Slim Charless wrote:Ghost of Kleine wrote:sashaturiaf wrote:
Emotional side of Suns fans says trade anyone but Book. However rational side says Book should be the one to go, he's simply got the most value and plays the same position as Beal.
There is also a doomsday scenario in 2 years time when KD is old and broken and Book is here in his absolute prime carrying a bunch of minimums to fight for the 10th seed every season. If you really like Book you would not want that for him. Sometimes its just easier to say goodbye when the time is right
So IF you choose to move Booker, Keeping in mind that he's been the face of this franchise forever, is still in his prime, and is under contract for multiple seasons still, what exactly does your plan become? building around a 36 yr old Durant and a 30 yr old Bradley Beal that easily has the very worst contract in the entire league, is a shadow of his former 30+ points per game, only plays around half the season if you're lucky, and honestly is just a slightly worse fascimile of Booker?? How do you suppose the fans will recieve/ react to this plan? How much longer do you honestly expect KD to be able to be dominant into his late 30s? How do you expect a 53 million player that struggles with injuries so much, and has never really led his previous team anywhere and only scored 9 points before fouling out will be recieved by the fanbase here promoted as the chosen leaders of this team? Nah! KD is easily and obviously the one that you trade in order to pull a maximum value return to build out depth and return assets around a backcourt of Booker and Beal! I get that KD is truly great! I really do, but father time is undefeated, and you just don't trade your younger franchise player whose still in his prime and under contract for around at least 3-4 more years? And try to sell your fanbase on instead building around a 36 yr old aging superstar player and an oft injured lower tier version of your franchise star that coincedentally is really underperforming while also making excess of 50 million. You'd likely lose a large majority of your fanbase or Ishbia would be run out of town by a mob with pitchforks!
If you're st on moving Booker fine! But then you honestly just need to bite the bullet and blow it up completely and move KD too, and try to convince Beal to approve trades rather than endure a perennial 1st round exit until he retires or gets frustrated and leaves for a better situation.
Well since I brought this up, I'll answer. It's mostly due to multiple factors. Some of which include:
-We'll get WAY more for him as he's younger and locked up.
-There will be a wider net of teams that want him as KD is only feasible to small number of teams and those all need to be title contenders.
-KD+Beal should more or less be able to do what KD+Booker can while Beal+Booker CANNOT do the same. We would still have the weird pairing in our backcourt.
-KD is the best player out of the 3, age notwithstanding and as such it makes more sense to keep him and try for this with someone who is 1 of the 13 best players of all time.
-Beal and KD's deals both end before Booker's does, giving us a theoretical chance to get some cap room sooner.
That isn't everything, only a portion. I'd say the main bonus being, that we get more. Also since we're stuck with Beal it would help if we had a sensible team that fits. But FTR, I'm not 100% sure of this I just wanted to throw it out there for discussion. I'm fine with moving Durant too, I just feel the selection of teams and by extension the assets we can reap from a trade are more limited if we move him. As opposed to Book.
If fans hated this team now, I can't imagine what the reception would be with KD and Beal as the main guys after trading the franchise player.