Eric Bledsoe – 3 starts
As mentioned in the intro, when the 2017-18 season began, Eric Bledsoe was the team’s starting point guard, a role he had held since 2013. Bledsoe had been a quite catch for the Suns, growing in skill over his 4+ seasons in Phoenix, developing into a true star at point guard, particularly as of 2016-17, developing into a legitimate scoring threat, breaking the 40-point barrier for the first three times in his career.
When this season began though, the Suns were dominated in two of their first three outings setting an NBA record for worst loss on opening night. But while the entire team looked absolutely awful as a whole overall, Bledsoe looked particularly bad in the two losses.
Initially nobody pointed a finger at him as either being the cause of the bad play or as having given up – especially since their second loss, (this one at the hands of Lonzo Ball and the Los Angeles Lakers), he did score 28 points, but when he tweeted out his request to leave, suddenly his poor play was placed squarely into focus.
In his final game as a Sun, Bledsoe scored only 4 points on four shots, dished out only 4 assists, and provided almost absolutely nothing to the team in a second 40+ point blowout loss. The quiet performance looked bad on the surface, but came under intense criticism on his way out..