Eric Bledsoe is the Phoenix Suns’ best player. Brandon Knight and the way he meshes with Bledsoe will likely determine how successful the Suns are next season as they fight to end a five-year playoff drought, so he’s pretty darn important too.
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Markieff Morris will be the biggest X-factor, either because his sour disposition could ruin the season or because the Suns could just as easily be forced to trade him away for something below market value. Among all these Suns starters, however, Tyson Chandler just might be the most important player on the roster for 2015-16.
We’ve covered what Chandler brings to the table ad nauseam since the news first broke that Phoenix had locked him in to a four-year, $52 million contract. His veteran experience, locker room leadership, defensive prowess, rim protection and rebounding skills will all be huge benefits for the young Suns, who seem trapped in the middle of the Western Conference.
But with the Keef situation reaching threat level midnight, Chandler’s influence will be huge no matter where the embattled Morris twin winds up. As of right now, the three possible outcomes are:
- Keef is traded
- The Suns are unable to work out a passable deal and either keep him in an uncomfortable work environment or glue an unhappy, poisonous locker room presence to the bench
- Morris realizes the best thing for him and his NBA career is to suck it up, act like a professional and focus on playing basketball
Let’s tackle these one at a time.
In the first scenario, the Suns will more than likely be reeling from the departure of a talented offensive player who is only 25 years old and on a bargain of a contract for the next four years.
Even if they nab a starting power forward in a potential deal, we’ve already examined how some of Phoenix’s best options have major drawbacks — without including the obvious issue that teams won’t be tripping over each other to land a player whose reputation and trade value is spiraling down the toilet right now.
Sir Charles In Charge
Options like Taj Gibson, Channing Frye or Ryan Anderson represent the dream scenario for the Suns, but even if general manager Ryan McDonough worked his magic and made one of them a reality, Phoenix’s frontcourt would suddenly age a bit with players on much shorter deals. In this outcome, Chandler’s health becomes of the utmost importance.
After all, Gibson is coming off left ankle surgery at age 30, Frye is 32 and Anderson is a defensive turnstile. Considering Chandler’s injury problems over the last few years (though he did play 75 games last season), the Suns’ defense wouldn’t be able to afford his absence in the frontcourt even if they managed to land one of these more ideal options in a Markieff Morris trade.
In the second scenario, Chandler’s importance would hit peak levels. The Suns brought the former NBA champion and Defensive Player of the Year for what he could accomplish on the court as a nightly double-double, but also for what he has to offer Alex Len and the rest of the young team in terms of mentoring them and cultivating their professionalism.
If a pissed off Markieff Morris really does want out of Phoenix, doesn’t get traded AND has his role drastically reduced, he’ll represent a direct foil to the leadership and locker room unity Chandler is supposed to bring to the table.
In this hypothetical scenario, how Chandler deals with a negative presence like that could be more important than anything he provides on the court this season.
Would he put Keef in his place and find a way to coax out his inner professionalism? Would he speak his mind as he often does and publicly condemn that kind of potential negativity? Would he be able to have the same impact on the players who actually want to be here while Keef sulks in the corner? They’re all questions that would need to be answered.
Even worse, the Suns would have to resort to Mirza Teletovic as the team’s starting forward in this scenario. Even if Alex Len somehow morphed into a stretch-5 capable of knocking down threes and playing alongside Chandler in extended minutes, Phoenix would then lose its depth at center if they got fancy and went with a Twin Towers lineup.
No offense to Teletovic, but the Suns would be one Chandler injury or one Len injury away from being seriously shorthanded in the frontcourt. Phoenix has the makings of a top 10 defense, but if Keef can’t be traded and doesn’t buy into the team concept, the cracks in that defense will start to show pretty quickly.
In the final scenario, it’s hard to imagine Keef coming around without Chandler being directly involved. Even if they’ve never been teammates, and even if the report is true that Keef won’t talk to teammates right now, Chandler might be the only player on the roster capable of getting him to buy back into the team.
But Suns believe Keef will come around, see the opportunity next to Chandler to take it to next level as a player.
— Dave King (@DaveKingNBA) July 9, 2015
Right now, the likelihood of that happening doesn’t seem great.
I’ve been saying it since the moment Marcus Morris was traded away, and it hasn’t been an uncommon thought: Markieff Morris now represents the powder keg that could either ignite the Suns to the playoffs for the first time since 2010, or he could implode the framework of the whole 2015-16 season.
It’s slightly unfair to Tyson Chandler, who hasn’t even been in Phoenix for more than a month. But no matter what comes out of this ugly Keef situation, Chandler could very well represent the Suns’ best chance at overcoming the impending consequences.
Next: Drawing Up Potential Markieff Morris Trades