Suns must avoid franchise-altering mistake if they stumble early

Perhaps the only negative of having Kevin Durant on your team is the constant noise surrounding him. His name is frequently brought up in trade rumors, while his happiness in a given situation is always a topic of debate.

That might be a bit unfair to a player that’s only requested one trade, but his bristly nature and tendency to ignore rumors gives a lot of room to media personalities and fans who use his name to generate clicks. Durant has played for the Phoenix Suns for a little over a year, but the team has already experienced the full force of that phenomenon, especially earlier this summer.

Although those talks have cooled for the time being, they're bound to start up again if the Suns get off to a slow start or when the trade deadline approaches. 

Part of the reason why the Suns are being subjected to these rumors is because the idea of trading KD isn’t without merit. The Suns were swept in the first round and the approaching cap penalties of the new CBA means an expensive roster isn’t tenable long term.

KD isn’t the face of the franchise like Devin Booker is, nor does he have a no-trade clause like Bradley Beal. That makes him the most likely star to be traded if the Suns want to make a big change.

But that doesn't mean the Suns should make that kind of change this season.

Teams rarely if ever get equal value back for a superstar, and you don’t have to look further than the other end of the trade that brought Durant to the Suns. The Suns’ package of Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, and multiple first-round picks was considered fair value at the time, but "The Twins’" performance in Brooklyn was underwhelming. 

The real prize was the draft picks the Suns gave up, but there’s no guarantee those picks will end up in the lottery. The same goes for any picks the Suns would get for KD. Additionally, with the Suns in win-now mode, prioritizing and keeping picks doesn't help them much.

On the other hand, if the Suns trade any picks they receive to try and land another star, they’d be extremely limited in what they could bring back.

Due to the new CBA, if the Suns were to get multiple players for KD they wouldn’t then be able to turn around and add up to those contracts in an outgoing trade. So unless they're getting a player on a massive contract in return, they'd be out of luck when trying to package picks for a star.

Trading KD would mean that the Suns are committing to Beal being their second star, and surrounding him and Booker with role players. That's probably not a recipe for success.

The only way a KD trade would work in that scenario is if the Suns trade him for several young players who could develop into stars down the road.

That type of trade was what got the rumor mill churning earlier this summer, when Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the Houston Rockets were stockpiling assets to make a run at KD. 

The Rockets have plenty of high-potential young players along with picks they can deal to the Suns, but that’s still something Phoenix should avoid for the moment. The Suns spent years developing young players like Bridges, Johnson, and Deandre Ayton, hoping that they’d improve enough to bring them to the promised land.

They didn't quite get there, but that young core was still massively successful and isn’t easy to replicate. It doesn't make sense to go back to that strategy when the Suns already did it with better young players, and with Booker now in his prime.

A Durant trade should be viewed only as a last resort if the Suns continue to come up short, especially because they can revisit that possibility at a later date with little damage to his trade value. He’s old, yes, but unless he suffers a career-altering injury, Durant should continue playing at this level for a few more years.

Teams that are looking to make the jump will continue valuing him just as the Suns did, and they’ll always have that escape hatch if things don’t work out. For now, they need to give this revamped roster a chance. Durant still gives them the best chance to win in the present, and until they've exhausted their options in building around him, he needs to remain in the Valley.