The Phoenix Suns are a playoff team. However, they still need some help. These are five trades James Jones should make as soon as possible.
I absolutely love writing these words: the Phoenix Suns are a playoff team.
Yeah, yeah. They haven’t made it just yet, but the Western Conference is not nearly as strong as many projected it would be this season, the team is much improved over the past nine years, and that current roster is taking full advantage of both improbable variables.
However, General manager James Jones should not sit on his laurels looking at the roster he constructed this offseason with the perspective of it being “good enough.”
It’s not. The core still needs some help – and it is up to the general manager to find it.
I recently broke down the roster to figure out exactly where management should find help.
The obvious position is power forward.
Whereas I once believed that Dario Saric could be the standard bearer at the position, I was wrong, and I fully admit that.
Would he be a great backup? Absolutely. But a long-term solution at starter, he is not.
So it is with that perspective that I look at the combination of the power forward position as the team’s greatest weakness as well as the fact that Devin Booker needs another star next to him not only to push him but to take some pressure off, that I look at these potential trades.
Who will be traded though, is the question.
Ricky Rubio and Deandre Ayton are’t going anywhere, so the core will guarantee include the three of them.
I would prefer to keep Kelly Oubre Jr. on the roster, but sometimes it takes talent to acquire talent, so I am open to including him in deals.
In the post where I breakdown the roster, I do discuss that I hope and wish for Oubre to be a star player, and the perfect compliment at small forward to Devin Booker.
But as he has the consistent flaw of being a below average 3-point shooter with no other major specific strengths that make him an untouchable, he must be considered in any deal.
Regardless, I am looking at these trades as a means of supplementing an already solid roster with talent that will not only take the Suns out of the current eight spot in the West (which when the playoffs begin would be a death knell as they would face the Los Angeles Lakers), and guide them at least into the Conference Semifinals.
Therefore without further ado: five post-black Friday trades James Jones should make as soon as possible.