He’s a superstar under contract for 5 years.
How much longer will he be productive? 3-4 years? Even if he is productive for the next 5, we'd be better off with the #1 pick. We'd have that player under control for the next 8-9 years and they'd be much cheaper than Westbrook. If that is Ayton, we'd be more balanced with Ayton, Booker, and Jackson compared to Westbrook, Booker, and Jackson. The Suns wouldn't be much better than the Thunder are right now also. We wouldn't have the money to add another superstar, or the assets, so we'd be like the Thunder now, first round fodder. Booker and Jackson will get better but Westbrook will start declining. Who is to say they'd be happy being Westbrook's sidekicks? You know Westbrook wouldn't accept being second to Booker on the Suns, nor should he at this point, but that would only make the Suns the #6-8 seed in the West.
I miss seeing the Suns in the playoffs like everyone else but I'd rather not see them try to take a shortcut to get back there at the expense of being able to truly compete in the playoffs. We would not be competitive with that roster in the postseason but we'd be just good enough to make an appearance. We'd be stuck drafting in the late teens and early twenties again, where it's hard to find top talent. We'll only get as far as Russ could take us and by the time he's regressing we'll need to hope that he's willing to take a backseat to Booker and Jackson, if they stay that long, and he lets them take the lead from him. There's no guarantee he'll do that or how productive he would be at that point and in that role.
The ceiling of a team with Booker, Jackson, and Ayton is greater than that of a team with Booker, Jackson, and Westbrook. The window for the team with Ayton would be open for longer than the team with Westbrook also, since Russ only has another 2-3 years of playing at the level he is. I'm fine with the Suns taking their chances to grow together rather than trying to jump into the postseason right away. We'd be more balanced with Ayton compared to Russ and we'd have more flexibility over the next couple of seasons without Westbrook's contract eating up 1/3 of the salary cap.
