The Wolves, Kings, Nuggets, Pelicans or Mavs Move Into Top-3
The Suns have made it very clear that they are building their team to win in 2020. They are one of the few teams in the West poised to rise up in that way. Their aim is to reach their peak as all the current super-teams leave their prime or are disassembled altogether. The Suns definitely don’t want another young team in the West to get one of these top-3 or four franchise-changing players.
The Wolves moving up would be the worst of the bunch. They already have Karl Anthony-Towns, Andrew Wiggins, Zach Lavine, and Kris Dunn. They are one to two years away from being a playoff team exactly as Phoenix is. The last thing the Suns, or frankly the league, need is for the likes of Markelle Fultz or Lonzo Ball to join that dangerous core.
The Suns also don’t want the Kings or the Mavs to move up, simply because both teams lack any young talent to build around. Every year those teams don’t have a top pick is one more year they won’t contend with Phoenix down the line. The Nuggets are also in a similar position to the Suns. They have one young star in Jokic, and a bunch of assets around him with nothing to show for it in the win column. Plus the Pelicans adding any of the “Big 3” of this year’s draft to Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins would make the West that much harder and a potential Suns jump into the playoffs extremely difficult . Not to mention, the Pelicans core would still be younger than any of the current dominant teams in the West.