The Official 2025 Offseason Thread #4 Free Agency Opens!

[sunsbg]

I'll give it half a season before FO starts thinking how to move Green for a real PG. It was probably never the plan to get him in KD trade, but they were forced by the circumstances.

[WeekapaugGroove]

Sure call Green a PG because that's who he'll guard on D but I suspect the actual O will mostly 'your turn/my turn' between him and Book being the handler in P&Rs.

[Puff]

Damn people. It's amazing the point Book crying and whining out here. Kobe was a shooting guard but the primary ball handler for all the Lakers championships during his tenure.

Career average for Kobe 25p 5.2r 4.7a 3.0to .329 3pt%, .447fg%, .826ft%
Career average for Book 24.4p 4.0r 5.2a 3.0to .354 3pt% .464fg% .873ft%

Fact is, you should always put the ball into the hands of your best player and live or die with it.

I agree with this and have a hard time buying into SGA and Brunson being called Point Guards. Are they really? They are the Thunder and the Knicks best players. They create opportunities for their teammates based on their shooting guard skills.

SGA is a GREAT shooting guard that primarily handles the ball for the offense. Normally it does not stick in his hands unless his guys do not get open then he puts his Shooting guard skills to work and kills you. Same goes for Brunson in New York.

When I think of PG's I think of guys like CP3, Nash and Westbrook who seemed to do all the work for the offense. Those types of guys do not exist anymore. Well, I guess Doncic is one of those guys.

Indiana has a pass first PG in Halliburton, but the ball does not stick in his hands. He actually seems to lead the parade in creating sensational ball movement for the Pacers. That is what I am looking forward to seeing. I want 5 so called Point guards on the court at all times. I would love to see our team play like either the Pacers or Thunder.

[Ghost of Kleine]

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[SkyBill40]

Ugh. I don't like the idea of either Green or Booker being the primary ball handler. Both have major issues in that regard. We need an actual PG who can run an offense and distribute accordingly. The problem with that is it forces Green to play off the bench or moves Booker to SF and that's equally bad. This is why Green should be moved for other useful pieces when the opportunity becomes available. It would have been better to have told HOU no when the trade was being drawn up unless Smith were the key piece.

[WeekapaugGroove]

Ugh. I don't like the idea of either Green or Booker being the primary ball handler. Both have major issues in that regard. We need an actual PG who can run an offense and distribute accordingly. The problem with that is it forces Green to play off the bench or moves Booker to SF and that's equally bad. This is why Green should be moved for other useful pieces when the opportunity becomes available. It would have been better to have told HOU no when the trade was being drawn up unless Smith were the key piece.

I don't really think they had an option to add a 'true pg' who's worth a damn this summer. I agree with 4pointplays tweet that shoe horning a lesser talent like Tyus Jones into the starting lineup just because you want some true PG doesn't work.

I'll probably hate Green by Christmas but I am a little curious to see him and Booker together. Bookers played with a lot of dudes in the backcourt but never really a guy like Green.

[Sunsdeuce]

Welp guess we all have different opinions of the current backcourt and their point guard capabilities Personally, from watching Booker play from rookie year to him experimenting playing PG (being the primary distributor/ball handler), I think Booker is trash as a PG! Straight trash! Booker as a shooting guard is a different story. Booker was born to play SG. That is what he excels at. Keep him there. Booker simply lacks court vision, awareness, and leadership to play the role of PG.

On to green. Most of my knowledge is just watching a few games against the Suns and watching YouTube breakdowns so I’m no expert on him. But from what I have seen so far is that he is just a north south player. Looks like he just wants to go straight to the hoop or stop and shoot. I haven’t seen much (none to be honest) ability to go east/west with the ball in his hand. East/West ability is the most important part of PG because that’s where you open the court for the players and open the offense. BUT I’m definitely in wait and see.

My point of view, I never want to see the eye sore of Booker attempting to play PG. Green, I need more knowledge so he can prove his ability. I don’t have enough evidence that he can’t play the PG(although there isn’t much evidence that he can on the flip side). I’m in wait and see mode with Green. It’s definitely bold strategy. Let’s see how it works out.


Note: Kobe was never the primary ball handler. He never was tasked to bring the ball up court every game. I watched him from his rookie year, to riding Shaq, to him quitting on his team against the Suns, to him riding Gasol and Bynum to Two more rings. He was NEVER tasked as a PG and no Derek Fischer was never a “combo guard”. Fischer was always the point guard hence why he started next to Kobe. That term “combo guard” only started after D’Antoni invested positionless basketball. PLUS Kobe played in the triangle offense, which was centered around ball movement but didn’t mean they didn’t play specific positions.

[lilfishi22]

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This should work out famously!
1- Which player is the better shooter to draw defenders away from double teams?

2- Full time point Guard with Booker's hamstring issues.

3- Which player is the better ballhandler/ downhill driver ( might be important for kickouts to shooters.

Just a few considerations around "point book."

The fact is Booker is a significantly better playmaker than Green. No one is super keen for Point Book but he's the best option we have in that role. Book is also a better drive and kick passer than Green for that matter. In every measure and stat available, Book is the better player, better playmaker, has the better court vision and has far more experience as the offensive hub, for better or for worse.

I acknowledge Book's injury issue and it is not something I consider lightly but if you want to move him off ball, we're going to be worse offensively

You're very right, and I get that consideration. But the problems surrounding this in the most basic sense is two fold.

1- Point Book will only once again lead to double and triple teams that have previously proven effective in taking the ball out of his hands or forcing a turnover under pressure.

Green not being the better established shooter/ scorer ( efficiency, etc) playing the SG role will only exacerbate this as defenses will know that they can sag off of Green more to double and triple team Booker to force him to cough up the ball or render him ineffective offensively.

But in his time playing at the PG position for Houston, his shooting efficiency, playmaking and other metrics did improve/ increase. So with better spacing (playing off of Booker in my suggested premise) I believe both players can optimize their natural skillsets/ abilities to their utmost potential.

2- Booker's natural position is SG and his elite skillset is shooting/ scoring. In this point Book scenario not only is he being underutilized in a role that doesn't compliment his elite natural abilities,

And it's going to put much more pressure on him to create because Green again won't pull the defense away from him as aggressively to give him space to even operate as a high level playmaker.

The difference now being that before, even despite their concerns, having KD and Beal (both elite established scoring threats) gave him space to operate effectively. But Green doesn't carry that reputation. Booker will get blitzed, and even if he could somehow pass out, which player would be the more advantageous scoring proposition situationally??

Would you rather hinge games on Booker passing to other lesser scoring options? Or being the elite offensive weapon recieving the pass from Green. I ask this because I believe that Green is possibly/ can be (with more spacing) a more dynamic ballhandler and isolalation penetrator that should be having the ball to pass to Booker as the much better elite shooter/ scorer.

Lastly, the usage/ minutes/ injury consideration. Which role do people think would put more pressure/ risk of injury on Booker's hamstring??

Constantly having the ball and trying to break down defenses to create offense, or to spot up, flare, pick n roll recieving a pass in natural motion offensively to score and flex defenses while still being an elite secondary facilitator through reactionary defensive pulls?

I'm just looking at maximizing Booker's best natural elite talents over trying an experiment that repeatedly limited his elite abilities in a lesser unnatural role.

He's simply much better and more elite at SG. And because Green is the lesser shooter but better and more athletic/dynamic ballhandler, he should be the point guard to free up Booker to be the elite scoring assasin he was in our finals run again!

I'd much rather have the defenses blitzing Green and have him passing out to Booker if double or triple teamed that the inverse.

It’s an inevitability loop. Without a true PG, the offense always circles back to Book as the creator anyway because he's still the best creator on the team.

And yes, we all understand SG Book is better than Point Book, no one is disputing that. But SG Book is only elevated to the degree we saw next to CP3 when you have an elite playmaker next to him to allow him to do all his elite scoring stuff. In the first season with Beal and KD, we ran Point Book when we could've run Beal or KD at the 5 for a specific reason, because he's a far better creator and playmaker for the team than either Beal, KD or any other playmaker on the team for that matter. KD and Beal are also better playmakers than Green, who you're trying to jam into a playmaker role when he isn't a playmaker. Like I don't understand why you think Green is a good playmaker. Green peaked at a 17.3% ast% the prior two seasons and dropped down to 16.0% this past season. Book in his first two seasons in the league put up 15.8% and 16.3% which were career lows and since then it's been as high as 34.1% down to a low of 20.6% next to CP3. And let's forget the pretty mid court vision, passing abilities and turnovers, the worst trait of his and probably most detrimental to the proposed role of lead playmaker is he's a poor decision maker.

Point Book isn't something you go to when you have options, you go to it when you don't. And unless we're bringing in a high level playmaker to allow Book to play a lot more off ball which clearly we aren't after singing Butler and Goodwin, we should be running the best playmaker in the playmaking role. And all the points you've put forward about Book struggling with double/triple teams and Book's natural position being the 2, are literally the same arguments for making Green the SG because he's not good under pressure, more prone to making mistakes under pressure and he's far less of a combo guard than Book is so his natural position is actually the 2. And no, I'd rather not have Book passing to lesser scoring option but I'd prefer even less for Book to wait for an ugly play to be run off ball only for the ball to go back to him anyway where he's asked to create with under 3s left on the clock.

[dremill24]

Ugh...can we go back to just insulting each other? The 'position' discourse is the worst

[TeamTragic]

We had a true point guard last season. In fact we had two.

Both Tyus and Monte which made zero difference. Stop the insanity.

[Sunsdeuce]

We had a true point guard last season. In fact we had two.

Both Tyus and Monte which made zero difference. Stop the insanity.

And we had 3 stars who essentially played the same position. So the point guard last year was only suppose to bring the ball up the court than be mindless and stand in the corners for threes. Last years team was a mish mash mess of a roster. Three Stars who were all essentially SG mid range, ball in their hand to be effective.

[lilfishi22]

Damn people. It's amazing the point Book crying and whining out here. Kobe was a shooting guard but the primary ball handler for all the Lakers championships during his tenure.

Career average for Kobe 25p 5.2r 4.7a 3.0to .329 3pt%, .447fg%, .826ft%
Career average for Book 24.4p 4.0r 5.2a 3.0to .354 3pt% .464fg% .873ft%

Fact is, you should always put the ball into the hands of your best player and live or die with it.

Derek Fischer never existed?

DFish was PG in name only and his job was to bring the ball up, give it to Kobe and be a 3PT outlet for him.

Fisher averaged under 2.9 assists in LA while in that same time Kobe averaged just under 6.

[lilfishi22]

TheIVpointplay is great analyzing the Suns and he is all in about Book at PG. Here is what he said about that in X:

Just my opinion but being critical of what Devin Booker is set to earn over next 5 years while simultaneously stating he should play as a traditional SG next to a full-time PG - seems a bit disingenuous or something?

Margin for error to *earn* that $ is much slimmer if you put him in that box. & there is more than enough evidence that going the other route is certainly worth it.

Especially if you consider the limitations PHX have right now & how much a move like that would limit elsewhere.

Yes, the Suns were GREAT with CP3. But it dictated the rest of the roster in a way that they had to thread a needle & they still almost did.

How many guys are out there that can do what that version of CP3 did? And how many can PHX realistically add?

Not afraid to be wrong & welcome different opinions. But I will tell you one thing for damn sure. Zero reason to start Tyus Jones next to Book just to keep some BS convention. List of players who can create advantages for a team better than Book is A LOT shorter than you think.

I've been waiting for this for 3 years. Hell, I've been talking about it in some capacity for nearly 7.

Right or wrong, I am excited the tea leaves are suggesting we are going to finally find out.

I'll be honest, and have said as much recently, that from my limited scope of knowledge, it seemed to make more sense, as @Ghost of Kleine has been debating, to use Green more in a PG role. Green seems to be the more talented driver with at least as good of handles as Booker. And yes, with Booker being our premier point getter, he should be left off-ball to maximize his abilities, and 'open' catch-n-shoot opportunities.

That said, I'm happy to be wrong in this instance. We better have at least two pure shooting threats in the line-up, to give Booker more chances to operate, without being accosted by three defenders. I still believe that Green should have a good % of opportunities, to bring the ball up, even if that means just handing back to Booker once he gets back to within a few feet from the top of the key, because at least then, there's the options that opposing defenses will have to account for--will Green drive? pull-up and shoot the 3? or hand the ball to Booker?

Regardless, if 'Point Book' ends up being a wild success, I'll hardly complain about being dead wrong!

Last season drives stats

Drives per game: 14.0 vs 10.5
FGA: 5.6 vs 5.3
FG%: 52.5% vs 46.7%
FTA: 2.1 vs 1.8
Pts: 8.0 vs 6.6
Passes out of drives: 6.4 vs 3.2
Assists from drives: 1.5 vs 0.6
TO: 0.7 vs 0.8

[lilfishi22]

https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/s/ObPQPTCKsn

[John Gambadoro] Adjustment here on the Suns plans this year:

Green will be the PG. Gillespie is the backup.

Point Book does not work due to double/triple teams.

From that Reddit post

I have seen most of the games Jalen played in his Houston career, maybe he will get better but him as a ball handler is just not it. He is capable of thinking like 3 different things. One is “I am just going to go towards the basket, not even try to score or jump or find a gap to make the pass, and I will dribble back and hand it back to Sengun effectively wasting time”, 2 is “I will just shoot this contested shot” which he occasionally makes if its his day, and I guess 3 is “I will just hand hand it back to FVV who will hand it to Sengun”. I think he is actually becoming underrated these days but he didn’t show us a lot of potential to be a good PG

If we run Jalen at the 1, this is what I'm expecting, except replace Sengun with Book.

[Sunsdeuce]

Damn people. It's amazing the point Book crying and whining out here. Kobe was a shooting guard but the primary ball handler for all the Lakers championships during his tenure.

Career average for Kobe 25p 5.2r 4.7a 3.0to .329 3pt%, .447fg%, .826ft%
Career average for Book 24.4p 4.0r 5.2a 3.0to .354 3pt% .464fg% .873ft%

Fact is, you should always put the ball into the hands of your best player and live or die with it.

Derek Fischer never existed?

DFish was PG in name only and his job was to bring the ball up, give it to Kobe and be a 3PT outlet for him.

Fisher averaged under 2.9 assists in LA while in that same time Kobe averaged just under 6.

100% correct. But the triangle offense didn’t rely on PG. Ron Harper, BJ Armstrong were also PGs on the triangle offense. Their duties were to bring up the ball. But they were point guards. Yes with the greatest player of all time in Michael Jordan, you aren’t going to do more than bring up the ball but don’t be confused, they were PGs. In the case of Derek Fischer, he brought the ball of for Shaq (most dominate Center of all time), for Kobe, for Gasol. But he was a PG. And the triangle offense also had an influence but Fischer, BJ Armstrong and Ron Harper were 100% PGs. But there duties were vastly different than Nash, Kidd and KJ.

[lilfishi22]

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Go figure??

I don't understand what Gambo is trying to spin here. How does 19/4ast qualify someone to be a PG lol

In those games with FVV (looks like 23 games to me but whatever), he averaged 4.04 apg and 2.91 turnovers for a 1.39 A:T ratio. In the rest of the games with FVV, he averaged 3.22 apg and 2.33 turnovers for a 1.39 A:T ratio.

The positive is that he increased his assists per game playing about 4mpg less. The negative is that he's playing 4mpg less when their lead guard was out which itself says quite a lot

[grumpysaddle]

I remember Grayson Allen playing PG one game and he had like 14 assists and I think the Suns won. Grayson for PG!

[garrick]

I'll give it half a season before FO starts thinking how to move Green for a real PG. It was probably never the plan to get him in KD trade, but they were forced by the circumstances.

It's the rookie max deal which was the same for MPJ and DA where teams are forced to offer the rookies the max or risk losing them for nothing and end up overpaying. Green on 20M to 25M is a lot more palatable than 35M per season!

I don't know what the solution is but if there needs to be a better solution where teams don't have to feel the need to overpay yet not risk losing their rookies to free agencies because most teams don't want to do what Phoenix did in telling Ayton to go hunting for a better offer from another team.

99 percent of the time teams will max out their rookies if they show enough potential even if those players will never become all star caliber players.

[lilfishi22]

Damn people. It's amazing the point Book crying and whining out here. Kobe was a shooting guard but the primary ball handler for all the Lakers championships during his tenure.

Career average for Kobe 25p 5.2r 4.7a 3.0to .329 3pt%, .447fg%, .826ft%
Career average for Book 24.4p 4.0r 5.2a 3.0to .354 3pt% .464fg% .873ft%

Fact is, you should always put the ball into the hands of your best player and live or die with it.

I agree with this and have a hard time buying into SGA and Brunson being called Point Guards. Are they really? They are the Thunder and the Knicks best players. They create opportunities for their teammates based on their shooting guard skills.

SGA is a GREAT shooting guard that primarily handles the ball for the offense. Normally it does not stick in his hands unless his guys do not get open then he puts his Shooting guard skills to work and kills you. Same goes for Brunson in New York.

When I think of PG's I think of guys like CP3, Nash and Westbrook who seemed to do all the work for the offense. Those types of guys do not exist anymore. Well, I guess Doncic is one of those guys.

Indiana has a pass first PG in Halliburton, but the ball does not stick in his hands. He actually seems to lead the parade in creating sensational ball movement for the Pacers. That is what I am looking forward to seeing. I want 5 so called Point guards on the court at all times. I would love to see our team play like either the Pacers or Thunder.

Doesn't really matter what you call them because positions are almost redundant these days. It's more important to identify who the "engines" of the offense is. Luka is like 6'8 but he's the engine of the team. SGA is the main scorer on the team but he's also the engine of the Thunder, likewise with Jalen. With us, it's clearly Book. SGA is the point guard in spite of his elite scoring abilities because he's got really good court vision, handles and is incredible at taking care of the ball (last few years had a sub 10% turnover rate). Brunson is also a fantastic distributor in spite of his scoring abilities because similar to SGA, great playmaker and takes care of the ball really well (10.2% career turnover rate).

I'm open to see how it works with Book and Green splitting "engine" duties (not that I have any say in it anyway) but the idea that anyone thinks Green is the PG in any iteration of the word based on the examples you brought up (CP3/Nash/SGA/Brunson/Luka) is preposterous to me quite frankly. And that's fine, it's not who Green is and he has other strengths but let's be real and honest about it.

[dremill24]

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Go figure??

I don't understand what Gambo is trying to spin here. How does 19/4ast qualify someone to be a PG lol

In those games with FVV (looks like 23 games to me but whatever), he averaged 4.04 apg and 2.91 turnovers for a 1.39 A:T ratio. In the rest of the games with FVV, he averaged 3.22 apg and 2.33 turnovers for a 1.39 A:T ratio.

The positive is that he increased his assists per game playing about 4mpg less. The negative is that he's playing 4mpg less when their lead guard was out which itself says quite a lot

Cmon man, you know it doesnt matter whether the 'evidence' is substantive, only that something was thrown out there to back up the claim. Duh!