Should The Phoenix Suns Re-Sign Brandon Knight?
Pros
It’s understandable to be concerned about what we saw from Brandon Knight in his limited time in a Suns jersey, but at 23 years old, he’s nowhere near his prime. With the Bucks, Knight was the best player on a playoff-bound team, averaging 17.8 points, 5.4 assists and 4.3 rebounds per game while shooting 43.5 percent from the floor and 40.9 percent from three-point range.
The Suns offense without Knight has been an unmitigated disaster. Though the defense improved by moving Marcus Morris into the starting lineup and switching P.J. Tucker to the shooting guard position, Phoenix has the fourth worst offensive rating (97.2) since the All-Star break.
In that time frame, the Suns are shooting 43.6 percent from the field (24th) and an abysmal 29.4 percent from downtown (30th). Knight didn’t exactly light up the scoring column in his 11 Suns appearances, but the guy was a 41 percent shooter from deep in Milwaukee.
Those 11 games were also an extremely small sample size, and the Suns could desperately use some perimeter shooting based on what we’ve seen from this roster with Knight sidelined. Isn’t it far too soon to say trading for him was a mistake when he hasn’t even been through a training camp with the team yet?
The Bledsoe-Knight pairing will take time. Knight had the ball in his hands a lot more in Milwaukee as a true point guard; in Phoenix, he’ll be a combo guard playing off the ball. But just because the Suns have been a train wreck and ugly melodrama over the last few months doesn’t mean the appropriate response is giving up on him because of one ankle injury.
The Suns need his offense, his youth and his perimeter shooting, but they also need a reason to stay positive. Paying Knight in the $10-12 million range per season is much better than the max contract it would’ve taken to keep Goran Dragic, and we should keep in mind that the salary cap is set to explode in 2016-17.
The front office wouldn’t have traded away that valuable top-five protected draft pick (from the Los Angeles Lakers) if they weren’t convinced Knight could fit in here. That’s not to say the front office is infallible (Isaiah Thomas, anyone?), but it does suggest that the Suns have been committed to re-signing Knight since they first traded for him.
Look at it this way: Would you rather the Suns slightly overpay to keep a young, promising player like Knight after trading away that pick, or would you rather they get scared off by a minor ankle injury and have lost the pick for nothing?
The pick is gone. It’s in the past. There’s no use bemoaning its departure now, and the Suns would be wise to make sure their compensation for that potentially valuable draft selection doesn’t walk away this summer.
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