Kevin Durant-Nets/Suns- 22-23 Thread- any last thoughts on Bradley Beal?

[Special_Puppy]

Trading ayton was dumb me thinks

Ayton is nowhere near good enough for you to be this enamoured with him.

Nurkic is only four years older and a consistently better defender at half the cost.

Underrated part of the Suns struggle this season was Nurkic going from good to washed in one off-season. To be clear Ayton is nothing more than a backup center a on a good team at this point so its not like they were missing out on much. Goga would have been huge for them though

[AEnigma]

I feel fine saying their window seemed to have closed with the Mavericks upset, and — like many teams — rather than take a season or two to retool, they made some shortsighted moves in an attempt to cling to relevance for a bit longer which will now require a full rebuild. But the big mistake was the Beal trade, the lesser mistake was moving for Durant at all, and the tertiary mistake (this one more obviously hindsight) was trading away Camara as part of the Ayton trade. Trading Ayton himself was of low consequence otherwise.

[penbeast0]

My take on Beal is that the Suns seem stuck with him unless they pay to get rid of him and they probably aren't strong enough to afford that, so how do you get value out of him. He is a one dimensional scorer so to get maximum value out of him you need to have him as a primary scorer, either a 1st or 2nd option. To this end, I would probably look to trade Booker, (a) because he and Beal basically play the same role (not at the same ability) and don't seem to create any kind of synergistic effect playing next to each other and (b) because he is a valuable trade asset while no one I've heard of treats Beal on that contract as a positive asset. So, you deal Booker for value, preferably someone who has significant value outside of just scoring, and elevate Beal into his role on the team. If it works, now you have Beal and Durant as primary scorers and whatever you got for Booker either to make the team stronger defensively or to give it future assets. If going for the future asset approach, then you probably try to trade Durant as well but I think his current value is significantly higher and his trade value due to his age is probably lower so if you are trying to compete, you keep him.

I'd love to see some sort of Booker for LeBron move. Get the two grand old men of the league playing with Beal and see if that turns the team around. LA gets a younger star to play with Luka and Reaves. Probably not doable though.

[TroubleS0me]

Pack it up. Horrible FO moves from Phoenix after 2022.

I know their scouting and analytics teams were in hell the past 3 years. Especially anyone around from 2019-2022 during the development and contending years.

Terrible end to Durant’s prime. Terrible waste of Booker’s peak.


Scorers are overrated. Well-round young studs like Bridges and Johnson are what drives dominant teams like the current Thunder, Celtics and Cavs. Trading them for an old Durant was insanity.


And Chris Paul’s teams have never, ever improved from trading him.

good bump