It is time to trade him
I hate to call anyone a bust this early in their career, and certainly Chriss has the athleticism to eventually become a decent player in this league if he only cleared his mind of all it’s obvious obstacles. The problem is, I wonder if he has what it takes between the ears to reach that point, and I would hate for the Suns to hold onto him for too long and risk that never happening.
At this point there will still be plenty of teams around the league that would love to add Chriss to their roster to see if they can find a way to mold him into a competent and complete player.
Phoenix Suns
There is a bonus in attempting to trade him now for the Suns too in that he is still under his rookie contract for another two seasons after 2017-18 so a team would have plenty of time to find out if they can develop him without having to overpay.
The Suns are still looking for a star player to add to their core, and right now a trade is their best bet to do so, especially since this offseason the free agency market doesn’t look like it’ll be all that appealing to the Suns.
Should a trade materialize for Phoenix to find a star piece, they should not hesitate in including Chriss in a package while his youth and contract still offers good value.
If they wait too long, Phoenix could have a situation that the Chicago Bulls faced almost ten years ago:
Selecting 4th overall in 2006, the Chicago Bulls drafted Tyrus Thomas, a 6’9″ hyper-athletic power forward/center our of Louisiana State University, built in the same mold as Marquese Chriss.
From day one, he was a flop.
(Check out this scouting report from 2009, three years into his career. The Bulls believed that Thomas would be better than LaMarcus Aldridge. If you read the discussion of his intangibles and replaced his name with Marquese Chriss’, you’d think that you were reading a summary about Chriss today.)
While Thomas had all of the athletic tools in the world, his game never evolved out of an alley-oop savant, making him all but a fun end of the bench player that could never be a core piece of a team.
Midway through his fourth underwhelming season he was finally traded, but the initial return was nothing special. The Bulls received back Acie Law, who played in only 12 games for Chicago, and Ronald Murray, who dressed in only 29, although they too got a 2014 first round pick that would end up being Jusuf Nurkic, who the Bulls traded on draft day for a package that included Doug McDermott.
Next: Alex Len Will Eventually be Traded for a First Round Pick
The Phoenix Suns need to not wait that long. The necessity of pulling off this current rebuild and doing it right is too important to hang onto Chriss with the hopes that he eventually figures it out. They need to target a player that they know is a capable star and use Chriss as part of the package to make it happen, hopefully in doing so holding on to a first round pick that can be used in a later trade.
I do not see Chriss as ever being a centerpiece of a team as his mind and game just do not seem to be that of a star player. Therefore, the Suns need to trade Chriss as quickly as possible while his value is still as high as it can be, and find a piece that is better suited for this franchise in the long run.