Star Point Guards don’t win championships
I touched on this earlier. and if you have read my work here on Valley of the Suns (or watched my weekly show Valley of the Suns Live! on Periscope, Twitter, and YouTube, Monday’s at 6pm AZ), then you know that I have long argued that point guards do not win titles, wings do, and to a lesser extent in today’s NBA (although still bigger than point guards), bigs.
Think back to all of the great “traditional” point guards in history. Consider how many of them never won a title. Steph Curry is the most recent example of a point guard who led a team to a championship, although even he in many respects is no longer a point guard of a traditional sense given that not only have his assist number dwindled over the past few years, the Golden State Warriors’ assists leader is a power forward.
My personal preference is not even for the Suns to target a point guard in the draft (although I trust McDonough’s gut in selecting the best available, which if that is a point guard, do it), and would rather the focus be on one of the potentially dominating power forward/centers – a position much harder to come by once a player is in the league due to the lack of such star players as teams rarely give up on them unless they are breaking down (see Amar’e Stoudemire in 2010).
Giving up on a draft pick that could very likely be one of those generational – and thus extremely valuable – bigs is too much of a risk in my mind, and either trading the Suns’ pick or acquiring Kemba and improving in the standings would very likely destroy such currently decent odds.
Even though Kemba would be a significant upgrade over both Tyler Ulis and Isiah Canaan, he would not be the missing piece to win a title. Yes, Phoenix would be better than they are, and they would have a little money to play with (although, at least this offseason, do you believe that any of the potentially acquirable unrestricted free agents make the difference if added to the duo of Kemba and Booker?) But when you compare a presumably intact roster that now includes Kemba, where do you believe it is placed in the echelon of talented Western Conference teams?
More would have to be done to the roster, which even in our wildest dreams, such big moves to acquire superstars is incredibly difficult to pull off, especially in a competitive market.