If Adam Silver had his way all GM's would be helping Lebron somehow. He doesn't care about a player like Chandler being bought out and signing with the Lakers. Like with Cousins signing with the Warriors, there are 28 other teams in the league that could have offered the Suns something for Chandler or offered Chandler a better contract but they didn't. Unless someone has clear cut evidence of under the table deals there won't be anything done.
No one seemed to have an issue until Tyson showed he had more in the tank than he displayed in Phoenix. Of course it looks like that when you see highlights on ESPN or selectively posted on Twitter. Look at the stats themselves and it's virtually the same with a slight increase in rebounds because he's seeing the floor almost twice the amount he was here. How many people have watched a Laker game where they're not playing the Suns though? I would guess no one that is complaining about Chandler being cut to help the Lakers since his numbers are essentially the same. I know he had a couple of plays in this first couple of games where he showed a lot of energy but energy doesn't always equal positive production, see Josh Jackson for evidence of that. Compare the stats between here and LA this year and he hasn't played better, he's shooting worse there and rebounding a little more but actually his rebound rate is down since he's seeing almost twice the amount of playing time but only 2 more rebounds.
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He hasn't improved in LA either if you compare the brief numbers this season between his time as a Sun and Laker. He's averaging more minutes in LA now but that's pretty much it. In 7 games in Phoenix he averaged 12.7 minutes a game to go with 3.7 ppg, 5.6 rpg, and 0.1 block all while shooting 66% from the field. As a Laker in 16 games he's averaging 21.1 minutes to go with 3.6 ppg, 7.6 rpg, and 0.4 blocks all while shooting 55% from the field. So almost twice the playing time and he's grabbing 2 more rebounds and his shooting dropped by 10%.
I don't think Tyson was giving 100% here but I didn't need to see him as a Laker to believe that. For some reason Tyson gets less blame for signing with the Lakers and not playing hard in Phoenix than James Jones, Sarver, Lebron, and McD, even though McD was already fired when Tyson was bought out. Could Chandler have brought back something in a trade? Maybe, but I'm not so sure that's an easy yes or no question. He was in the final year of a deal that was paying $13.8 million this year. That's a considerable cap hit that isn't easy for a contender to swallow. It's much harder for a contender to take that on while sending out a player that wouldn't hurt our cap situation beyond this year. No one wanted to take on additional salary to dump Chandler either so what options did we have? Let him continue playing while fans want him sat since he has no future here, but that would keep his value somewhat decent until a trade can be found, or sit him and hope a team decides to trade for a guy who has been in the league 18 years that isn't playing on the worst team in the league? If he didn't suffer from lots of injuries then sitting him might have been ok but for how long? No one wanted to see him end his career glued to our bench. It's likely he would've been bought out after the trade deadline anyways, waiving him now expedited all that.
If Lebron wasn't a Laker then I doubt Suns fan talk about Chandler for more than a week after he got waived. Suns fans hate the Lakers and seeing them benefit from a player we waived isn't fun but no one wanted Chandler to get meaningful minutes here because there was no future for him as a Sun. He was over the hill and not producing as a Sun this season. He should have been waived in the offseason but he wasn't, maybe we could have found a trade but we don't know if McD tried or not. I think he did, I doubt a trade for Chandler was declined by us so long as it didn't hurt out cap in the future. I can't see Sarver veto'ing McD's trade involving Chandler and then allowing James Jones to waive him 2 weeks into the season. Sarver is an idiot but a scenario like that is too hard to swallow. If Sarver was fine with buying him out so soon then we should have done it sooner but we didn't, for some reason, and it was highly unlikely someone would have traded for him so early in the season anyways so waiving him before the season started should have been the route taken if we weren't willing to wait it out until the trade deadline to see if a trade would materialize for him.
The Suns were in a no win situation with Chandler because they didn't trade him well before this season. That's on McD, not James Jones, not Lebron, and not Sarver. It may partly be Sarver's fault but we don't know for certain. If real evidence comes out of James Jones colluding with Lebron or that Sarver vetoed a trade for Chandler, then we have something to talk about but until that's produced it doesn't help us to pine over what Chandler could have been on our bench.
