Suns immediately waive player they landed in Kevin Durant blockbuster trade

The Kevin Durant era is now officially over for the Phoenix Suns - and although this has been known for some time - Sunday was the first day that the trade to the Houston Rockets could be made official. That it morphed into the biggest trade in NBA history - with a whopping seven teams included in the eventual deal - was more of a surprise.

The front office in Phoenix have managed in the last number of weeks to remake the roster around Devin Booker, and they deserve a lot of credit for that. Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, Khaman Maluach, Rasheer Fleming and Koby Brea ended up being quite the haul for a soon to be 37-year-old, and fans in The Valley are showing more excitement for this version of the team than any Durant iteration.

Suns immediately waived additional player added to Durant deal.

As Shams Charania of ESPN was breaking down just what each of the seven teams in the trade received, another name popped up for the Suns. That of Atlanta Hawks two-way player, Daeqwon Plowden. The 26-year-old appearing six times for the Hawks last season - but according to the always reliable Duane Rankin of The Arizona Republic - Plowden will be let go straight away.

This makes sense for a ton of reasons - and hard as it may be to believe - the Suns suddenly have some depth across their roster. Last season they surely could have talked themselves into giving Plowden a shot - he's a shooting guard who shot an absurd 52.9 percent on 2.8 efforts from beyond the arc each game - but that is no longer the case.

They have neither the roster space, the financial flexibility or the desire to use up a two-way deal of their own to keep Plowden around. Not when they have three incoming rookies in Maluach, Fleming and Brea, plus sophomores Ryan Dunn and Oso Ighodaro. Point guard Collin Gillespie was a two-way success story last season, and was rightly brought back into the fold again for 2025-26.

Shooting guard has also become the position on the court where the team have become deepest, with Booker, Green, Bradley Beal, Grayson Allen and Royce O'Neale all capable of playing in that spot. There are surely other trades still to be made in Phoenix this offseason - Allen and O'Neale in particular make sense to move on from now - which means Plowden was never going to get a shot.

Really though this speaks to the nice job General Manager Brian Gregory is doing in his first months on the job. It was a concern to see owner Mat Ishbia give the role to an unproven Michigan State guy, but Gregory is off to a promising start. The Suns have gone from taking a flyer on Bol Bol in back-to-back seasons to actively waiving players who could have filled out their bench. A promising sign.