The Phoenix Suns have one of the worst reputations in the NBA currently for trading away future draft assets, and their next available first-round draft pick in 2032 also can't be used because of time previously spent in the second apron.
Pick frozen because of past financial decisions
Owner Mat Ishbia certainly lives in the moment, which is why he keeps recycling players and using picks as they become available to him to improve the roster around Devin Booker. Spending their 2033 first-round pick on Miles Bridges? Reckless.
He also spent a ridiculous amount of money to get Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to The Valley, and in doing so, spent time in the second apron. The punishment for doing this is having their first in 2032 frozen, and it came at the worst possible time for the franchise.
They can't trade the pick, as the front office would surely love to do, while they have had some underrated success in using these picks in the last number of years. Oso Ighodaro has become a rotation player and was a second-rounder, while Rasheer Fleming and Khaman Maluach (despite being taken by the Houston Rockets) look like they will work out.
Ryan Dunn was a whiff, and we don't know what the team has yet with Koa Peat. Then there is the one that got away in Toumani Camara, a decision so haunting that it actually changed the Suns' stance on these youngsters and led to them taking and developing some of the players they have today.
Suns won't have Devin Booker to bail them out in 2032
As hard as it is to envision now, the Suns won't have Booker to paper over these glaring cracks by the time 2032 rolls around. He will be 36 years old, and although he may still be in The Valley, his prime will have come and gone, so the organization will be trying to build the next version of this team.
Having a first-round pick would go a long way to helping, while the following year's selection has already been spent on that aforementioned Bridges trade.
If the Suns have somehow won a championship before that point, then all will be forgiven. It's more likely that Ishbia is either public enemy number one for how he has run the franchise or no longer in town at all.
His heart was in the right place spending whatever it took in order to build a winner during Booker's prime. But it backfired terribly, and the Suns will be paying for that decision well into the next decade.
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