KdoubleDees23 wrote:Ghost of Kleine wrote:Hitachi77 wrote:
Trading Beal as a huge expiring contract next year seems like the best play?
Edit: damn didn’t realize he had a PO for one more year. Ouch.
Yes! Much better than stretching him and having 20 million in dead cap tied up on our books for the next 5 years, or 36 million over the next 3 years. And not being able to make any significant moves even with him off the roster because of that cap hit.
Also in not giving giving up our very last two picks in the CLE firsts as that's likely what it'd cost just to officially get him off the roster when he doesn't/ hasn't played now, and we still suck without him playing.
We shouldn't be giving up picks when we are already very limited with those first the next half decade just to move a contract that'll become a valuable expiring asset after next season.
Because we already don't have hardly any assets left as it is.
It'd end up just another very shortsighted and egregious value assessment situation for us. I want us to start breaking that cycle of compounding loss just to make moves is all.
TBH we don't need Draft Picks. We need players who have proven they can play. The Suns have probably developed 3-4 draft picks since 2010. Thats not good odds, especially a later pick.
Go get players who can fill a role and add depth
I hear what you're saying man! And do understand that line of thinking by some. But our reality is just different from everyone else's because our owner decided to give up basically all of our assets ( picks/ young talent) and fap space for this aging and failed super team.
We have no cap flexibility and can't really sign anyone beyond vet minimum options and two way undrafted players due to being a 2nd apron team and the restrictions we're under currently.
That's the first reason that draft picks are important. Because they allow us to actually circumvent those restrictions and add talent and positional versatility and depth to our roster that we otherwise couldn't via free agency or trade as a 2nd apron team.
The next reason those picks are critically important now ( under this new CBA era were in) is because they're the primary premium currency for teams in trades.
This is because they offer up to 4 yrs of low scale salary cost control for teams, and for teams like us with no cap flexibility carrying large max contracts eating up the majority of our payroll, those critically balance out our roster with financial variance.
The next reason those draft picks are critically important is in two parts, first is their ability to add young athletic, physical, competitive/ hungry, aggressive (something to prove) players that are energizers to our aging of5 apathetic casually indifferent team as exemplified by Dunns' and Osos' energizing impact for us.
And the 2nd part is in developing key young core players that can either develop and take over for Booker and KD as they obviously won't be around forever, maybe a few more years at most then we'd be rebuilding anyways.
And/ or to create desirable trade assets to attach to bigger vet salaries for key roster upgrades or star acquisitions when some do become available in trades or in free agency because we'd have cost control and balance throughout our roster to actually make legitimate moves.
Lastly, the line of thinking that we should avoid the draft and only go with vet/ tenured players that have been in the league and have multiple years of experience. The problems with this strategy we've seen play out for multiple seasons now, and should at least recognize that it repeatedly hasn't worked out for us.
Vet players often even the low scale journeyman players have all got their bag and just do what they need to and go through the motions rather than playing hard consistently. This is because they already got paid and aren't hungry anymore or feel like they have anything to prove after being in the league for multiple years.
Look at the teams with the best record at the top of the league and playoff seedings for evidence of this difference/ success in roster building strategy. Now look at our outcome constantly avoiding the draft and opting for older vet options and how that's paid off for us! It's time for a drastic change in approach.
Lastly, we shouldn't draft young players because we suck at talent identification and acquisition as an argument. This is honestly just a poor logically flawed argument position because prior to Ishbia, we had a skeleton crew of bottom tier no names .
Also, we had a GM in James Jones who openly admitted to not even caring about/ investing any time in/ utilizing the draft, so of course we're not going to do well at pulling high level talent if the money and work isn't put in to get high end results. You get what you pay for and you get out what you put into things. So did we!
But now, the money/ spending is there, the higher tier quality scouting options are there, and the payoff outcome for us will now be much different and better obviously!
