The Phoenix Suns finally got the stretch-four they have been looking for for the past five seasons. Unfortunately, he came five seasons too late.
When power forward Ryan Anderson was traded to the New Orleans Hornets in 2012, he was the perfect player for the Phoenix Suns: a stretch-four who was a relentless outside shooter, draining outside shots at a 40% clip.
By 2014-15, when rumors begun to percolate around the now Pelicans’ attempts to trade him, Phoenix was a regularly discussed potential destination for Anderson – as was Kevin Love, although that’s a different story altogether.
That season, with Markieff Morris playing the four, Phoenix snuck up on the league and won 48 games – although they missed the playoffs by a hair.
A player of Anderson’s ilk, someone who could stretch the court, was unselfish and not a cancer in the locker room, might have put Phoenix over the top and not only into the playoffs in 2015, but for several years in the future, totally changing the direction of the franchise for many years to come.
(Yes, that likely would have meant that the Suns never would have ended up with Devin Booker, Josh Jackson, or Deandre Ayton, but let’s face it – if the Phoenix Suns had been a winning team all these years and a regular playoff participant, we wouldn’t know any better – nor would we honestly care all that much.)
However now that the Suns have finally got their guy, it is too little too late, and the cost might be too much to bear.
Of course Ryan Anderson is better than Marquese Chriss, so if the swap was that straight forward, then maybe the trade would have been universally celebrated from the instant it was announced.
However, not only did Phoenix have to give up their only true starting point guard (at this moment) in Brandon Knight to make the trade happen, but Anderson’s contract is approximately $6 million more than Knight both this season and next – and the Suns had supposedly been setting themselves up to be players in the 2019 free agency market.
Sure, if Suns General Manager Ryan McDonough has any sort of guarantee that he will be able to move Anderson this season (or in the 2019 offseason) in a move that brings Phoenix a star and having Anderson’s expiring contract on the books makes such a move easier to pull off, then once again, the trade would be universally celebrated.
There is a problem though: there is no such guarantee.
In the meantime, as good of a 3-point shooter as Ryan Anderson still is (he shot 38/6% for Houston last season on 5.1 attempts per game), and as better a player he is than Marquese Chriss (and even Dragan Bender at this stage in their careers), Anderson’s statistics have faded each of the last two seasons, with no inclination that he is suddenly going to become a game-changer once again, this time for the Phoenix Suns.
Phoenix is also now running without a true, starting caliber, point guard, meaning the offense will almost assuredly struggle once again – a repeat of the biggest issue the team faced last season.
Had McDonough been able to acquire Ryan Anderson in 2013, the acquisition would have been huge.
Today though, there are just too many red flags and too many reasons to question the purpose of the trade, and the makeup of the roster in 2018-19 – specifically how it will affect Devin Booker’s continued rise to stardom, and Deandre Ayton’s development in the NBA.