Trade & FA Ideas & Discussion 3: #TheTimeline

[Bogyo]

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Blessing in disguise? I mean if we could have him for the QO, or sign him to a 5-6mio per year contract I'd be estatic.
I'm pretty sure he will develop more (like RoLo and the rest of the late-blooming big guys), plus he is already a good rim protector.
We tell him to rimrun, rebound and protect the rim for the 15-25 minutes he is on court, and we have a pretty servicable C for our "timeline" on a great contract.

[weslo1812]

Its crazy with today's day and age and how players operate that sooo many fell for the news of Blake having scheduled a meeting with the suns and essentially set thier heart already on the Suns landing him lol I'd guess it's probably because many fans are so desperate for the team to win again that they immediately cling and attatch to anything they think would help the team be successful. But when you attatch to something so quickly without waiting it out a bit to really find out what's going on, then you often end up getting dissapointed like many on here are.

Anyways I do think sticking with the young guys was a good idea, see what Bledsoe can do this year, and what JJ is gonna bring this year and how he, Booker and Bledsoe and the other young guy end up meshing. Let these young guys figure it out. Being patient and developing what we got is really the best approach right now. GS isn't going anywhere anytime soon, SA, although I don't think they'll get another title they will still be a very competive team and they always play great defense. Then you have the Rockets and thier explosive offense, Grizzlies, and possibly Thunder. It's gonna be tough in the west, especially for a young and largely inexperienced team like us. But at the same time even though we may only win 7-10 games more this next season playing against the very competitive west with more than just 2 solid teams is only gonna be benificial for our guys when they get things figured out in a couple years. That's also assuming there is good coaching and development along the way too. Right now I see this team being a season maybe 2 from playoffs and 4 maybe 5 to being potential title contenders. And that's really being short and generous with my timeline honestly.

On another note, the big thing or step I wanna see this team start to take, is a consistency in defensive effort and excuting the fundamentals and basics right as well as always hustling and giving full effort. That's 1 thing you can always control, is your effort!!! And that's one thing that Jackson should bring is that kinda mentality. Hopefully he can bring that shot in the arm on that side of the ball this team needs. And he's not afraid to be vocal and hold people accountable either which is good. But if this team ever wants to get to the point of potentially being great, we are gonna have to become at least a good defensive team. We can't do things like we did back in the Nash years or it'll be another 10 years full of playoff appearances but no finals appearances and no championship or championships. If you go and look at the teams that have won titles over the years... a constant theme of just about every single one of them is they were a top notch defensive team.Weve GOT to establish a consistent effort and presence on that side of the ballin order to ever one day have hopes of winning a title.

[Frank Lee]

Beasley
Shannon brown
Dragic
Dudley
Frye
Gortat
Wes Johnson
Kendal marshal
Morri
Scola
Tucker

Vs

Our current roster

Which team would you rather have?

perhaps a better comparison would be to teams like Minnesota, Utah, Denver, Atlanta... teams who have been on a very similar rebuild journey and dare I say TIMELINE ...

I was looking for an old article of all the young and up comer GMs that were hired around the same time as McDoughnut.... couldn't locate it.

[jcsunsfan]

Or Jackson, Chriss, Bender, Knight, 2 PHX picks for LBJ+ filler if LBJ says he won't be back for sure. CLE gets value and builds around Kyrie. LeBron gets to play with the PG he wants to play with.

Bledsoe/Booker/Dudley/LBJ/Chandler. Good role players/defenders around LBJ. We could also pick up some other players via trade and/or signing. LBJs wife gets to Scottsdale/PV and is only an hour from Burbank or John Wayne via his private jet.

Not even interested in that. It would be LeBrons worst team ever.


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[ImNotMcDiSwear]

I should also note that this should spell the end of McD. No wins, no FAs. As much as I've liked some of his moves, it may be time for him to move on. We've been in this holding pattern too long. Literally no progress other than picks at this point. We win less games last year than the year he joined. He can still pull it out this summer, but it's not looking good.

So we end up not making any of these big FA offers in order to stick with the youth movement that everyone wanted and now, having gotten what we wanted, we start calling for the GM's head?

Kinda sucks. Going After the big names and only be used to bring some extra moneys for the fa's. We Need to get something done. Its time to win some Games. To be attractive for some fa's. What happend to the Franchise

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So Blake Griffin appears to have completely played the Suns, using Phoenix as a leverage point to force the Clippers to offer him a max, five-year deal (he was never coming to Phoenix) which he has received.

Pretty sure we knew what was happening as we were doing it. You gotta play nice with the players and agents in this league. It also doesn't hurt sometimes to have your Plan A look (going young) look like your Plan B. I don't think we'll get a lot for our vets if we're able to move them, but if everyone knew that it was very clearly our plan from the start to toss the vets overboard, we'd be pretty nearly over a barrel, I think.

[BobbieL]

Suns- kantar / singler
Thunder- chandler/ knight

Suns get to dump salary, and get a solid young

Thunder get a center who can work PERFECT WITH ADAMS! Can also get some Pg help for
When Westbrook is on the bench .

That is a pretty good trade actually. It does save the Suns some cash over three years. Kanter rolls off in 2019 like Chandler but Singler is much cheaper in year 3 than Knight would be. I think it does make the Thunder a better team as Kanter really was ineffective when I saw himm and Singler was just a bench player.

I also totally agree that the way the West shaped out with GSW bringing everybody back, Rockets now adding Tucker to that deep mix, OKC doing things (they will get Rudy Gay or Millsap - I have a feeling, Presti has one more move to get RW on board longer than this year) - the Suns were wise to fore-go the Millsap and trust #TheTimeline

When can Beverly and Lou Williams be traded - might want to call the Clippers about Bledsoe for those two guys. Or Bledsoe for Wesley Johnson and Lou Williams if the Suns want to move cap space. Maybe that is selling low on Bledsoe but I am guessing with Paul gone, Clippers would do for an upgrade at PG - but again, that frees up cap space if they don't see Bledsoe longer term

And for taking on a contract - the DeMarre Carroll contract is appealing if you can get a good asset from the RAptors. As its over in two years. I just don't like what the Rockets have to offer for Anderson - but they would have to include Capela. And he has one year left on his deal. So for me CArroll and Poetl make more sense - especially if you renounce Len

Wes Matthews is out there but what else do the Mavericks have to give. If they wanted to move Matthews and Dennis Smith for Bledsoe - would do that deal in a heartbeat. But Mavs are on record as saying they want to build around Noel, Barnes and Smith

[Sunsdeuce]

I like how the Suns are in a youth movement (again) but I don't like how it got to this point (again).

Ryan McDonough's continuous "Star" strike out is why we are back at this point again.

Ryan went after some big names like Blake and Millsap but they shunned us so it forced Ryan McDonough to go back to going young (again). This sounds exactly like the LMA ordeal all over again (is Ryan not learning his lessons?). This just shows he is not sticking to a clear plan. I think we all can agree we all just want a plan. This back and forward nonsense from Ryan is quite disturbing because it shows confusion, lack of organization, lack of a true plan.

I am to the point I have accepted that this team will not be good until new ownership/FO happens. I mean it is what it is, we have a bad FO. This is what happens to bad organizations. Going on a decade of no winning, no playoffs, and no signs of a plan to fix it.

Anyway, Ryan has had FOUR years to devise a plan and here we are today still getting shunned by "star" free agents. Ryan is the guy who is bragging about trading for a disgruntled superstar (and he has had chances to do so) but here we are with nothing to show for with all the assets he has.

Booker and Josh Jackson seem to be the only sure pieces to be here for the next 4 years. All the other players are iffy at best. Len has been a failure (but that's mostly on Earl Watsons bad coaching), Bender was a huge disappointment, Warren has been so up and down, don't know what to think, Chriss had a decent if not good year but nothing to make anyone believe he has star point (yet). Chandler is a year or 2 from retirement, Bledsoe is just a poor floor general and is not a good "PG", decent player but not PG, plus his contract will be up soon, knight has been a colossal failure of a trade. So while Ryan has done a few decent things, he has yet to come through on his boasts and has yet to display a clear plan.

Ryan please get a plan and stick to it. Don't have a plan for a a day then change it the next day then change it the next day then change it the next day. That's not how successful operations work.

[WeekapaugGroove]

Williams making 6% of the salary cap would really hamper us going forward.

It would be the undoing of this franchise

I get that its a very small number and i certainly wouldn't lose sleep over williams make 5 mil per year. At least his best skill rebounding is something this team sorely needs.

But I do caution that even these little deals add up and can matter. 5 mil can be the difference between being able to offer a star player a max in free agency or having to attach an asset to get rid of a guy to get there. They would have been in that situation this year if they would have made an offer to griffin.

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[matt131]

@wojespn: Sources: Rudy Gay is leaving OKC visit today, sides still searching for financial path to deal. Sign and trade with Kings remains difficult.


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[Sunsdeuce]

I should also note that this should spell the end of McD. No wins, no FAs. As much as I've liked some of his moves, it may be time for him to move on. We've been in this holding pattern too long. Literally no progress other than picks at this point. We win less games last year than the year he joined. He can still pull it out this summer, but it's not looking good.

So we end up not making any of these big FA offers in order to stick with the youth movement that everyone wanted and now, having gotten what we wanted, we start calling for the GM's head?

Kinda sucks. Going After the big names and only be used to bring some extra moneys for the fa's. We Need to get something done. Its time to win some Games. To be attractive for some fa's. What happend to the Franchise

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So Blake Griffin appears to have completely played the Suns, using Phoenix as a leverage point to force the Clippers to offer him a max, five-year deal (he was never coming to Phoenix) which he has received.

Pretty sure we knew what was happening as we were doing it. You gotta play nice with the players and agents in this league. It also doesn't hurt sometimes to have your Plan A look (going young) look like your Plan B. I don't think we'll get a lot for our vets if we're able to move them, but if everyone knew that it was very clearly our plan from the start to toss the vets overboard, we'd be pretty nearly over a barrel, I think.

Good post but just too many assumptions you are making which doesn't back up your argument well.

[WeekapaugGroove]

Im a little confused about the "missing out on star FAs" angst I see. What's the solution? Should they stop taking meetings with these guys so they don't appear to be missing out? I would say in all their free agent star pursuits (bron, lma, griffin) they were severe underdogs going into the process. Hell if you want to take an optimistic view at least they get some of those meetings, half the franchises in the league don't. Phoenix isn't a miami or la type destination but its squarely in that second teir.

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[ImNotMcDiSwear]

I like how the Suns are in a youth movement (again) but I don't like how it got to this point (again).

Ryan McDonough's continuous "Star" strike out is why we are back at this point again.

Ryan went after some big names like Blake and Millsap but they shunned us so it forced Ryan McDonough to go back to going young (again). This sounds exactly like the LMA ordeal all over again (is Ryan not learning his lessons?). This just shows he is not sticking to a clear plan. I think we all can agree we all just want a plan. This back and forward nonsense from Ryan is quite disturbing because it shows confusion, lack of organization, lack of a true plan.

I am to the point I have accepted that this team will not be good until new ownership/FO happens. I mean it is what it is, we have a bad FO. This is what happens to bad organizations. Going on a decade of no winning, no playoffs, and no signs of a plan to fix it.

Anyway, Ryan has had FOUR years to devise a plan and here we are today still getting shunned by "star" free agents. Ryan is the guy who is bragging about trading for a disgruntled superstar (and he has had chances to do so) but here we are with nothing to show for with all the assets he has.

Booker and Josh Jackson seem to be the only sure pieces to be here for the next 4 years. All the other players are iffy at best. Len has been a failure (but that's mostly on Earl Watsons bad coaching), Bender was a huge disappointment, Warren has been so up and down, don't know what to think, Chriss had a decent if not good year but nothing to make anyone believe he has star point (yet). Chandler is a year or 2 from retirement, Bledsoe is just a poor floor general and is not a good "PG", decent player but not PG, plus his contract will be up soon, knight has been a colossal failure of a trade. So while Ryan has done a few decent things, he has yet to come through on his boasts and has yet to display a clear plan.

Ryan please get a plan and stick to it. Don't have a plan for a a day then change it the next day then change it the next day then change it the next day. That's not how successful operations work.

I've been like a broken record in Suns fan land throughout the McD tenure. I've repeatedly stated that if you examine the actions of the FO rather than the words, you realize that the plan is actually consistent, and that the plan has been - the entire time - to rebuild through the draft. I think we knew that when we signed IT, we would have to deal Dragic or IT or both unless the trio transformed the league. In other words, I think we wanted to force ourselves to make moves. We thought we were acquiring long-term value in Knight and moving - at worst - sideways with the LAL/MIAMIA pick swap.

I think we traded Marcus Morris not with the idea that we would use that cap space to sign LMA; rather, I think the LMA pursuit was an excuse to deal Marcus for next-to-nothing, with the idea that this would "force" us to trade Markieff. It nearly backfired, but we ended up getting the #13 for that. Had we not signed the Morris twins and IT, we would have had none of the assets with which we eventually traded for Marquese.

I think we acquired Bled with one eye on the trade market from the start. I think we acquired Chandler believing that the contract would be valuable in trade after a year or two (and with the intention that it would compromise Len's value, as it has). I don't think we expect the center position to fall into such ill repute.

Even going back to the "failed" Lebron chase - if we were really angling to win now, we would have signed Channing Frye. He and Dragic formed the core of that 48 win season. We did not re-sign Channing because despite the extra wins, we did not think his contract would be an asset. All of this is consistent.

The only teams that have acquired more draft assets than us during Ryan's tenure are Philly and Boston. Certainly no WC team has gone so far in this direction, and it's been this way from the start.

THE ISSUE HERE is that fans - and especially fans and sportswriters focused on multiple sports - take the narratives that are fed to them and come to the quickest conclusions possible. It's just like politics or other competitive endeavors: you don't tell your competition the truth. You try to get people to believe things that are not true. Whether that's to sell tickets to fans or players to other teams. LOOK AT THE RESULTS. Does everyone really think that having all of Ulis-Booker-Reed-Jackson-Warren-DJJ-Bender-Chriss-Williams-Len occurred by happenstance? That we weren't actually angling to rebuild with youth, that it just happened? Come on.

Extend McD.

[ImNotMcDiSwear]

Spoiler:

I should also note that this should spell the end of McD. No wins, no FAs. As much as I've liked some of his moves, it may be time for him to move on. We've been in this holding pattern too long. Literally no progress other than picks at this point. We win less games last year than the year he joined. He can still pull it out this summer, but it's not looking good.

So we end up not making any of these big FA offers in order to stick with the youth movement that everyone wanted and now, having gotten what we wanted, we start calling for the GM's head?

Kinda sucks. Going After the big names and only be used to bring some extra moneys for the fa's. We Need to get something done. Its time to win some Games. To be attractive for some fa's. What happend to the Franchise

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Pretty sure we knew what was happening as we were doing it. You gotta play nice with the players and agents in this league. It also doesn't hurt sometimes to have your Plan A look (going young) look like your Plan B. I don't think we'll get a lot for our vets if we're able to move them, but if everyone knew that it was very clearly our plan from the start to toss the vets overboard, we'd be pretty nearly over a barrel, I think.

Good post but just too many assumptions you are making which doesn't back up your argument well.

It would be one thing if I hadn't been singing the same song for so many years, but I have been. My assumptions align with what were once predictions.

To be clear, I don't think every element was planned in advance. I think Babby and Hornacek were more focused on short-term results and that their influence probably caused us to hedge against the all-youth movement with some win-now moves. But overall, I'm just "assuming" that McD isn't always telling the truth when he's on the radio. Outlandish, I know.

[sunsfever68]

How do people not understand McD knows what he's doing but shieeeeett rolls downhill and everything stupid originates from Sarver.

Sarver is pushing McD to win now bc playoff revenue lines his pockets more and offsets the financial loss he's been operating on the last few season as Suns owner.


The Timeline (as we're calling it) is the only plan, and Griffin would have been maybe the only signing (if healthy) that would've made sense for us.

McD probably wanted this all along but he's getting pressured to make moves to appease Sarver when in reality sarver just needs to extend McD so he's relaxed and can make his moves.

He's done a good job in the draft recently, and his only real blemish was the Knight trade.

I am an advocate for McD contract extension, jury is out on Watson although it seems like players like him, and I'd love for a new owner but obviously that's not happening ha.

For the first time in a long time I'm really really excited about the future of the Suns.

We will be contenders in 2020-2027 if we are able to keep our core of Booker/Jackson (assuming he's good)/Chriss/Bender (assuming he develops) +1-2 more good pieces through draft upcoming (PG/C)

[Frank Lee]

Top tier Free Agents place a high priority on joining competitive play off bound teams. We have not been able to offer that in quite a while.

I get the impression Sarver is content not losing money by keeping the payroll at the minimum and thus waiting yet another year before they go out and drop some massive cash. This is a business still, and considering McDo has essentially thrown away close to $130 million on Chandler, Dudley and Knight with minimal ROI, ($200 mill if you include Bledsoe )....perhaps Bobby is a little more cautious with his blank checks, as well as re-upping McDo.

May be a fire sale order has been issued to try to recapture some of the value that was once praised.

[Sunsfan12]

Any reason we can't get in on the Otto Porter sweepstakes? Fits timeline, style of play and he is really really good.

[ImNotMcDiSwear]

How do people not understand McD knows what he's doing but shieeeeett rolls downhill and everything stupid originates from Sarver.

Sarver is pushing McD to win now bc playoff revenue lines his pockets more and offsets the financial loss he's been operating on the last few season as Suns owner.

I also think this narrative with Sarver is tired and contradicted by the evidence. We sold draft picks during D'Antoni's tenure, and never since. I think Sarver intends to own this team for the rest of his life, so that's the timeline he's working on. Hell we've already endured the pain of a true rebuild; what's the point of cutting it short and not aiming to the exclusion of all other goals for a championship?

[NTB]

Any reason we can't get in on the Otto Porter sweepstakes? Fits timeline, style of play and he is really really good.

You wanna give max to Otto? Also Wizards said they'll match whatever he gets.

[Sunsdeuce]

Suns used to be the destination of Choice in the 90s for quality/star free agents. What changed?

[ImNotMcDiSwear]

Suns used to be the destination of Choice in the 90s for quality/star free agents. What changed?

Things change, dude. Things will continue to change. That is the way of things in general.