Release or Trade Alan Williams, Tyler Ulis, and Shaq Harrison
These are three players that you can’t help but love. They are all high-energy, high-hustle glue guys with huge hearts. They’re the players that make good teams great.
However they’re not the right fit for the new era.
Alan Williams has the best case to stay. He’s a local kid with a great story, but more than that he can really play. He adds a ton of value on the court. The problem is that he doesn’t fit the scheme and at $5.5M he costs more than he is worth. He can only really guard big men on defense. On offense, he has never even attempted a 3 in the NBA so he has no ability to stretch the floor. That means he’s only going to play when Ayton isn’t and when you have Tyson Chandler on the team, that means he’s not going to play.
I Love the Big Sauce, but he’ll be just fine in New York City, where I believe he will end up.
Tyler Ulis might be Booker’s best friend, but he’s never going to see the court in Phoenix anymore. Ulis can’t guard anyone but point guards and even then it’s questionable. Similar to Payton, he can’t hit a 3 which severely limits his fit on this team. Maybe there’s a fit as a third wheel, but there’s no reason to torture Devin’s friend with no playing time. Might as well set him free to find a better fit.
Shaq has all of the same flaws. No need to beat the dead horse here. Just let them all go and free up the $8M in cap space from their combined salaries. If anyone will give the Suns a 2nd round pick, even better, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
Next: Who is the odd-man out in Phoenix?
If the Suns took this advice they’d have a current depth chart of:
Knight/Okobo
Booker/Daniels
Bridges/Warren/Dudley
Jackson/Bender/Chriss
Ayton/Chandler
This is a team weak at point guard and power forward. Which brings us to Part 2 of this three part series, that will continue on Monday, June 25.