2020 Season/Offseason (FA/Trade) Speculation - the Season Resumes

[nevetsov]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing - TJ was made of glass his last couple of seasons here, which was why we couldn't get the return for him that we should have.

Also, we dumped him to get Rubio, which I think worked out pretty well.

[bwgood77]

He's been playing mostly PF the last couple of years. I don't know about hindsight...the trade was ridiculed the moment it happened by most everyone except those who simply wanted him gone.

[Revived]

The culture that the Suns have is just absolutely awful. That’s why many players don’t want to be here.

We need to pray collectively that some kind of dirt comes out on Sarver being sexist or racist or something and then hopefully Silver can force him to sell the team to help ensure competitiveness.

The man is just a loser. I didn’t even realize that the Suns sold their G league team until just now. What a joke to do that during a time in which more and more analytics should the importance of having a G league team and utilizing it properly.

He’s clearly not wealthy enough to be a successful owner, I don’t understand why he doesn’t just sell the team. He can probably make triple or more $$ on his initial investment.

It's worth over $1.6 billion. His net worth a year ago was still reported at $400 million. I think he bought the team for about that amount but had to leverage it with borrowing (of course he started a bank and is President of one so he probably has a nice interest rate)...and then he has minority owners of course.

I think he's gotten better post late 2000s though personally...now of course I want to blame McD for the player relations part....which it absolutely was his fault there but of course Sarver is the one who hired him....seemed like a good hire at the time though. Sarver did reportedly want Earl Watson though which was terrible.

I didn’t mind Sarver during the McD era because it at least seemed he didn’t meddle. Of course McD was an awful hire so he deserves blame for that.

I don’t like the James Jones hire either. The guy is qualified at all to be an NBA team’s GM imo. I hope I’m wrong but I think 2-3 years from now we’re gonna look at Jones in a similar way as McD or worse. Or we find someone better and delegate James Jones to a consultant role if Sarver really wants to keep him in the organization.

[thamadkant]

Suns giving away Warren and Jackson for nothing will always be a stain. I would have passed on Oubre. I like him but he's going to be very expensive... Warren gets paid half as much and Jackson under Monty would have been interesting.


Either way past is past... James Jones hasn't really done anything remarkable. Coming draft and off season will test him out.

[Bogyo]

I hated the Warren trade with passion. While I have no evidence of this, I truly believe that this was just a question of being lazy, and not turning every stone to find a better trade. Seems kinda the same with Jackson - to a lesser extent, but that's also just taking the easy way out, and rather short sighted.

Jones hasn't impressed me at all with any of his moves, be it trades or draft, or signing players. He seems like a guy who just wants to keep his job, make the easiest and "safest" decisions.

[suns12345]

Warren can play for sure. For whatever reason I didn't like watching him on the suns and still don't now. So asset management aside, i'm at peace with the trade.

Also 53 tonight has no bearing on how I view the trade or him as a player. I mean, Jamal Crawford had 50 for the suns last year...

Oh, and booker had 70 in a loss and is an empty stat guy [green font] lol

[ImNotMcDiSwear]

Warren can play for sure. For whatever reason I didn't like watching him on the suns and still don't now. So asset management aside, i'm at peace with the trade.

Also 53 tonight has no bearing on how I view the trade or him as a player. I mean, Jamal Crawford had 50 for the suns last year...

Oh, and booker had 70 in a loss and is an empty stat guy [green font] lol

What I lol about is how much Suns fans love Devin Booker for his offense and have no problem overlooking his defense, while they didn't appreciate TJ's (superior) offense and kept pointing to his (superior) defense as a problem.

[King4Day]

I'm just glad Warren is on a team that hasn't won before.
If he was on LAL or the Spurs, I'd be even more angry. But Indy is fine by me.

[DroughtsOverPHX]

Warren can play for sure. For whatever reason I didn't like watching him on the suns and still don't now. So asset management aside, i'm at peace with the trade.

Also 53 tonight has no bearing on how I view the trade or him as a player. I mean, Jamal Crawford had 50 for the suns last year...

Oh, and booker had 70 in a loss and is an empty stat guy [green font] lol

What I lol about is how much Suns fans love Devin Booker for his offense and have no problem overlooking his defense, while they didn't appreciate TJ's (superior) offense and kept pointing to his (superior) defense as a problem.

The trade sucked, we should have gotten more for him but I don't miss him. I didn't like the mystery injuries, the whispering technicals for not getting calls, his lack of leadership and his RIP girlfriend tatt. He was trade bait to me long before he left here.

I can't overlook Booker's lack of defense. It's hard to say at what point exceptional offense outweighs horrible defense but to me his lack of D keeps him from being untouchable which makes him eligible for a horrible trade too.

We gave Warren a good chance. When Bender puts up 50, THEN I'll feel bad.

[Crives]

I was a big proponent of keeping TJ Warren last year, but I understood the trade. I really preferred that we stretched Tyler’s contract to free cap space instead.

If we don’t take advantage of our cap space this summer (use all cap space + MLE), the Warren trade will look even worse

[charley barkles]

One aspect of the last off-season that NOBODY is talking about with this trade is culture. In order to change a massively bad culture in any organization, team, or company, you have to remove anyone who is not 100% in for the new direction, and infuse it with ideal team players (Patrick Lencioni anyone??). These are people who are humble, hungry and smart.

Culture trumps any talent, vision, or strategy. You can have a ton of talent and a great plan... but if your culture sucks, you will never get there. This is true for any organization.

TJ Warren is a talented scorer and was improving each year. But he had some weird things going on and didn’t fit the culture that Monty and James Jones are trying to infuse. Now, I find it hard to believe we couldn’t get a better offer and maybe they needed to be more patient, but sometimes you just have to take your losses to move forward.

Not only was removing Warren (and Josh Jackson) part of the plan to get rid of bad culture guys, but it also allowed Jones to go get those team players to infuse a new culture (Rubio, Baynes, Dario, Kaminsky).

Even though our record wasn’t great this year and it’s unlikely we sneak in to the playoffs, there is finally a positive momentum where we are going in the right direction. Without a suspension to Ayton, which led to overuse of role playing veterans which led to injuries, who knows how we would have done this year. We had 13 games of double digit leads that we blew (signs of a young team). Even if we held on for half of those, we’d be right around .500. We are really close.

All that to say... not getting a return for Warren sucks and we don’t know what kind of offers James Jones was receiving or seeking out, but it was the right move to make in the grand scheme of things.

[Scoot McGroot]

DEFINITELY NOT HERE TO TROLL, I PROMISE!

He's been playing mostly PF the last couple of years. I don't know about hindsight...the trade was ridiculed the moment it happened by most everyone except those who simply wanted him gone.

I was really taken aback by the trade when it happened, and was prepared for Warren to be an all O, no D guy that was still a huge question mark from 3. Even in his last year in Phoenix where he exploded from 3, he started the season INSANELY HOT from beyond the arc and then cooled throughout the year, so I was wondering where he'd settle in the end.

Otherwise, in Indy, we've played him purely as a 3, even last night when we were missing everyone but Turner at the bigs. We've actually been having Justin Holiday guard the 4 spot all season long, where he's excelled for us, and Warren has been solo at the 3 and guarding big wings, and he's actually been a really good defender this year, one on one. A bit gambling in a team defense setup, though. I don't know if it's what he's always been capable of doing, or if it's time with our defensive guru assistant coach Dan Burke (he's been with us around 20 years on the bench and has been the coach most responsible for us playing tough defense over the same time frame). I mean, Dan made Bojan Bogdanovic a good defender at the 3/4 spot for us and we've had Bojan/TJ defend guys like Lebron, PG, Butler, etc, one on one. We've also, however, really encouraged him to focus on the mid-range, where he's always been deadly consistent, and the long range shooting has come from there, I think.

I'm happy he's worked out in Indy, as I was naturally suspicious to start the year. But ultimately, I think it was just time for a break in Phoenix. We've had guys in Indy that went on to success elsewhere and it just wasn't meant to be in Indy, or time had basically run its course. I think, ultimately, that's the case with Warren in Phoenix. It was likely just time.

[SideSwipe]

He definitely was motivated to leave PHX like Bledsoe and Josh Jackson was. His PPT has been insane since Jan and it's only getting better. He's a part of the post Dec PPT gawds with Norm Powell, T. Ross, Cam Reddish, Zion, and Bradley Beal.

He only wanted to leave because he was underappreciated in PHX. This game is helping to prove that point. PHX never, ever should have gotten rid of him that cheaply. He can absolutely play. .599 TS% on volume.

You can always count on TJ to score. The biggest complaint with him for so long was the 3 pt shooting, or not taking them, and then he took a bunch and shot 42.8% the year before we traded him. There were complaints about the defense, which wasn't nearly as bad as people made it out to be, but the main thing is, that was a solid contract...and he did have value. They could have waited to trade him until after teams struck out in FA...they just pulled the trigger too fast...but, a rookie GM is going to make rookie mistakes.

Worked out well for him though. Most players that leave the Suns in end in a good position..him, the Morris twins are on the Lakers and Clippers, Bledsoe on the Bucks, Tucker on the Rockets, Dragic on the Heat, Jackson and Melton on the Grizzlies, etc. Maybe Chriss can hang on with the Warriors.

Yeah for me, it's not so much that we traded him, but we did not get value for what we developed him into. He should have been worth at least a mid-first in a trade with no dollars attached. I was pushing for Sabonis before he broke out. I would have had no problem if TJ had his year if we have Sabonis to show for it. As it is it just makes me frustrated with bad decision making at the top. Apparently James Jones was reading realgm and people that didn't appreciate TJ's game and didn't value him highly enough.

[Scoot McGroot]

He only wanted to leave because he was underappreciated in PHX. This game is helping to prove that point. PHX never, ever should have gotten rid of him that cheaply. He can absolutely play. .599 TS% on volume.

You can always count on TJ to score. The biggest complaint with him for so long was the 3 pt shooting, or not taking them, and then he took a bunch and shot 42.8% the year before we traded him. There were complaints about the defense, which wasn't nearly as bad as people made it out to be, but the main thing is, that was a solid contract...and he did have value. They could have waited to trade him until after teams struck out in FA...they just pulled the trigger too fast...but, a rookie GM is going to make rookie mistakes.

Worked out well for him though. Most players that leave the Suns in end in a good position..him, the Morris twins are on the Lakers and Clippers, Bledsoe on the Bucks, Tucker on the Rockets, Dragic on the Heat, Jackson and Melton on the Grizzlies, etc. Maybe Chriss can hang on with the Warriors.

Yeah for me, it's not so much that we traded him, but we did not get value for what we developed him into. He should have been worth at least a mid-first in a trade with no dollars attached. I was pushing for Sabonis before he broke out. I would have had no problem if TJ had his year if we have Sabonis to show for it. As it is it just makes me frustrated with bad decision making at the top. Apparently James Jones was reading realgm and people that didn't appreciate TJ's game and didn't value him highly enough.

Well, yeah! You'd have come out WAAAAY ahead!

[sunsbg]

He only wanted to leave because he was underappreciated in PHX. This game is helping to prove that point. PHX never, ever should have gotten rid of him that cheaply. He can absolutely play. .599 TS% on volume.

You can always count on TJ to score. The biggest complaint with him for so long was the 3 pt shooting, or not taking them, and then he took a bunch and shot 42.8% the year before we traded him. There were complaints about the defense, which wasn't nearly as bad as people made it out to be, but the main thing is, that was a solid contract...and he did have value. They could have waited to trade him until after teams struck out in FA...they just pulled the trigger too fast...but, a rookie GM is going to make rookie mistakes.

Worked out well for him though. Most players that leave the Suns in end in a good position..him, the Morris twins are on the Lakers and Clippers, Bledsoe on the Bucks, Tucker on the Rockets, Dragic on the Heat, Jackson and Melton on the Grizzlies, etc. Maybe Chriss can hang on with the Warriors.

Yeah for me, it's not so much that we traded him, but we did not get value for what we developed him into. He should have been worth at least a mid-first in a trade with no dollars attached. I was pushing for Sabonis before he broke out. I would have had no problem if TJ had his year if we have Sabonis to show for it. As it is it just makes me frustrated with bad decision making at the top. Apparently James Jones was reading realgm and people that didn't appreciate TJ's game and didn't value him highly enough.

Or maybe James Jones didn't read realgm and just decided to improve the team's culture and let players that don't want to be here go. He may have asked for a late 1st rounder that usually ends a player like Ty Jerome, but apparently nobody wanted to give even that at the time. We certainly should spent next two years to discuss this.

I wonder if people would still be upset about this trade if Ayton didn't screw things up and the team reached the playoffs for the first time in 10 years.

[El Hespiritu]

What I don't really get is why there's some random data for starting to consider JJ's job.

To me, his job as GM starts the day he signs the contract.
All decissions since then are his responsibility.

I have no major complaints so far.
I even have some major flatteries.

Namely:

-He brought a coach I'm liking.

-He brought players I liked a lot before and I like now even more.

-He even brought a couple of players who are not actually my cup of tea... and they are looking now better to my eyes.

-I don't miss any of the players gone or not coming here because of him (Korver, TJ, Warren... you name it).

-Team is playing its best basketball in the last five or six years (I might lack some deep background here... feel free to disagree who lived those years closely).

-I even feel like if opponents are starting to have a bit of respect for the Black Troll Suns... maybe a slight, patronizing and let's see how long they can sustain it kind of respect but respect nonetheless.


Nothing is perfect but in my opinion he's making a sensible task. Not that he makes bright Ujiri kind of moves or whatsoever... just prudent and sensible decissions.

I buy it.

Wether the next virgin teenie from the Draft happens to be a bust or a jewel won't change my mind about him.

About future FA... well... we'll see but I can't honestly foresee him doing long-term major deals in risky bets leaving the franchise kneeling under a spoiled so-called-star.

I think he just tries to join a good team.

[AtheJ415]

I don't think Jones has done a good job. I realize that working virtually on the draft can be better if done right, so I don't care about him not scouting live, but we could've simply cut Jackson. We didn't need to create the space by adding Melton to that trade. Melton has a much higher upside than Carter imo and could've been a piece we direly need as the super versatile defender next to Book.

Jerome looks like a bust so far. We'll see because sometimes it takes guys some time, but that's what he looks like right now.

Asset management is half a GM's entire job. You can't be bad at it.

Warren was one of our few legitimately good players. Jackson was terrible, so I won't lament moving him off the team, but I imagine we could've gotten at least a 2nd for him from some team who liked him when he came out.

For all of McDonough's issues, and he had many, it looks like Ayton, Bridges, and Booker are going to be a super trio that we could waste if we're surrounding them with Kaminsky caliber guys and don't draft well. I still can't understand how we didn't end up with Brandon Clarke, and while I liked Cam coming out of the draft and had him higher than most (top 17) I don't understand not trading down when we could have assuredly gotten him 5 picks later. Usually I'm not a trade down guy but in this scenario it was universally considered such a reach that I think the odds of losing him were next to 0.

[SideSwipe]

You can always count on TJ to score. The biggest complaint with him for so long was the 3 pt shooting, or not taking them, and then he took a bunch and shot 42.8% the year before we traded him. There were complaints about the defense, which wasn't nearly as bad as people made it out to be, but the main thing is, that was a solid contract...and he did have value. They could have waited to trade him until after teams struck out in FA...they just pulled the trigger too fast...but, a rookie GM is going to make rookie mistakes.

Worked out well for him though. Most players that leave the Suns in end in a good position..him, the Morris twins are on the Lakers and Clippers, Bledsoe on the Bucks, Tucker on the Rockets, Dragic on the Heat, Jackson and Melton on the Grizzlies, etc. Maybe Chriss can hang on with the Warriors.

Yeah for me, it's not so much that we traded him, but we did not get value for what we developed him into. He should have been worth at least a mid-first in a trade with no dollars attached. I was pushing for Sabonis before he broke out. I would have had no problem if TJ had his year if we have Sabonis to show for it. As it is it just makes me frustrated with bad decision making at the top. Apparently James Jones was reading realgm and people that didn't appreciate TJ's game and didn't value him highly enough.

Or maybe James Jones didn't read realgm and just decided to improve the team's culture and let players that don't want to be here go. He may have asked for a late 1st rounder that usually ends a player like Ty Jerome, but apparently nobody wanted to give even that at the time. We certainly should spent next two years to discuss this.

I wonder if people would still be upset about this trade if Ayton didn't screw things up and the team reached the playoffs for the first time in 10 years.

Even if TJ didn't want to be here, it speaks to ineptitude. You always maximize value. They should have held out for more value than that. When you sell low you you lower your asset base. Also not controlling Ayton is another sign of ineptitude. It takes all of those pieces working together to make a good GM.

[Jdiddy701]

We need Memphis to win vs the Spurs, right everyone??


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AtheJ415]

You can always count on TJ to score. The biggest complaint with him for so long was the 3 pt shooting, or not taking them, and then he took a bunch and shot 42.8% the year before we traded him. There were complaints about the defense, which wasn't nearly as bad as people made it out to be, but the main thing is, that was a solid contract...and he did have value. They could have waited to trade him until after teams struck out in FA...they just pulled the trigger too fast...but, a rookie GM is going to make rookie mistakes.

Worked out well for him though. Most players that leave the Suns in end in a good position..him, the Morris twins are on the Lakers and Clippers, Bledsoe on the Bucks, Tucker on the Rockets, Dragic on the Heat, Jackson and Melton on the Grizzlies, etc. Maybe Chriss can hang on with the Warriors.

Yeah for me, it's not so much that we traded him, but we did not get value for what we developed him into. He should have been worth at least a mid-first in a trade with no dollars attached. I was pushing for Sabonis before he broke out. I would have had no problem if TJ had his year if we have Sabonis to show for it. As it is it just makes me frustrated with bad decision making at the top. Apparently James Jones was reading realgm and people that didn't appreciate TJ's game and didn't value him highly enough.

Or maybe James Jones didn't read realgm and just decided to improve the team's culture and let players that don't want to be here go. He may have asked for a late 1st rounder that usually ends a player like Ty Jerome, but apparently nobody wanted to give even that at the time. We certainly should spent next two years to discuss this.

I wonder if people would still be upset about this trade if Ayton didn't screw things up and the team reached the playoffs for the first time in 10 years.

I'd still be mad about it. Truth is t would have been damn near impossible for this team to be as bad as last year. Simply adding vets and our young guy getting older accomplished that.

I'll credit Jones for signing Rubio though how he ages will determine if that ends up a plus or minus. Kaminsky has been terrible. Jerome has been terrible. We're still missing competent backup guards and have a weird mix of centers and guards. Zach Lowe said it best at the time--we'll win more next year, but that's not really the point of why people are mad about this. We could have been better set up to win in the long run than we are today if we managed Warren, Jackson, and that entire debacle correctly.