Draft night could almost have not played out any better for the Phoenix Suns, and fans the Valley wide are ecstatic – for good reason.
There is no need to re-hash the regular season by discussing the team’s tanking and fall from the second worst overall regular season record to the fourth overall pick in the draft.
For moths the seemingly consensus picks to open the draft were (regardless of the teams selecting) Markelle Fultz, Lonzo Ball, and Josh Jackson. Suns fans had known for while prior to the lottery that those were the three players that were supposedly head and shoulders above everyone else, and drafting fourth overall made the ability to select any one of them extremely unlikely.
Although rumors bearing the notion that at least one of those three may be available to Phoenix came and went, overall there was only minimal hope that the Suns would have the opportunity to select any one of those players, making it a perceived foregone conclusion that Jayson Tatum, De’Aaron Fox, and Johnathan Issac were the best players available at four for Phoenix to choose from.
Then, almost without warning, over the final eighteen hours before the draft a door that had only previously been cracked open slightly was beginning to widen, and when the name Josh Jackson was finally announced by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, fans in the Valley of the Suns were ecstatic for several reasons: