The Phoenix Suns have two very specific problems that they likely will not be able to fix this season: the need of a strong leader and point guard, and a consistent secondary scorer to take more pressure off of Devin Booker.
We all, in the Valley of the Suns, recall that the Suns were in hot pursuit of Kyrie Irving, the very epitome of a strong leader at point guard, as well as a strong scorer that could have taken a considerable amount of pressure off of Booker. Reports were that the Cleveland Cavaliers wanted from the Suns the 4th overall pick in the draft, which would have amounted to Josh Jackson, with Eric Bledsoe and some other pieces as well.
Of course, the Suns demurred and declined to make the trade, allowing Boston to swoop in and make the trade for the Irving, leaving the Suns with their pick, as well as a growingly disgruntled point guard who would eventually force his way out.
But now that we see how strong the Boston Celtics are behind their newfound star point guard and the combination of Josh Jackson’s slow start as well as the Bledsoe trade demand, the Phoenix Suns should have pulled the trigger.
The reasons are many, but I’ll offer my top few:
The Suns would have saved themselves from a number of unnecessary events
Hindsight is 20/20, I understand that. So while the Suns were apparently blindsided by the Eric Bledsoe trade demand, they had to have known that there was growing discontent with Bledsoe, making the necessity of trading him fairly strong. Moving him in a package that would have netted the Suns a star point guard capable of doing what he is doing in Boston would have been beautiful.
Yes, the Suns would have lost out on Josh Jackson (as well as the Milwaukee first round pick and depending on the total package demand by the Cavaliers, the Miami first round pick in 2018 as well), but in the short term, that wouldn’t have hurt the Suns. Not only has Jackson been far from the impact player that the team was hoping they were getting immediately out of the gates, but there is no guarantee that the future Milwaukee and Miami picks would have allowed the Suns to acquire absolutely anything close to a player of Irving’s stature, and thus, not necessarily anything special.
Regardless, the Suns would have had a star player right out of the gate to place next to Booker in the offense, and while sometime down the line (in 4-5 years) when the potential draft picks could be reaching their prime, Phoenix could be well into a lengthy Western Conference dominance with Kyrie, Booker, and whomever else they eventually acquired.
Speaking of who they may have acquired…
Kyrie wouldn’t have been the Suns’ only acquisition
Many people around the league are beginning to see Devin Booker as the kind of player that other star players would want to join up with and play alongside. Adding Kyrie Irving to that mix might have allowed Suns General Manager to pull off another trade right away and acquire an additional star, or potentially add someone through free agency this coming offseason.
How do we know that another player would have joined up with the Booker and Irving backcourt?
Because the Suns would have been winning.
While it is highly unlikely that adding Irving to the Suns this season makes them as great as the Celtics are right now, let’s not ignore the fact that the Suns would have been better. Not only would they have the contributions of Kyrie, but Josh Jackson’s slow start would have been mitigated, and the play of Kyrie at point guard would have helped the offense to expand and the play of both Dragan Bender and Marquese Chriss might actually be improved as they would have had a strong leader at point to both guide them, but also get them the ball in the right spot.
Irving demanded his trade from Cleveland at the end of July. Had the Suns been active and made their deal imediately, they too could have capitalized on the earliness of the trade by using the rest of the summer to make additional moves. At this point Gordon Kayward had already signed with the Celtics, doing so about a week before Irving demanded his trade. However, having Kyrie may have encouraged Blake Griffin to actually take that meeting with the Suns, or other players such as Serge Ibaka, Pau Gasol, Danilo Galinari, Paul Millsap, and others.
Yes the Suns would have had to move Jared Dudley and/or Tyson Chandler, but each of those conceivably could be pulled off fairly easily if the Suns are able to take on other contracts, or offer up picks that with the added talent would be much lower in the draft anyway.
And believe me, the Suns would have been winning…
The Phoenix Suns would be GOOD
Well, at least presumably. Unfortunately Earl Watson would likely still be the Suns’ Head Coach if Phoenix trades for Kyrie and acquires any other talent, the Suns likely begin to win at at least a decent clip, and therefore they are stuck with a coach who would have still been the worst coach in the NBA.
Phoenix would at worst, I would argue, be at .500 at this moment in the season, and likely several games ahead of .500. The team would have a point guard who knows how to lead a team forward, and whose offense would have opened up so much for the rest of the young Suns on the roster.
While the team without Kyrie struggles to find any rhythm, with him, especially when seeing what he is doing in Boston, the team would undoubtedly be winning this season. And doesn’t winning cure all ills?
If the Suns don’t have to fire Watson (as much as they needed to), that alone would have alleviated the franchise from some of the dark cloud that has hung over them so far this season. Had they been able to trade Bledsoe (the fourth top-talent player in the past five years to demand a trade from Phoenix) and not worry about his eventual demand, that dark cloud turns into nothing more than a Phoenix haze.
Then had they been winning, the discussion of whether or not Devin Booker would eventually demand a trade is alleviated. In fact, the discussion about whether or not the team is in a funk is entirely eliminated, and in fact the conversation is replaced with the conversation of “can this team be a championship contender in the next two years?”
So let’s assume that the Suns are winning and looking good. Let’s say that if nothing else, the backcourt of Irving and Booker propels the Suns into playoff contention. How much fun would this team be to watch right now? How many more people would be at the games? Might they actually sell them out now?
There would be one question handing over the Suns, even with all this newfound pleasantness…
Would he have stayed?
It was well documented that Kyrie Irving will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2018-19 season, and the question of whether or not he would bolt the Suns leaving them high and dry is an entirely valid and fearful situation.
Yet there is one variable that could have easily have brought the Suns to the position of keeping him in a Phoenix uniform that during the dark times has made Suns fans feel like that would never happen: the Suns would have been winning, and if the right talent was put around both Kyrie and Booker to really make this team a competitive one, they would have been a very good team. Kyrie wanted to be the focus of a franchise (this would have happened in Phoenix) and to win (that likely would have happened presuming that the Suns did whatever they needed to keep Kyrie happy.
While there would be no guarantee that he could have been tempted by offers from other teams around the league, one would have to presume that if the Suns are winning, that he is the focal point, that he is treated well, and that the franchise is doing everything possible to build around him, Kyrie Irving would have been comfortable enough to stay here and finish what he started.
Granted this is all speculation, and no one would have foreseen how freak Kyrie Irving would have made the Gordon Hayward-less Boston Celtics. As I said at the top, hindsight is 20/20. It just feels like there is no reason why the Suns couldn’t have seen tat this was all possible, and that the team would have taken a significant step forward in their development without really gutting the roster with any significant.
Next: Trade Scenarios for Tyson Chandler
Hopefully the slow and steady approach does eventually win the race and the young Suns all develop into players that can truly be difference makers on this roster, they are able to find a point guard (or develop an offense that does not need a true point guard), and they are on the upswing of their development and are only a year away from developing a truly competitive team with mostly the roster they currently have.
But you cannot deny: what we see in Boston could have been (at least to some degree) seen in Phoenix. And there is no denying how great that would have been.