Is the rhetoric really necessary?
Well, no, of course not; it's not necessary that I post at all, or that you read my posts.
You could simply disagree and offer reasons to support your position.
Bledsoe is a player without a position. He's a classic undersized "combo guard" who isn't enough of a distributor to be a PG and doesn't shoot well enough to be a SG. Over the last 25 years, I can think of only one player in the Bledsoe mold who has been a top-five player in the league, and that's Allen Iverson. And while it's true that I haven't watched every Suns game this year, I've seen enough of Bledsoe to know that he's no Iverson.
I think not making that trade is quite rational but that's because I value Bledsoe to a far greater degree than you do. What would fall beyond the realm of rational thought would be for me to suggest we trade Bledsoe, a player I've pegged as approaching his top 5 potential, for a player I wouldn't rank in the top 10.
There's a difference between rational and logically consistent. Your unwillingness to part with Bledsoe is consistent with the premise that he is (nearly) destined to become a top-five player. But that premise, in my opinion, is faulty.
I know I'm in the minority on this and I may well be wrong but I'm not willing to abandon my opinion merely because most people think otherwise.
And I'm not willing to abandon mine just because a few people think otherwise.
If he had some major flaw in his shooting stroke maybe I'd lower my expectations of him but it looks pretty good to me.
Well it's hard to give that statement a lot of weight unless you have some track record of successfully evaluating the shooting form of NBA players, and if you have that, you haven't shared it. His numbers are what they are. He's not a good shooter. He's a career 32% shooter from three-point range and 76% from the line.
Now Kevin Johnson wasn't a good three-point shooter either, but he shot 84% from the line and better than 50% overall for his career, which is astounding for a PG. Oh, and throw in 9.1 assists per game, good for sixth on the all-time list. So you say Bledsoe is a better defender, yes, probably, but he has nowhere near Johnson's charisma as a leader.
By the time Johnson was Bledsoe's current age, he had already logged seasons of 19/11 and 22/11 and made an All-Star team. Your assessment of Bledsoe is based on what you imagine he might become. That's fine, but there's no strong evidence that convinces me to buy into that dream.
Once he masters that mid-range floater and gets a little more consistent from distance he'll be unstoppable.
Why are you so confident assuming that those things will happen? Shooting a basketball is damn hard. Lots of superb basketball players never get very good at it. You don't get to be a good shooter, by NBA standards, just by wanting it. It isn't just desire and experience that sets someone like Stephen Curry apart from the Bledose ranks.
