2019 Draft Discussion - Suns with 6th pick!

[RunSunRun]

I honestly haven't looked too in depth at any of the draft prospects besides Zion, Ja, Barrett. I saw a few clips of Clarke, but didn't pay too much attention to any other PG's besides Ja. I'll have to watch some videos tonight of White, Garland, Reddish, and other top guys.

Definitely take a look at White, he is not polished as a PG yet but improved over the year at UNC. Think he'll be a great fit next to Booker and will be able to develop next to him. At #6 we'll be looking for fit and upside, think White has both.

[bwgood77]

If NOP can get #3 and Knox from NY for AD, that might be VERY interesting.

NOP reunites RJ and Zion and with Knox, Jrue, and some of their other solid players, they start looking scary.

NY can then try to complete their Kyrie/KD/AD summer.

Lakers lose out on everyone.

Could be worse Suns fans.

Barrett and Zion were not the best pairing. You really want to surround Zion with 3 pt shooters. Knox I don't think can shoot either. I'd make sure to try and get shooters if I was the Pelicans in any deal for him.

[Slim Charless]

Does anyone think that we can somehow get Ball from the Lakers from this? We send our pick onto NO while they ship Lonzo here and other stuff for AD(Trying to find a silver lining here) Or does that hiring of Kidd pretty much shut that down

Probably ended with the Kidd hiring but LA is so dysfunctional, who knows what they'll do.

True I don't trust the Rambii, Jennie and all the other geniuses to make the right decision on pretty much anything on that team so hopefully we can take advantage and grab their young, talented, and somewhat flaky PG.

[lilfishi22]

honestly though, punishing tanking still doesnt change the fact that the teams between contender and lottery are just treading water. teams like the suns arent choosing to be bad. this is just the way they are.

We definitely chose to be worse than we needed to be. Maybe the difference between choosing to be worse and just being bad might not be 10-15 games but we've certainly properly tanked in the past.

I wouldn't go so far as to make us look like we're above tanking.

HOnestly I think the negative feedback about tanking is ridiculous. Teams who are good play for playoffs teams who are bad play for the best odds of the draft to improve their team and not tank. Everyone won’t make the playoffs and some teams know before the season that they won’t. If you want to remove tanking then have a tournament and let every team play a sudden death game to advance like college and when it gets to the last 4 teams of each conference start the best of 7. If my team sucks and you don’t give me a chance at a championship or playoff money and now you take away my chance at improving in the draft then there’s something wrong.

That's something that has been discussed by the NBA and I do think it's going to happen eventually. The lottery makes almost negligible revenue (ads, TV deal etc) compared to what a mini tournament would make. It makes financial sense to do a mini tournament and give something for lotto teams to actually play for

[Ghost of Kleine]

Silver linings... As I stated earlier I truly don't believe there's much difference in talent from 2-6 in this draft class. They save a little cap space with the rookie deal. But maybe most importantly this will basically force them to go the vet route to solve their problems instead of talking themselves into someone like Ja being an immediate savior. Time for Jones and crew to get to work.

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That's all fine and good to prefer a vet in a trade, but for who honestly????......And at #6, what kind of value should we really expect to even get in return....honestly.

[bwgood77]

Tanking isn't totally worth it unless you have like a really top heavy deep draft with like an elite top 7. Not with the new odds.

[Ghost of Kleine]

Coulda been 7th for the record

Our highest odds by far were #6....almost double our odds for 1, 2 and 5...more than double the odds of 3 and 4. http://www.tankathon.com/pick_odds

yep.

In mentally prepping had mostly accepted it was going to be 6th going in.

I like White, and think he'll be there. So sure some disappointment, but hardly pulling my hair out with the results.

Yeah, The Silver lining could still be White ( in a kind of Jamal Murray role) for us next to Booker.

And there is the fact that White is from the Bahamas, So that would be kind of a cool connection with Ayton.

Also Clarke is still a nice option potentially too.

[Ghost of Kleine]

Correction: 9.4%

Regardless, 2 of the top 3 teams lotto teams fall out of the top 4, And 3 late lotto teams with very little chances statistically move up???

I'm happy for the Pels, But this should be fairly obvious fairly obvious that the stage is being set for major moments involving big market teams by the league.

compensating NO for AD leaving like the Cavs after Lebron went to MIA

Exactly.

[Phnxsports]

Exactly why I wasnt upset Suns traded Miami first.

Tanking isn't totally worth it unless you have like a really top heavy deep draft with like an elite top 7. Not with the new odds.

[King4Day]

We definitely chose to be worse than we needed to be. Maybe the difference between choosing to be worse and just being bad might not be 10-15 games but we've certainly properly tanked in the past.

I wouldn't go so far as to make us look like we're above tanking.

HOnestly I think the negative feedback about tanking is ridiculous. Teams who are good play for playoffs teams who are bad play for the best odds of the draft to improve their team and not tank. Everyone won’t make the playoffs and some teams know before the season that they won’t. If you want to remove tanking then have a tournament and let every team play a sudden death game to advance like college and when it gets to the last 4 teams of each conference start the best of 7. If my team sucks and you don’t give me a chance at a championship or playoff money and now you take away my chance at improving in the draft then there’s something wrong.

That's something that has been discussed by the NBA and I do think it's going to happen eventually. The lottery makes almost negligible revenue (ads, TV deal etc) compared to what a mini tournament would make. It makes financial sense to do a mini tournament and give something for lotto teams to actually play for

Imagine the Suns are having a bad season and lose booker and ayton to legit injuries. Then they are forced to play a tourney and lose in the first round as they don't have the talent to compete. Now they are punished and forced to pick late in the lottery.
The lottery will never be perfect. The way they have it is fine. Otherwise you'll see 6-8 seeded teams tank to be the better team that misses the playoffs and run over the bad teams to pick a great player.

[WeekapaugGroove]

Why do people think uniting Barrett and Zion is something that would be appealing to new Orleans. We had a whole year to see how they are a weird fit.

As I was saying earlier I think Memphis might snag Barrett at 2.

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My thoughts exactly regarding pairing Zion and Barrett. I don’t think that is very appealing to the Pelicans at all.

Now I do think that there is about a 95% chance Memphis takes Morant. I believe there are a number of teams who would take Barrett here but don’t see Memphis as one of them. It just makes too much sense to trade Conley and take Morant. Plus Murray State is really close to Memphis so I imagine those fans will embrace him right away.

I hadn't thought of the Murray St angle, good catch and you could be right.

The thing with Barrett is he was considered the concensus top froah coming into this college season, he absolutely balled out in the all Star camps. Teams spend years scouting these guys and tend to put less emphasis on one college season than media and fans do.

I also think Ja is a little over rated by fans because he's exciting but there are very real flaws in his game.

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[WeekapaugGroove]

Silver linings... As I stated earlier I truly don't believe there's much difference in talent from 2-6 in this draft class. They save a little cap space with the rookie deal. But maybe most importantly this will basically force them to go the vet route to solve their problems instead of talking themselves into someone like Ja being an immediate savior. Time for Jones and crew to get to work.

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That's all fine and good to prefer a vet in a trade, but for who honestly????......And at #6, what kind of value should we really expect to even get in return....honestly.

We'll see who's available a lot can change in a month. There are always some diamond in the rough FAs and trades a good front office can find. Now we get to see if Jones is a good GM.


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[Ghost of Kleine]

Count me as one who is absolutely against a 31 year old broken Conley.

If it involves trading the 6th pick then I agree. But if we can get Conley for lets say Tyler Johnson, Josh Jackson, and the Bucks pick, then I do that.
I do think we'd be able to trade the 6th pick, amongst other assets for Jrue Holiday.

Again, Jrue isn't going anywhere. Griffin even said so, and now with Zion, and also with the Lakers most certainly drafting Garland at 4.

And then trading him in their package for Davis ( as per Jrues' stated preference to be a shooting guard) allows them to run Garland at the point, Jrue at shooting guard, Ingram or Kuzma at small forward, and zion at power forward.

And of course Okafor at center, speeding up their rebuild.

Just watch it happen at the draft.

[NyCeEvO]

So much unknown at this time but so many possibilities. I'm watching the D Russell options myself

Count me as one who is absolutely against a 31 year old broken Conley.

If it involves trading the 6th pick then I agree. But if we can get Conley for lets say Tyler Johnson, Josh Jackson, and the Bucks pick, then I do that.
I do think we'd be able to trade the 6th pick, amongst other assets for Jrue Holiday.

I know Booker and DLo are best friends, but do the Suns actually want DLo? If so, do you think they would prefer acquiring him or drafting a PG?

[lilfishi22]

HOnestly I think the negative feedback about tanking is ridiculous. Teams who are good play for playoffs teams who are bad play for the best odds of the draft to improve their team and not tank. Everyone won’t make the playoffs and some teams know before the season that they won’t. If you want to remove tanking then have a tournament and let every team play a sudden death game to advance like college and when it gets to the last 4 teams of each conference start the best of 7. If my team sucks and you don’t give me a chance at a championship or playoff money and now you take away my chance at improving in the draft then there’s something wrong.

That's something that has been discussed by the NBA and I do think it's going to happen eventually. The lottery makes almost negligible revenue (ads, TV deal etc) compared to what a mini tournament would make. It makes financial sense to do a mini tournament and give something for lotto teams to actually play for

Imagine the Suns are having a bad season and lose booker and ayton to legit injuries. Then they are forced to play a tourney and lose in the first round as they don't have the talent to compete. Now they are punished and forced to pick late in the lottery.
The lottery will never be perfect. The way they have it is fine. Otherwise you'll see 6-8 seeded teams tank to be the better team that misses the playoffs and run over the bad teams to pick a great player.

Maybe they'll still be competing for better odds

There's no perfect way to handle it but I'd rather team competing for wins than competing for losses.

[BobbieL]

Silver linings... As I stated earlier I truly don't believe there's much difference in talent from 2-6 in this draft class. They save a little cap space with the rookie deal. But maybe most importantly this will basically force them to go the vet route to solve their problems instead of talking themselves into someone like Ja being an immediate savior. Time for Jones and crew to get to work.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using RealGM mobile app

That's all fine and good to prefer a vet in a trade, but for who honestly????......And at #6, what kind of value should we really expect to even get in return....honestly.

We'll see who's available a lot can change in a month. There are always some diamond in the rough FAs and trades a good front office can find. Now we get to see if Jones is a good GM.


Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using RealGM mobile app

Glad that Bowers and Monty will be in the room though with Jones giving advice.

I am okay with the 6th pick - might work out well. Get a better player for the Suns and extra cap space.

[lilfishi22]

So much unknown at this time but so many possibilities. I'm watching the D Russell options myself

If it involves trading the 6th pick then I agree. But if we can get Conley for lets say Tyler Johnson, Josh Jackson, and the Bucks pick, then I do that.
I do think we'd be able to trade the 6th pick, amongst other assets for Jrue Holiday.

I know Booker and DLo are best friends, but do the Suns actually want DLo? If so, do you think they would prefer acquiring him or drafting a PG?

I think it was one of the local radio guys (Gambo - correct me if I'm wrong) that mentioned DLo will be an off season target.

[Phnxsports]

If the Kyrie to Nets ends up materializing maybe. Also they invested a ton into Dinwiddie already so who knows.

Q

So much unknown at this time but so many possibilities. I'm watching the D Russell options myself

If it involves trading the 6th pick then I agree. But if we can get Conley for lets say Tyler Johnson, Josh Jackson, and the Bucks pick, then I do that.
I do think we'd be able to trade the 6th pick, amongst other assets for Jrue Holiday.

I know Booker and DLo are best friends, but do the Suns actually want DLo? If so, do you think they would prefer acquiring him or drafting a PG?

[oddity]

Is it possible to land Bradley Beal in a trade revolving around the #6, the Milwaukee pick, and TJ? Tbh that might be our top candidate atm....

[Ghost of Kleine]

Does anyone think that we can somehow get Ball from the Lakers from this? We send our pick onto NO while they ship Lonzo here and other stuff for AD(Trying to find a silver lining here) Or does that hiring of Kidd pretty much shut that down

Probably ended with the Kidd hiring but LA is so dysfunctional, who knows what they'll do.

It's because they're so dysfunctional and still the league darlings, and that they couldn't close the deal for Davis, That the league office is compensating the Pels with Zion in order to make sure the Deal finally goes through this summer.

The league also knows already that Irving will join Lebron in L.A, Giving them a big 3. And Durant will still join the Knicks and likely convince Kemba to go there now. Giving New York top talents.

They're so predictable in that they're once again trying to rebuild a lakers, knicks rivalry. And look for Conley to be shipped to Boston, as compensation from the league for getting the 2nd pick, which allows them to rebuild better than what they'd get by just trading Conley.

The NBA helps out there big markets once again.