certainly wouldn’t be sad if Devin Carter from Providence fell that far. More realistically, I would be good with either Zach Edey as the Suns new backup center or Tyler Kolek as a backup PG choice.
Brrrberry: I addressed this in question 2. Tyler Kolek from Marquette is a 4-year-old PG who I’m expecting to have a similar effect to what JJJ and Podz had for Miami and GSW. The fact he plays PG makes him the best ROOKIE fit for a team that’s all in on winning. He’d make a big difference. Mccain, the combo guard from Duke, would be a nice long-term fit, and Tyler Smith from G League Ignite is my No. 1 sleeper in this draft, but despite his sweet shooting stroke at 6’11 with plus athleticism, he’s still pretty raw and likely doesn’t have the impact we’re needing out of that asset this upcoming season, so he’s probably not the right fit for the 2024/25 season, unfortunately. All the same, I don’t expect he’ll be available at 22; I think he’ll be a late riser and someone who really scoots up the draft boards during the pre-draft process.
Rod: I think the Suns can find a player in the draft that could play a useful part on the court in his first NBA season, but it won’t be easy to find more than a useful bench piece at 22. At the time, I believe the Suns should be considering either a point guard or a center with their pick. If they do wind up moving Nurk (see my answer to Q2 above), then Zach Edey would be my choice if he’s available. While there are doubts about his ability to defend in space, I have my own questions as to whether he’d be worse than Nurk at it, plus he looks to be an improvement in many other areas, especially rim protection and scoring in the paint. If the Suns could trade Nurk for a reasonably good backup PG, I would go this route, but of course the draft is going to happen before the Suns have a real opportunity to make that trade, so they would have to take Edey with the assumption that they can somehow find a useful PG later on.
If Edey is gone when the Suns draft, they might go with drafting a PG, and my personal choice would be Tyler Kolek. Are there better PGs in this draft? Yes, but none of them will likely be available when the Suns pick at 22, and Kolek may be the best pure assist man of the bunch (7.7 assists per game). Why isn’t he going to go before 22? Much of the reason behind him not being taken earlier is his age. He’s a 23-year-old senior, which could be a plus for the Suns given that he would likely be needed to mostly just play a backup role and because of his maturity and extra college experience. He’s also considered just average athletically but can score (15.3 ppg, 38.8% from three), has active hands on D (1.6 steals pg), and fits the profile of the type of player JJ likes to pick. It’s not thought likely that he’ll become a great starting PG in the NBA, but he should become at least a quality backup, which would be a solid get for Phoenix in the draft.
