With Grizzlies shopping 4th pick and Chandler Parsons, the Suns should pounce
In the superteam-dominated NBA, multiple superstars win championships. If you don’t have enough star players, you won’t get very far. Elite players are the most valuable commodities in the league because there are very few of them available, so drafting them is the Phoenix Suns’ best bet at stocking up on them.
The Phoenix Suns need to bring in star players to surround Devin Booker – a future star himself.
That is why the Suns should be 100% interested in trading for Memphis’ 4th pick, even if it means taking Chandler Parsons’ $49.2M contract.
With the 4th pick, one of Luka Doncic, Marvin Bagley III, or Jaren Jackson Jr. will be available (presuming the Suns do select Deandre Ayton first), as well as Trae Young, Michael Porter Jr., and Mohamed Bamba.
If the Suns acquired the4th overall pick, they would have the opportunity to pick up a second potential star player in addition to who they draft first. They then have insurance with a second top five pick, if whoever is drafted first does poorly.
So what might a trade look like?
Memphis is in need of young players, which is why they value the fourth pick very highly. However, with this proposed trade, they get three young players while dumping a contract that is taking up so much of their cap space. Memphis must want to compete now if they are shopping the fourth pick, and trading Parsons gives them the flexibility to upgrade their roster in free agency this summer.
Parsons is paid about $24M in each of the next two years and would unilaterally take up all of the Suns’ cap space for this offseason, making it hard to add additional veteran players. This likely delays the rebuild somewhat as the Suns badly need veterans to help this team win next year.
General Manager Ryan McDonough also want to pursue top free agents in July of 2019 (when Jared Dudley‘s and Tyson Chandler‘s contracts end) but would have another season of Parsons’ contract on the books taking up too much cap space to do so.
Instead of going after veteran role players this offseason and big time free agents next offseason, the Suns would have to wait until next season to create cap space to sign more veteran role players, and would have to wait until the summer of 2020 (when Brandon Knight‘s contract would be gone too) to go after big time free agents.
Basically the Suns would have to delay bigtime offseason plans for another year, along with trading Warren and Chriss to get the fourth draft pick from Memphis.
However, the MOST important thing in the NBA is having star players. The only current star for the Phoenix Suns is Devin Booker. Josh Jackson could become a star but their is a decent chance he’ll just be a really awesome role player.
The Suns could pick up two potential future stars by keeping the first pick and trading for the fourth.
The Suns will put themselves in a better position for free agency in 2020 by trading for the fourth pick. With two or three stars (Booker, Jackson, 1st pick, 4th pick) Phoenix could attract and afford star players then.
The core of the team moving forward would look like Booker, Jackson, Ayton, and Bagley/Jackson/Doncic. That’s potentially four star players, all without having to dip into free agency.
If McDonough and Robert Sarver made this gamble, who would they draft?