Four veteran point guards John Gambadoro says the Phoenix Suns might target

Darren Collison

Darren Collison is Indiana’s other point guard, their starter and the better option of the two – although with one significant drawback.

A better offensive player all the way around than Joseph, averaging double-digits in scoring every season of his career, he is a very  good 3-point shooter hitting over 40.0% in each of the last four years including a career-high and league-leading 46.8% on 3.0 attempts per game two seasons ago.

Collison’s shooting alone would make the Suns better as they are in desperate need of additional shooting (especially with the potential loss of Troy Daniels) making the offense far more potent than they have been since the end of the Steve Nash era.

What’s more is that he is a very good ball-handler, having not averaged more than 2.6 turn overs per-36min over the last eight seasons.

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Although he is not necessarily an assists-guru, he did average 6.0 per game last season with a career-average of 5.0 which places him right in the range of Eric Bledsoe (4.8) and Goran Dragic (4.8).

Here is the drawback though: he will be 32-years old at the start of the 2019-20 season.

Much like the discussion of Phoenix acquiring Chris Paul, if Collison were younger  he might be the perfect point guard to target. But they are not getting the younger version. They are getting the perfect point guard for a team looking to win now and who believes they are only a solid PG away from potentially going over the top.

He is not the perfect PG for a team who wants to build for the future with a core designed to remain together for the long run.

A positive to his age is that (having never earned more than $10 million a year – which he did in each of the least two seasons), one could expect that he would be signed at a very comfortable rate which would not prevent further upgrades in other areas.

Phoenix would absolutely improve next year with Collison at the helm, although with the understanding that he is not the future.

If that is what the Suns want to do, fine, but at this point I think that I would prefer Collison as a second point guard rather than a primary starter as that means that the team has a younger/better point guard on the roster, and Collison running the second unit would make Phoenix’s offense far  more potent.