The Value of the Phoenix Suns’ 6th overall pick

Talk is cheap and trades are fun. But while the 6th overall pick gives Phoenix Suns fans plenty to talk about, it’ll take a gamble from another team to truly make a trade fun.

If the Phoenix Suns had the first overall pick in the draft, they could essentially hold the league for ransom and acquire just about any single player in the league they wanted for it (within reason).

Literally every team could be a suitor, and James Jones would field calls for all 29 of his compatriot general managers as they test to see how far he is willing to go.

If the Phoenix Suns had the second overall pick, his list of potential trade suitors would shrink as the number of teams willing to trade a significant asset for a rookie point guard would not nearly as high as the willingness to add a superstar big, but Jones still could have made a pretty hefty move, should he have so chosen.

The potential trade packages for the third overall pick would have shrunk that much more, and, well, you get the picture.

Most years, the trade value of the sixth overall pick holds very little value.

2018 was an aberration, whereas unfortunately 2019 has returned the draft to the general trend, with the Phoenix Suns stuck in a spot that is envious of none.

I recently wrote about the players who have gone sixth overall in recent seasons when I did a shallow dive into the topic prior to the draft.

Marcus Smart, Willie Cauley-Stein, Buddy Hield, Jonathan Issac, and Mohamed Bamba were all taken at six since 2014, all names that Suns fans would be interested to have on the roster at one time or another, with only Hield as a potential game-changer some day.

Of course on occasion a very good player is found (Chris Kaman, Brandon Roy, and Damian Lillard have all been drafted at six within the last 20 or so years), but while it can  happen, no team can ever bank that it will  happen, thus the value of the pick remains low.

To further illustrate just how poor the value of this pick is to even the Suns, while James Jones did say on lottery night that he loved the team’s options, the prevailing public discussion surrounding it has been it’s trade value and not it’s pick value.

Ryan McDonough constantly discussed the number of collegiate and international options at the spots that he had to pick from (even if he whiffed on making the franchise the most dominate young team in a decade).

Yet now, the discussion isn’t “who are they going to choose between these two or three really good players,” it’s “what can they get for their pick?”

The problem with that public narrative is that everyone around the league knows what the pick’s general value is worth. They know just as well as we do that the chances of a star player being available there are very slim.

The value in that pick then must be invented by finding unique situations in which a team has a reasonable desire to acquire it.

Phoenix Suns

Can they trade it and it alone for Anthony Davis?

No.

But there are other opportunities out there.

For instance, they can try to work with a team to move back in the draft.

To do that though, Jones would essentially give his current away if they only move back a couple of slots.

For example, let’s say that Atlanta calls. As I have written in the past, the Hawks have the 8th and 10th picks. The value of their picks alone are even lower than Phoenix’s, and to the Suns, adding two  rookies does not make a whole lot of sense. In this case the Suns would be getting quantity over quality.

Yes, they could then use those two picks as pieces of another trade, but only  if it happens at least several days before the draft. Once the draft starts, the chances for something decent in return evaporate like water in the desert.

They could technically flip their current pick for an individual player, but that team must be desperate to move a contract and that player must then hold value to Phoenix.

Would the Washington Wizards take the the Suns’ pick for John Wall one-for-one?

If they wouldn’t they are foolish.

But would that work for the Suns, a team desperate for a legitimate point guard?

Absolutely not. Not only is he coming off of a serious injury, but his contract is the albatross of albatrosses and he is supposedly a cancer in the locker room.

Would the Dallas Mavericks take the sixth overall pick for Luka Doncic?

Absolutely not – even though he is the exact player Phoenix wishes they had at point.

Unfortunately too in these unique times the Suns are in, in which they want to continue to build smartly but also want to win, the number of teams who would actually see legitimate value in the sixth pick over what they currently have, and the kinds of players that Phoenix would actually have value, because a mathematical-style equation in which the answer – while it may be variable – remains very small.

Who would they likely trade the pick for one-for-one? Those who are still under their rookie contract yet no longer in the future plans of their current team.

Although there are some options there, it might take a basketball miracle to pull it off.

For a team purportedly preferring to trade their pick than keep it, picking sixth in this draft is about as bad as it gets making it extraordinarily difficult to net the the kind of player(s) (with the the right star potential, at the right age, and with the right contract) they want to get.

In my opinion they should act as if the player that they are going to assume that the draft options at number six will not develop into the kind of player that they want long term and do everything they can to find a taker for it (obviously within reason).

The time to risk another offseason on wasted draft picks has long since past. It is better to find a player currently in the league who’s skills and potential are already well known, than hope that the ticket they hold is a winner.

Hopefully some team out there is a gambler, and James Jones and the Phoenix Suns can sell them on that possible outcome.