The Phoenix Suns and the escape from basketball purgatory

[Mori Chu]

I'm sorry that my post upset some folks or took the wind out of your sails. I am as excited and happy as anyone about our great season so far. I am just trying to be realistic and look at what our ceiling can be with this roster. I think our ceiling is a play-in team. We're not better than OKC, DEN, SAS, LAL, HOU, or MIN, and imo a few other teams like the Warriors and Clippers are better once they get on their feet. So we're probably a plucky first-round exit or play-in exit. That's better than being a horrible bottom-of-the-standings team, absolutely! And I truly enjoy watching this team play.

But how could they get better? We don't have picks, assets, or cap space to improve. And if we can't get any better, what is the point? I don't mind being a medium-good team if we have the ability to slowly grow into a really-good team. Do we have that?

If you think this team is great and is the future of the Suns, can you describe to me how we get to contention? Is the hope that some FA or trade opens up and we can flip for a guy who levels us up to contention? What kind of player would that be? A premium PF? What assets would we give up to get him? Jalen Green? Grayson?

[Split T]

I think it’s all about player development and striking at the right time. You gotta hope Williams/Green/Dunn/Maluach/Fleming/Brea develop above their expectations…either so we can use them or trade them. Then I think you gotta keep competing…think the bubble suns run leading to CP3 wanting to come. If we play above expectations, we might be desirable to a star.

Sounds like you graduated from the Jerry Colangelo School of Rebuilding with a degree in Remaining Competitive.

With no control of our own 1st round pick until 2032 I am absolutely on that train.

[Superbone]

The entire thread was about how do we best improve going forward. I think the only complaint was some slight roster imbalance and a potentiality limited ceiling due to not owning our own picks etc, whilst commenting that the current team was fun to watch. I listed a wide range of options including internal development. We get one game above .500 and some of you start chirping as if I said burn It down during peak show time lakers

I got you. But others came into the thread and want to burn it down. That's like, their opinion, man. </The Dude> I disagree and want to enjoy what we have right now. That's my opinion. Everybody is allowed to give their opinions and we're also allowed to agree or disagree.

[Superbone]

Maybe some of you should become Kings fans.

[ShelC]

The Kings are definitely in purgatory with just a collection of dudes. Trading for Lavine never made sense and they blew whatever hope they had with Fox and Sabonis. Another meddling owner, which seems to be a theme with bad teams.

My biggest question mark is Sabonis. Incredibly skilled but tough to pair in the froncourt, kind of a tweener as a 4/5. Wonder where he lands.

[Split T]

If you think this team is great and is the future of the Suns, can you describe to me how we get to contention? Is the hope that some FA or trade opens up and we can flip for a guy who levels us up to contention? What kind of player would that be? A premium PF? What assets would we give up to get him? Jalen Green? Grayson?

I don’t know if apply here as I wouldn’t say I think this team is great and the future of the suns, but the pathway is developing the young talent and then adding to that at the right moment.

I get the desire to blow it up and try to rebuild like OKC, Houston, Utah, etc, but my question would be can you describe how exactly you’d do that?

I know you gave some ideas earlier, but trading say Grayson Allen for a late 1st isn’t really going to do much for us imo. Making the team worse on purpose only makes sense if you control your own picks.

This is, I assume, why Danimal made the thread. We’re in a tough spot where going all in doesn’t make much sense because we aren’t a contender right now and don’t have the assets to make a major splash to become one. We also don’t have a clear path to blowing it up…hence the sort of purgatory we find ourselves in.


I do think we need to take a long-term look for this team. We can’t be trying to win the championship this year, but making the playoffs(the real ones, not just the play-in), seems like a good goal. We should definitely avoid any moves that sacrifice the future for the now. We are going to have to build this slowly and carefully.

I say we see how this year goes…hopefully we sneak into the playoffs and reevaluate in the summer. We will have more flexibility to make trades now that we aren’t in the apron.

From my research(and it really takes some research lol), we have the following 1sts:

2027 worst of CLE/MIN/UTA
2028(worst of Brooklyn, Philly, Washington, or our own)
2030(Worst of Washington, Memphis, or our own)
2032 and all future firsts after this.

2026 goes to Memphis
2027 goes to Houston
2029 goes to Houston
2031 goes to Utah

[Carno]

As the eternal optimist, I'm going to challenge this prevailing opinion that the Suns are in purgatory. If the Suns were like, for example, the Kings, who have a lot of plateaued older talent that won't move the needle, I might agree. I like Keegan Murray, but I don't think they he's a top 10 talent that they can ride.

The Suns, on the other hand, have a top 10 level talent that could potentially contend for MVP (Booker got votes in 2021-22). A lot of people will argue this point, and that's fine, but I content that it's within the realm of possibility. Mark Williams is a solid, YOUNG center that probably has a greater impact than say Ayton in 2021-22. Jalen Green is still super young and turn into a high level 2nd to Book. They have solid role players in Allen, O'Neale, Brooks, Dunn, and Gillespie. They have youth that could get better in Maluach, Fleming, Dunn (maybe Oso too). Fleming and Dunn could develop into a high-level role players. Maluach could turn into a star. The path exists for this current team to get better and potentially compete.

Will it happen? Hard to say. I can see why the skeptics don't believe it, but with very few other options, isn't it worth trying before just blowing everything up to no real benefit?

[ShelC]

Purgatory would've been giving KD an extension and/or trading for Butler last year.

[wpmiller42]

Maybe some of you should become Kings fans.

I don't know what I would give up, but having Sabonis as a starting 4 with someone like Mark Williams at the 5 is legit. And, we could slide him to the 5 if we need to. I really like him.

[Superbone]

Maybe some of you should become Kings fans.

I don't know what I would give up, but having Sabonis as a starting 4 with someone like Mark Williams at the 5 is legit. And, we could slide him to the 5 if we need to. I really like him.

I was thinking about that too. If he would work at the 4 as it seems like he's been a 5 his entire career.

[Carno]

Sabonis was a 4 in Indiana where Myles Turner played the 5. With both players able to shoot 3s, on paper you'd think that would have worked great, but it didn't. No idea why, but that was why Indiana traded him.

[ShelC]

I think Sabonis is too slow to be a 4 and not big enough or good enough defensively to be a 5.

[Carno]

I agree with that.

[O_Gardino]

On offense, Sabonis can play 3-5. On defense, he's a liability. Great rebounder, though. I think Williams is at his best being a help-defender, and we definitely don't want Sabonis to be an on-ball defender. I love Sabonis' game, but it's just so hard to hide bad defenders in this era.

[Danimal]

Maybe some of you should become Kings fans.

Good. I bet the under on them

[JJ Slim]

As the eternal optimist, I'm going to challenge this prevailing opinion that the Suns are in purgatory. If the Suns were like, for example, the Kings, who have a lot of plateaued older talent that won't move the needle, I might agree. I like Keegan Murray, but I don't think they he's a top 10 talent that they can ride.

The Suns, on the other hand, have a top 10 level talent that could potentially contend for MVP (Booker got votes in 2021-22). A lot of people will argue this point, and that's fine, but I content that it's within the realm of possibility. Mark Williams is a solid, YOUNG center that probably has a greater impact than say Ayton in 2021-22. Jalen Green is still super young and turn into a high level 2nd to Book. They have solid role players in Allen, O'Neale, Brooks, Dunn, and Gillespie. They have youth that could get better in Maluach, Fleming, Dunn (maybe Oso too). Fleming and Dunn could develop into a high-level role players. Maluach could turn into a star. The path exists for this current team to get better and potentially compete.

Will it happen? Hard to say. I can see why the skeptics don't believe it, but with very few other options, isn't it worth trying before just blowing everything up to no real benefit?

Exactly! We have a group that plays hard and that like each other. They are fun to watch and are young. Let's find out what we've got before we trade them all away. Baby steps my friends, baby steps.

[Mori Chu]

I have always liked Sabonis. He has significant flaws, but he is an excellent rebounder, good passer, and good scorer. I don't know that he would be a very good fit for this team, though. He is not a good 3-point shooter, and if we played him at the 4 with Williams / Richards / Oso at the 5, that's two guys now who can't shoot. A big strength of ours has been that we have four deadly 3-point shooters on the floor almost all the time. Sabonis would mess that up. So I don't think I would give up any substantial assets to get him. I could maybe picture trading Jalen Green for him, but I am not actually sure it would make us much better.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/pl ... ndo01.html

[The Bobster]

Sabonis shot .396 on 3's over the last 3 years (before getting off to a bad start this year). I agree about his rebounding, passing and scoring (over the last 5 years - 12.8 reb, 6.8 ast, 19.4 pts), and the trade off is he's not a defensive presence. But at 6'10", 240 lbs he'd fix a lot of those matchup problems the Suns seem to run across at forward.

Sabonis ($42.3 million) for Green ($33.6 million) and O'Neale ($10.1 million) would seem the logical deal, but I'd rather trade Dillion ($21.1 million) if it brought back a starter-quality point guard along with Sabonis (and Schroeder and Westbrook don't really hold much interest for me).

[Split T]

Sabonis has a decent percentage from 3, but people don’t guard him…especially in the playoffs. He also can’t defend the perimeter…I think it would be a bit of a clunky fit, but we’d be an elite rebounding team haha. The offense would find a way to work as Sabonis/Booker would be pretty lethal…but what’s the cost? Sacramento isn’t doing that trade without us including Maluach…is that worth it? That risks putting us into the purgatory we talked about. If the defense isn’t tenable, what’s our way out?

[Wally_West]

I think once upon a time, Sabonis made sense for this team, but I feel that ship has sailed.