Re-Drafting Ryan McDonough’s five drafts
By Branden Wyss
With Ryan McDonough getting an extension after four years with the Suns, we come to know what to expect with this deal.
McDonough has had his share of ups and downs as a General Manager. However, even McDonough’s bad moves (drafting Alex Len and trading for and and signing Brandon Knight, for example) really aren’t the worst things a general manager has power to do.
There have been far worse general managers in the NBA, and while the Suns are nowhere close to competing for a championship, the Suns are definitely heading in the right direction. The downs, as mentioned above, are nowhere near as important as some of the ups.
The trade for Bledsoe early in his tenure gave us a starting point guard for years, who at some point will most likely be flipped for a valuable asset. The drafting of Devin Booker, Josh Jackson, and Marquesse Chriss seems to give them a potential three way group of potential All-Stars to build around.
But what if things were different?
There are a good portion of Suns fans who looking back say they would do things a little differently if they were in charge.
We can go back to the 2013 draft for example and say we wish we took Giannis Antetokounmpo. Selecting him though would have been a level of genius unseen as we all know no team would have taken him in the top five.
So, with a truly realistic mindset, let’s see how we could have shaked up the roster via the draft.
In these hypothetical scenarios we will simply take into account how the team would have looked in each year as we change the players we drafted. We will not go into detail and change future draft positions based on increased win totals that these players would bring. These are hypothetical scenarios for who would have been the best selection for Ryan McDonough at his draft positions.
There will be another article covering realistic free agency/trade situations that could have been made in Ryan McDonough’s first four years with the team.