Brace yourselves: The inevitable has happened.
Or maybe not.
According to ESPN.com’s Marc Stein, the Phoenix Suns would like to trade one of Eric Bledsoe and Brandon Knight before the start of the 2016-17 season:
The growing sense in league circles is that the Suns are determined to move either Bledsoe or Brandon Knight before the start of next season
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) June 23, 2016
Phoenix Suns head coach Earl Watson would beg to differ. As he said on SiriusXM NBA Radio:
Never once was Bledsoe [and Knight trades] even brought up in our [draft] war room. So where that’s coming from, I don’t know. Maybe another team wants them. That’s a compliment to our roster, to our guys. But we’re really creating something moving forward, so right now the addition has to be purposeful and not just to make an addition because of the fact that it sounds good or looks good.
All of this makes sense. But you’re kidding yourself if you think these Bledsoe and Knight rumors are going anywhere.
The emergence of Devin Booker makes one of them expendable, and the Suns didn’t add any talented wings in the draft. They picked up two bigs, and another point guard in Tyler Ulis, Booker’s former teammate at Kentucky.
Point guard is also the weakest position by far on this summer’s free-agent market. The Suns can sell off Bledsoe or Knight for a king’s ransom to a team in desperate need of a floor general. Booker than slides into the starting 2-guard slot, or the Suns plug and play a cheaper point guard next to the remaining point man, with Booker lining up at 3.
That said, neither Bledsoe nor Knight finished the 2015-16 season healthy. That said again, they are both locked up on long-term deals that will look like super-duper bargains once the salary cap explodes. Phoenix should have no trouble fetching an adequate return for either, creating financial flexibility or collecting picks and prospects that can be used to fill glaring holes elsewhere.
