2024-25 Season Discussion and Speculation Part V

[Rebound Mound]

Suns should’ve had tryouts for our next owner instead they chose a guy who throws money at anything. Ishbia got too excited for KD and that is going to set us back for foreseeable future. The best we can do is get rid of James Jones and 95% of our roster starting with KD & Book. Ishbia is not going anywhere so getting rid of him is slim to none.

I believe Ishbia did not understand the implications of all this. Or probably he only thought about the bright side of the situation, as thinking that there was any possibility of things going bad and the implications of these consequences. Probably he thought that money can solve everything, but the fact is that any amount of money can solve the situation with Beal or can give us back our picks.

I do not care about the picks, as they imply a long period of waiting for the players to develop, but I do care about the consequences of being unable to move Beal.

Anyway, it all depends in the atmosphere you create as a club, organization and by the coach and the GM. For example, Nurkic is performing quite OK with the Hornets, showing that the problem is US, not the players.

Nurkic has been pretty bad on the Hornets.

In 19 games he is playing 17 minutes per game and averages 7.3 points and 6.7 boards.

Shooting a terrible (for a 7 feet C) 46/29/65.

He has regressed so bad that your expectations are superlow for him now and stats like that can be seen as decent for him now.

In a team not interested in winning, with injuries to its PG, with a position at center that was supposed to be his, then the other guy was rejected in the physical test by the Lakers and with a not very organized team or organization.

[Djedefre]

We are litterally the laughing stock of the league. Yet somehow there are people who are still deluded. I mean i can even respect that, it is a choice, maybe it helps people to cope. But there is absolutely zero sane arguments in favor of Ishbia so far. He may be passionate about the game but he is clearly clueless, appears as a common idiot convinced that he is somehow the smartest guy in this whole wide world. He wants to be behind the steering wheel, make all the core decisions and he needs only yes-men. Probability of him hiring a proper GM or POBO and stepping back letting him do his job is almost non-existent. Apparently, he sees himself as some kind of an evil mastermind that'll outsmart everyone and solve the NBA in 3 moves. Only way for us to get out of this sh**hole is to make him sit the eff down and stick to being an owner. If he does not like it, he can go find a new toy, i don't care. Sarver was disastrous, this Ish-boy is like pure armageddon. He needs to be stopped in his rampage, any way possible.

[Revived]

Having again a G-League team wasn't a good move? Making Suns games available on local television for free wasn't a good move? Putting Amare and Marion in the Ring of Honor? And the list goes on and on...

And you didn't think that Budenholzer was a good signing?

the list doesn't really go on though, does it?

As if half of these moves have anything to do with winning. The others are questionable. Yes, Matty wants to be liked, we all know this. Unfortunately for him by now Saber is his only fan.

Fans like Saber deserve to have a favorite basketball team that’s absolute dogcrap.

Hey Sabestar do you watch American football by chance? If not, you should and I can recommend a team you’d like, the Cleveland Browns, to be a fan of. It has ownership that you would like and they need fans with your mentality.

[Ghost of Kleine]

Read on Twitter

[BobbieL]

the list doesn't really go on though, does it?

As if half of these moves have anything to do with winning. The others are questionable. Yes, Matty wants to be liked, we all know this. Unfortunately for him by now Saber is his only fan.

Fans like Saber deserve to have a favorite basketball team that’s absolute dogcrap.

Hey Sabestar do you watch American football by chance? If not, you should and I can recommend a team you’d like, the Cleveland Browns, to be a fan of. It has ownership that you would like and they need fans with your mentality.

I wouldn't go that far. Fandom is fandom and its good to be supportive. Hell, I wish the moves Ishbia had made had worked -they didn't

Now whats the next steps. Thats the key for Ishbia - not that you tried stuff that didn't work. What is your long term plan to fix it
Just because I don't think keeping Booker makes sense - doesn't mean there isn't a possible path where it does work to keep Booker, trade Durant (hopefully get under the 2nd apron), maybe trade Royce and Allen and see what kind of team you can put around him.

Granted, with the understandng that Durant is gone - what team will be able to win a title if built right
trading Booker and running out Beal until he expires seems better than keeping Booker and figuring out Beal. As I just think the cost to move or stretch Beal isn't worth it

But convince me - show me a plan to keep Booker

[bwgood77]

Yeah, that's what you want from an owner. He is putting all the resources in place to put this franchise at the top. It's not working for now, but the intentions are great.

But at some point, have to look in the mirror and say "this isn't working." And its not working
So does he quadruple down with arrogance or does he take a different course.

At some point people need to understand that two years isn't a long time. Ishbia arrived and made the KD trade and that season we played better and went to the 2nd round losing against the Champions 4-2.

Next year 49 wins and lost 4-0 to the Wolves (Western Conference Finals).

This season just 35 wins and the team has been really disappointing. We will see how this ends but I am pretty sure that we will see multiple changes. It's not like we have been bad for 15 years lol.

Yeah, it's been two years and he's traded away pretty much 7 years worth of draft picks (or as many as he is allowed to) and we have gone from a team that won 64 games the year before he bought us (and had made no changes really), to what we are now, after blowing all those draft picks and young players for one old superstar. Sure he's good. Were we better with him that year? I don't know. We had just gotten healthy when we blew it up..healthy for the first time since winning 64 games the previous year and were playing really well. We may have gone 8-0 with him, but he was also out a lot that year after we traded for him and we still had Ayton, Paul, Payne I think, etc.

If he made us really bad but we still had all our picks, fine, Or even put some protections on them.

[mkot]

Super excited this season is almost over.
Thankfully the real Suns came out and prevented our front office from thinking we can be good if we just make minor tweaks.

I know some people (Ishbia especially) hates the idea of tanking but watching a team with no expectations grow is FAR more fun than this.

Deal Book or KD to get our picks back. Trade the other to get some youth back. Wishful thinking.
At least we traded 2031 to Utah for literally nothing

Still cannot believe they traded that pick for three picks of much lesser value
what the hell were they thinking

It was believed that the move is to make the Butler trade done, but the 2nd trade wasn't a done deal apparently and they did the first deal anyway

That's just southpark level hiliarious

[BobbieL]

But at some point, have to look in the mirror and say "this isn't working." And its not working
So does he quadruple down with arrogance or does he take a different course.

At some point people need to understand that two years isn't a long time. Ishbia arrived and made the KD trade and that season we played better and went to the 2nd round losing against the Champions 4-2.

Next year 49 wins and lost 4-0 to the Wolves (Western Conference Finals).

This season just 35 wins and the team has been really disappointing. We will see how this ends but I am pretty sure that we will see multiple changes. It's not like we have been bad for 15 years lol.

Yeah, it's been two years and he's traded away pretty much 7 years worth of draft picks (or as many as he is allowed to) and we have gone from a team that won 64 games the year before he bought us (and had made no changes really), to what we are now, after blowing all those draft picks and young players for one old superstar. Sure he's good. Were we better with him that year? I don't know. We had just gotten healthy when we blew it up..healthy for the first time since winning 64 games the previous year and were playing really well. We may have gone 8-0 with him, but he was also out a lot that year after we traded for him and we still had Ayton, Paul, Payne I think, etc.

If he made us really bad but we still had all our picks, fine, Or even put some protections on them.

It will be very interesting to see what happens

Just glad Zach Lowe is back with a youtube/podcast - he was good. So I am sure he will have some good insights
I just hope the news comes out that Booker is open to being traded.

[Hitachi77]

But at some point, have to look in the mirror and say "this isn't working." And its not working
So does he quadruple down with arrogance or does he take a different course.

At some point people need to understand that two years isn't a long time. Ishbia arrived and made the KD trade and that season we played better and went to the 2nd round losing against the Champions 4-2.

Next year 49 wins and lost 4-0 to the Wolves (Western Conference Finals).

This season just 35 wins and the team has been really disappointing. We will see how this ends but I am pretty sure that we will see multiple changes. It's not like we have been bad for 15 years lol.

Yeah, it's been two years and he's traded away pretty much 7 years worth of draft picks (or as many as he is allowed to) and we have gone from a team that won 64 games the year before he bought us (and had made no changes really), to what we are now, after blowing all those draft picks and young players for one old superstar. Sure he's good. Were we better with him that year? I don't know. We had just gotten healthy when we blew it up..healthy for the first time since winning 64 games the previous year and were playing really well. We may have gone 8-0 with him, but he was also out a lot that year after we traded for him and we still had Ayton, Paul, Payne I think, etc.

If he made us really bad but we still had all our picks, fine, Or even put some protections on them.

Yeah but it has been mentioned here before, you can’t call us a 64 win team. Once CP3 fell off a cliff on his birthday that team was screwed. We had the most embarrassing single game loss in team history in game 7 (note it’s the most embarrassing single game, the most embarrassing series was the Wolves series last year).

I agree he gave up too much for KD, that’s obvious. But we need to be honest about the situation. He didn’t destroy a contender. He hurt a decent team. There was no CP3 level player we were going to get to become a contender again, especially since Bridges and Cam were going to demand bigger contracts. Even if we got Haliburton I don’t think we’d be a contender. He’s not CP3.

If your goal is to be decent for a long time, indeed he destroyed the team. But if your goal is to win a championship, I don’t blame him for what he did. KD transformed the Warriors into the GOAT team and very likely leads the Nets to a title without all those injuries. And that Nets team didn’t have some amazing supporting cast. He saw the impact KD has had and went for it.

The key now is to blow it up. Remember we missed the playoffs for a decade from poor management. We didn’t even sell all of our picks or make crazy trades. We just sucked. We have assets and can try to get what we can for them.

Obviously is retrospect we should have blown it up sooner instead of trading for KD, but I don’t think anyone here wanted that.

[Sunsdeuce]

The thing with Ishbia is this...................

- Is he a scumbag? I really don't know.
- Do I hate him as a person, not at all.
- Do I hate his basketball decisions and very limited acceptance of reality? Absolutely.
- Am I mad at his willingness to spend, absolutely not! It's an admirable trait that's very refreshing after Scrooge McSarver and his super parsimonious mentality.

Exactly, none of us know him as a person. BUT there is a trend I see with very very wealthy people and that is they almost always eventually think they are smarter than everyone about everything and stop listening to people and start forcing people to be scared to say anything or they will get fired. They almost always end by creating a toxic environment.

Ishbia is trending toward authoritarian style leadership and it never ends well. The greatest leaders are those who knowingly surround themselves with smarter people than them and aren’t afraid to say no to the owner. I see a lot of “yes” people in the FO and a lot fear and not enough focus on reality/admit to failure with the ishbia regime.

with that being said I dont see a long germ positive outlook for this team. All the money in the world doesnt buy respect!

[Sunsdeuce]

As if half of these moves have anything to do with winning. The others are questionable. Yes, Matty wants to be liked, we all know this. Unfortunately for him by now Saber is his only fan.

Fans like Saber deserve to have a favorite basketball team that’s absolute dogcrap.

Hey Sabestar do you watch American football by chance? If not, you should and I can recommend a team you’d like, the Cleveland Browns, to be a fan of. It has ownership that you would like and they need fans with your mentality.

I wouldn't go that far. Fandom is fandom and its good to be supportive. Hell, I wish the moves Ishbia had made had worked -they didn't

Now whats the next steps. Thats the key for Ishbia - not that you tried stuff that didn't work. What is your long term plan to fix it
Just because I don't think keeping Booker makes sense - doesn't mean there isn't a possible path where it does work to keep Booker, trade Durant (hopefully get under the 2nd apron), maybe trade Royce and Allen and see what kind of team you can put around him.

Granted, with the understandng that Durant is gone - what team will be able to win a title if built right
trading Booker and running out Beal until he expires seems better than keeping Booker and figuring out Beal. As I just think the cost to move or stretch Beal isn't worth it

But convince me - show me a plan to keep Booker

Nailed it!

[BobbieL]

The thing with Ishbia is this...................

- Is he a scumbag? I really don't know.
- Do I hate him as a person, not at all.
- Do I hate his basketball decisions and very limited acceptance of reality? Absolutely.
- Am I mad at his willingness to spend, absolutely not! It's an admirable trait that's very refreshing after Scrooge McSarver and his super parsimonious mentality.

Exactly, none of us know him as a person. BUT there is a trend I see with very very wealthy people and that is they almost always eventually think they are smarter than everyone about everything and stop listening to people and start forcing people to be scared to say anything or they will get fired. They almost always end by creating a toxic environment.

Ishbia is trending toward authoritarian style leadership and it never ends well. The greatest leaders are those who knowingly surround themselves with smarter people than them and aren’t afraid to say no to the owner. I see a lot of “yes” people in the FO and a lot fear and not enough focus on reality/admit to failure with the ishbia regime.

with that being said I dont see a long germ positive outlook for this team. All the money in the world doesnt buy respect!

Not trying to be too hyperbolic but its sports talk - I think the long term outlook of the team will be defined in next 90-180 days. And that is basically how does Ishbia handle this offseason

I truly do not see that he can straddle the line -meaning, trying to build around Booker and still wanting to contend. I don't see it happening because they have given up so much in draft capital, are above the second apron, etc to really be able to build the type of team around Booker that is needed.

So I say just rip the band-aid off, blow it up this summer and move ahead. If its a gut job, fix the whole damn thing, not this piece-meal nonsense

[Ghost of Kleine]

For the record, I'm against the idea of trying to do a quick reload and build around Booker because it honestly accomplishes nothing more than guaranteeing us a 11-13 seed for the next 3-4 years while not only wasting Bookers' prime years which is an absolute disservice to those that follow and adore him!

But furthermore, it keeps us in a perpetual cycle of mediocrity and irrelevance while Booker and further and any trade value he still possesses just continually decreases exponentially IF he doesn't get fed up with the losing and asks out anyways in the next couple of years! So the likelihood of him staying and finishing his career here as a sun is very minuscule at best, regardless of what we do, because we have already wasted 10 years of his career with only 1 legitimate finals appearance with the roster we've built around him.

Now IF Ishbia is hellbent on trying to reload around Booker thinking it will somehow change the (calculus) outcome. Then he's still deluding himself, and our rebuild will end up much more painful and a decade long if not more, due to having no assets or picks and choosing two sit on waste. the last two options we have left to pivot until their respective trade values are completely gone! But if that's our charted path (in a worst case scenario)!!!!

Then the names we should have atop our list to try and surround Booker with via trades would be Marcus Smart, Jonathan Isaac, and Jeremy Sochan. Now, how this would be accomplished via trade would be: (Post KD trade) ** Not my favorite KD trade option!!

1- KD to Orlando (Jonathan Isaac/ Suggs trade) ** I'd prefer to keep Suggs though!!!
KD for Isaac/ Suggs/ Silva/ Orlando 26' 1st (Top 5 protected) 1st.

2- Marcus Smart
Suggs for Smart/ Bey/ PHX 25' 2nd (42nd pick)/ DET 25' 2nd (48th pick). ** We'll keep those two 2nds to add more cost-controlled depth pieces.

3- Jeremy Sochan (Sochan can play in a Dennis Rodman defensive role for us while adding some ballhandling/ playmaking).
O'neale for Sochan/ UTA 26' 2nd.

** IF KD doesn't want to go to Orlando, then you instead take players package you get for him, attach the CLE 29' 1st, and then trade that to Orlando for Isaac alone! But keep any young players and picks we get in the KD trade! For instance, IF....................................................

- KD goes to Houston, for a package of Brooks/ Sheppard/ J Smith Jr/ Landale/ Whitmore/ PHX 25' 1st/ PHX 27' 1st.
You send out to Orlando for Isaac a package of Sheppard/ Allen/ CLE 27' 1st. And then send out to Washington a package of D Brooks/ CLE 29' 1st for Marcus Smart/ PHX 25' 2nd (42nd pick)/ DET 25' 2nd (48th pick). And finally, follow this up with an O'neale to San Antonio trade for Sochan/ UTA 26' 2nd.

Smart/ Booker/ Isaac/ J Smith Jr/ Richards.
Beal / Dunn / Carter Bryant/ Bol Bol / Ighodaro.
Gillespie/Whitmore/ Sochan/ Lendeborg/ Zisarky (7'3 230 lbs).

Picks
** Trading back with Orlando (the 12th and 48th picks) for the 16th, 25th and 44th picks giving us:

16th pick- Ben Saraf. Manu Ginobli. PG/SG
25th pick- Yaxel Lendeborg. Budget Adebayo. PF/C
29th pick- Carter Bryant. PJ Washington. SF/PF
42nd pick- Rocco Zisarky. Rudy Gobert. C
44th pick- Sion James. Marcus Smart/ Desmond Bane. PG/SG/SF
55th pick- Kobe Brea. Klay Thompson/ Duncan Robinson. SG

G League development
- Ben Saraf.
- Sion James.
- Kob Brea.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- PHX 27' 1st.
Plus whatever picks we get from eventually trading Booker/ Beal expiring, etc??

[bigfoot]

These should be the only returning players next season

Book
Gillespie
Dunn
Ighodaro
Beal (only because he is untradeable).

Everyone else should be moved for draft picks and young defensive players.

[SunsRback4Good]

These should be the only returning players next season

Book
Gillespie
Dunn
Ighodaro
Beal (only because he is untradeable).

Everyone else should be moved for draft picks and young defensive players.

You really believe in keeping Booker, huh? I on the other hand prefer he’s moved so we can start a proper rebuild.

[Calvin Klein]

Any chance this clown tries to trade Beal for embiid?


And then we’d have to see people say “well at least he tried” when embiid plays 3 games a season.

[Ghost of Kleine]

Read on Twitter

And the irony is that it just doesn't matter because it's incredibly unlikely that we win any of our next 4 games. So we're not likely to make up any ground and capitalize on King's losses regardless.

[Ghost of Kleine]

Read on Twitter

For any suns fans out there thinking it couldn't get any worse!

[SkyBill40]

The only way the team improves is if Booker, Beal, and Durant are all moved. James Jones needs to be fired. Mat Ishbia needs to take a LONG, HARD LOOK in the mirror and admit to not being a basketball savant and that he should leave roster construction to a professional and let that GM do their job hands free.

The fan base has turned on the team quite quickly and no amount of saying he's sorry or talking about is going to bring them back. It's the product on the floor that brings people in to watch and said product is rotten.

Losing Booker would be unfortunate, but it's becoming more necessary with each game we lose. He's the only one who will net us a decent return and we need a LOT to even get this team to approaching contention let alone being there continually.

Sent from my SM-F936U using RealGM mobile app

[KLEON]

Kings and Mavs just giving out gifts