Brandon Knight should remain a Sun at least for now

Trade Knight for an albatross contract

This option is the second most plausible as it may be possible for the Suns to acquire a player with only two years remaining on his contract, a year shorter than Knight’s three. However, it would seem unlikely that a team would accept a longer contract unless the year-to-year salaries of the contract they are sending back to Phoenix is significantly larger.

The other problem is that as of this season there aren’t any players whose contracts are both significantly more in year-to-year salary than Knight’s is, and is up in the summer 2019.

In doing some research to try to find an example of a trade that could work right away, I figured that hypothetically, depending on what the Cleveland Cavaliers do next  offseason (or more specifically what LeBron James does), the Cavs may be willing to make the switch in 2018 with one year remaining on Kevin Love’s contract and two remaining on Knight’s. The Cavs would immediately get cap relief while still acquiring a young-ish player in return (Knight would still only be 26-years-old), while the Suns would open up salary cap space a year sooner.

For the season of 2018-19 Phoenix would be desperately cap-locked with Love’s massive contract on the books (just over $24M, about $10M more than Knight), preventing them from making any significant moves next offseason – but the possible cap relief in the summer of 2019 would be exceptional.

There is one caveat though: Love has a player option for the 2019-20 season over just north of $25.5M which if he accepted would screw the Suns for that season, completely negating the purpose of trading Knight in the first place.

Thus, for the Suns to even consider such a trade they would need to receive some assurance that Love fully intends on opting out so he could sign a max contract at the age of 29 with the team of his choice.

Of course the Suns too could acquire two  players this offseason who equal a significant cost upgrade over two years instead of Knight’s three, although it would seem extremely unlikely that they would even consider such a trade as they would now have two roster spots filled with players who serve no future purpose, and might end up forcing them to cut a younger – and cheaper – player who would then not fit on the roster any longer.

In the end, while this could  still be a decent plan for the right price, this offseason there just doesn’t seem to be a player available to make such a trade. Plus, even if someone were to become available either this summer or next, once again, that kind of a trade would prevent the Suns from making a significant move where they take on the contract(s) of players who would help them long-term.