The Suns started a full-scale rebuild at the same time as the Sixers, but they’ve made so many unpredictable turns that it sometimes appears as if they have no guiding process at all.
Suns owner Robert Sarver admits he’s an impatient sort, but he embraced a rebuild when he empowered GM Ryan McDonough to gut the wretched post–Steve Nash roster ahead of the 2013-14 season. That team nearly blitzed to the playoffs, and the Suns have been prisoners to that shocking success ever since. They’ve veered off the rebuild path, and reached in a half-dozen different directions for missing pieces in an attempt to quickly turn themselves into contenders.
They met with LeBron James’s camp a year ago, and after James held the league hostage for two weeks, the Suns dealt for Isaiah Thomas — tripling down on a point guard experiment that already included Eric Bledsoe and Goran Dragic. When Dragic soured on his role, the Suns dealt him to Miami in exchange for two first-round picks — a killer return for a player on an expiring contract who wanted out, and a classic rebuild move. Phoenix at that moment had the trade chips to compete with anyone for the next disgruntled superstar.
And then, boom, the Suns traded two of their best chips — Thomas and a lightly protected pick from the Lakers — and didn’t have much other than Knight to show for it
. Phoenix had dealt two guards, dangled its most enticing bait, and somehow come away with yet another point guard — and no big men to fill out a thin frontcourt.
Four months later, they came out of nowhere to sign Tyson Chandler, opened up cap space with a salary dump in Detroit, and emerged as San Antonio’s only real competition for LaMarcus Aldridge. Aldridge chose the Spurs, and the Suns are now left with Chandler — a 32-year-old center at least seven years older than the rest of the team’s core, and a seven-foot barrier to Alex Len getting the minutes he needs.
So, umm, what the heck are the Suns doing?
“It has been a roller coaster for sure,” McDonough says, chuckling.
“I am not a real patient person,” Sarver says. “You don’t have the kind of success that allows you to buy an NBA team by being a patient person in business. But it’s just a personality trait, and you try not to make decisions based on that.”
Phoenix wagered that the Lakers would upgrade enough this summer to shove that pick toward the bottom of the lottery, but it appears to have lost that part of the bet. They could have waited to pursue Knight in free agency, though prying away restricted free agents is usually a loser’s game. Still: Knight now makes about double Thomas’s salary,
raising the possibility that Phoenix effectively traded one point guard and one draft pick for a worse asset at point guard they might have signed anyway and a worse draft pick — the Cleveland first-rounder Phoenix received from Boston in exchange for Thomas.
Phoenix showed it is willing to ditch the whole ‘stay young’ thing, chasing two 30-plus starters the moment free agency opened.
Phoenix swung and mostly missed. They’ll swing again. “One of these years,” McDonough says, “we hope we can win one of these.”
That may never happen. That is the danger of relying on cap space. Good news: The Suns aren’t just relying on cap space. They have a boatload of young players, and the 2018 and 2021 first-rounders coming from Miami loom as both interesting trade chips and key building blocks for the next era of Suns basketball.
Those picks could decline in value if Pat Riley’s beachfront pitch seduces another star, raising the possibility that Phoenix will lag behind at least Boston and Philly in the race to build a trade package for the next available star.
Philly’s owners know this, which is why they trust a process they can shape more than “normal” teams like Phoenix will ever be able to shape free agency or the trade market. But you can only do that if the owners let you.
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