The Phoenix Suns should overpay…and sign Kevin Durant
By Adam Maynes
How the Phoenix Suns could pull it off
General Manager James Jones can do everything he can now to fill out the roster as cheaply as possible to allow him the cap space necessary to add a player with Durant’s eventual cap earning.
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By trading the two larger contracts of Tyler Johnson and T.J. Warren, then by filling out the rest of the roster with cheaper options this offseason (that means no Ricky Rubio as I wrote about here, and signing players more along the lines of him and him) the roster can easily be constructed on the cheap (somewhere Robert Sarver is thinking “yeah?? Yeah?!?”) bringing together a bench eerily similar to that of the Golden State Warriors now, then later placing Durant in a position to slip right in like the perfect puzzle piece as he did when he first moved to California.
Then in signing with the Suns, Durant wouldn’t be joining a team with absolutely nothing on the roster either – something that could potentially be the case when signing with any number of teams around the league.
He would of course join up with Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton, two already strong figures on a team hoping to begin a rise to the top of the Western Conference this season, and with an additional year of seasoning while he recuperates, his later addition would instantly vault them to the top of the Association, precisely the very place he prefers to be.
Unlike some teams who would be acquiring their first star piece by signing Durant, if he is going to miss the entire upcoming season, Phoenix will have made it worth his while by placing an up-and-coming team around him, one that did not have significant pressure to compete for a title immediately and could wait more patiently while he worked through his recovery.