Although the 2019-2020 season is over for the Phoenix Suns, it isn’t too long until a different season rolls around for them: namely, the draft season.
What a whirlwind of a week huh? After rooting for our Suns to win game after game, and then improbably becoming short-term Bucks and Nets fans, the Phoenix Suns season is over. It still boggles my mind as to how the Orlando experience unfolded. The Devin Booker takeovers, the improved bench play, all here and then go in a Damian Lillard sized blaze. Yes, for the 2019-2020 NBA season the Phoenix Suns are done. However, the next phase of the season is rapidly closing upon us. That’s right, the NBA draft is just around the corner.
This draft class may be light on star end talent; fortunately, the Phoenix Suns are doing pretty well in that department.
The NBA draft is just over two months away (on October 16th to be exact) but the draft lottery is much sooner, a mere week away (August 20th). Despite the bittersweet ending, the Suns are sitting in a pretty good place, with the winning momentum that comes with a strong culture and good leadership combined with a weak enough overall record to have some hope of scoring a high pick.
I used Tankathon to simulate the Suns draft lottery odds, and rather then just do it once, I did it 10 times to get a better feel for the Suns median draft range. You may be excited to know that the Suns finished first overall one time and third overall another (or you may not be excited, based on how you feel about the quality of the incoming class).
The other eight times, the Suns fell between 10th and 11th on the board (six times in 10th, twice in 11th). Using these numbers gives a decent sense of the placement for Phoenix and hence the prospects that should still be available for them at that selection.
At Valley of the Suns, the draft content will begin in earnest to introduce you to the prospects that are available, and who would be good fits for Phoenix. With some pretty well-defined areas of need as well as potential internal solutions to their problems, the Suns could go in a few interesting directions with this draft. Only time will tell, and the first tick of that clock will start next week.