The Phoenix Suns are off to a better start than most predicted this season, and franchise cornerstone Devin Booker has been central to that success. The 29-year-old looking happy and comfortable with the new roster around him, while head coach Jordan Ott continues to quietly thrive.
Kevin O'Connor had Pierre Andresen on his podcast on Yahoo! Sports recently, and the idea of possibly trading Booker at some point this season came up. If for no other reason than to take advantage of Booker's hot start, and the fact this rebuild is going to come up the desires of their best player to win a championship eventually.
Proposed Detroit Pistons package from duo is laughable.
The Detroit Pistons quickly emerged as the perfect trade partner, and with good reason. Booker is from Michigan, and just like Kevin Durant going to the Houston Rockets, the Pistons would be a contender if they could get a deal done. The haul put forward of Tobias Harris, Jaden Ivey and a host of first round picks however, is astonishingly bad.
Obviously Cade Cunningham wouldn't be in the deal, but where is Ausar Thompson? Jalen Duren maybe? Not even Isaiah Stewart? Paul Reed anybody? This trade proposal assumes that General Manager Brian Gregory is as bad at his job as Nico Harrison was with the Dallas Mavericks, and through his first few months on the job, that has not been the case.
Harris is a fine addition if you're trying to win a championship, while Ivey still has some upside that continues to decrease as time goes on. The first rounders are the key here, but even they don't make sense for a very clear reason. If the Pistons have Cunningham and Booker, there's every chance most of those picks will be outside of the top 15-20 for the rest of the decade.
The Suns need to find ways to add young talent through the draft each season, but there are more creative ways than giving up on their franchise cornerstone. We're not even suggesting that a tough conversation does not need to be had down the road, because Booker deserves the chance to win it all and right now it is unclear if Phoenix will get back to relevancy quickly enough.
But handing him to Detroit on a platter is not the play either, even if getting him out of the conference would be the smarter way to play this. If Booker himself asked for a deal to be done, then that's a different story. But if you're actually serious about prising Booker away from The Valley, you're going to have to do a lot better than this.