Young player Suns gave away is coming back to haunt them

The Phoenix Suns are currently rolling through their preseason slate of games at a nice pace, with head coach Mike Budenholzer having the group playing with a flow offensively that was sorely lacking last season under Frank Vogel. Devin Booker might be resting his sore ankle, but 3-point attempts are way up, and that is good news for this team.

The place the organization finds itself in right now is a direct result of two seismic moves they made last offseason. That was moving out Chris Paul for Bradley Beal - who finally looks like he could be back to his best - and ditching Deandre Ayton for Jusuf Nurkic and Grayson Allen. Both moves that paid off as the team won 49 games last season.

But there's a sting in the tail of that second move for the Suns.

Nobody cared at the time, but second round pick Toumani Camara was also sent to the Portland Trail Blazers alongside Ayton. He'd had a couple of nice showings in Summer League, but holding up the deal in order to keep him in The Valley would have been ridiculous. Not that that was ever on the table, and Camara was moved on before ever playing a competitive game for the Suns.

Then he hit the ground running in Portland, and right away he looked like everything the team who drafted him were missing last season. There was defensive pop and an intensity when he was on the court for the lottery bound Trail Blazers that the Suns desperately needed as they stumbled through the regular season.

With a year of action now under his belt - starting 49-of-70 games and playing just shy of 25 minutes per night - Camara has looked really good in preseason. It does help that the Belgian has been given the opportunities to play through his mistakes and put up numbers for a bad team, but he already looks like he could help a playoff outfit in a real way.

That Herb Jones comparison might sound optimistic, but that's exactly how Camara has helped the Trail Blazers since landing with them. Offensively he continues to get better, while the defensive end is were he has quickly made a name for himself. In fact there are shades of Mikal Bridges to his game, which is what made giving up on him immediately so painful for Suns fans.

The only saving grace here is the introduction of Ryan Dunn - the Suns' first round pick this summer - who has been everything the franchise needs and more to this point. He's rightly getting compared to Bridges himself, with Bradley Beal going so far as to say that Dunn reminds him of Camara.

He would know, having spent time with both in Phoenix so far, albeit not very long in the case of both. Had the Suns not hit on both Dunn and second rounder Oso Ighodaro - as it looks like they have early on here - then this would have been a disaster. You could revisit the Ayton for Nurkic and Allen trade and now include Camara and say the Suns actually lost it.

This is especially true given the obvious limitations of Nurkic - who somehow played the most regular season games of any Sun last season at 76 - although Allen did have a career year. Camara is going to continue to get better as well, and whether it's in Portland or elsewhere, he is going to one day have a moment in the postseason. The only hope is that Dunn eclipses him.