Bill Simmons of The Ringer ripped the Phoenix Suns on Twitter for their last year of moves. However, like many outsiders, he chose to entirely ignore context.
It is very easy to rip Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver for the poor performance of the franchise since he purchased the team from Jerry Colangelo 15 years ago.
Sarver has been cheap, he has hired or allowed the hiring of some of the absolute worst basketball minds available at a number of positions, and he has hidden from the public eye during times of turmoil, refusing to take public credit for the team’s failures.
And while it is easy to paint the franchise in a negative light for 15 years of failure, it is unfair to rip the James Jones administration’s execution of their tear down of what Ryan McDonough had built – or failed to build.
Ryan McDonough’s plan was to build through the draft, a not-so-novel idea that would have worked well if only he had drafted the right players.
Instead McDonough selected the wrong player time-and-time again, only taking the absolute best player in the draft once, Devin Booker, who he happened to take 13th overall – had Phoenix been drafting anywhere else before 13, odds are McDonough doesn’t select Book.
Based on that plan of a slow rebuild, McDonough decided not to make any major free agent acquisitions or make any blockbuster trades that would disrupt the core youth or mess with cap space by acquiring a large contract comparatively.
Case and point: the potential missed opportunity of trading the pick that ended up being Josh Jackson for point guard Kyrie Irving.
In a Tweet Storm on July 3, Bill Simmons began with “Relegate the Suns and Hornets”, meaning, stick them in a corner and forget about them – they are that bad at what they do.
He then listed all of the moves the team has made over the last year – with no explanation.
His primary tweet was:
Y
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) July 3, 2019
I
K
E
S
Then in three subsequent tweets he illustrated two moves he forgot about and then a number of the poor picks of the McDonough era.
While it is definitely difficult to add context to tweets, it is not impossible.
He also never further ripped on the Charlotte Hornets beyond the “relegate” tweet.
However, let us quickly add that context here and realize the potential brilliance of the James Jones era to date.