Suns may have just helped Bucks keep Giannis Antetokounmpo long-term

The Phoenix Suns made only one move at the deadline, and it was a cost saving decision to move on from both Nick Richards and Nigel-Hayes Davis.

Richards has settled in Chicago with the Bulls, while Hayes-Davis is rightfully headed back to Europe to be one of the best players over there. He's reportedly getting paid $10 million for it too.

Bucks landing Ousmane Dieng after trade with Suns a master stroke

The Suns took back both Cole Anthony and Amir Coffey from the Milwaukee Bucks in that aforementioned trade deadline move, both coming across from the Milwaukee Bucks.

Anthony won't ever appear for the Suns, although Coffey has started life in The Valley by making a couple of shots and slotting into the back end of the rotation.

But the Bucks definitely won this trade if you look at the bigger picture, because they created a pair of roster spots in getting rid of Anthony and Coffey.

Turning that into Ousmane Dieng and Cam Thomas already looks to have paid off brilliantly, with fans in Milwaukee loving what they saw from Dieng the other night versus the Oklahoma City Thunder.

He is immediately an upgrade over Coffey, while Thomas (despite his streaky shooting) is also clearly a better player to have on their roster than Anthony.

All of the talk about Giannis leaving at the deadline turned out to be wrong, and the Bucks have quietly won five of their six games heading into the All-Star break.

If you have tuned into any of their games recently, they no longer feel like a group marching towards the inevitable split from Antetokounmpo.

Instead they are playing loose and free, which has not been the case for the entire campaign up to that point, with Giannis himself getting involved on the sidelines.

Will this be enough to keep him in Milwaukee? We won't know until the summer, although to this point he has never wanted to be the bad guy in coming out and saying he wants to leave the organization.

Perhaps these two additions, plus whatever they can make happen in the offseason, will be enough to convince him to stick around for a while yet. It's not like there are many appealing alternatives right now anyway.

So yes the Suns needed to save money and were smart to make the trade that they did. But it could also have helped the opponent who beat them to a championship in 2021 hold onto their best ever player.