Rebuilding teams always seem to think they can decide when the rebuild is over and the rise begins. They set ambitious preseason targets, sometimes hire new coaches, often sign or trade for a veteran or two to grease the skids. They then often find out that their rebuilding process is still in process. And while they were spending time, energy, and assets to transition out of the rebuild, they could and should have still been investing in that foundation instead.
Do the Suns look like a team on the verge of breaking through?
Sorry, Phoenix. The rebuild isn’t over yet.
It’s always tough to be awful in the NBA. It’s worse when you let yourself believe the lean days were over only to realize the famine’s still on.
Such are the Phoenix Suns, who carry the marks of a franchise that thought it had reached springtime only to get frostbite once again this winter. Phoenix has shockingly won three straight games, yet still remains on pace for its worst season since the year the Suns entered the league (1969). The Suns were a league-worst 21-61 last season. Phoenix is on pace for a 19-63 campaign.
The Suns didn’t intend this to happen. You know how we know? They signed Trevor Ariza to a 1-year, $15 million deal early in free agency last summer. Ariza is 33, hardly on the same timeline as the Suns’ young prospects. The fit looked dodgy at the outset unless you believed the Suns would careen up the Western Conference standings, with Ariza offering a good example to brash Devin Booker and wings like T.J. Warren and Josh Jackson.
Instead, the fit ended up being so poor that the Suns traded Ariza within hours of the first legal opportunity they had to trade him. Not only that, but they traded him for basically nada. Phoenix got Kelly Oubre, a mid-tier prospect who will be a restricted free agent in July, and Austin Rivers. The Suns waived Rivers before he ever suited up as he didn’t fit with Phoenix’s program.
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This is a real bit of lunacy — the Suns have been desperate for help at point guard all season. Isaiah Canaan started 15 games at the point for Phoenix before the team straight up waived him. Overmatched rookie Elie Okobo got four starts. Booker — as pure a shooting guard as there is — has been playing the point when he’s been healthy enough to play. The Suns desperately need at least one other competent NBA point guard to compete, and Rivers could have been that.
There’s no real benefit to the Suns in waiving him — they’ll pay his salary regardless, and now there’s not even a chance to spin him off to an even more desperate team at the deadline. Immediately after the news of his waiver came out, reports suggested the Grizzlies would sign him.
This is triply hilarious because of the Brooks To Be Named Later saga from Friday night. In case you missed it, credible reports suggested the Suns would deal Ariza to the Wizards with Oubre going to Memphis, and Rivers, Wayne Selden, and either Dillon Brooks or MarShon Brooks going to Phoenix. Some minor picks were also being sent from Memphis to Washington.
The deal broke down because the Suns thought they were getting Dillon Brooks and the Grizzlies thought they were giving up MarShon Brooks. Phoenix wouldn’t take MarShon and Memphis wouldn’t give up Dillon. So then 12 hours later the Suns and Wizards did their deal.
Here’s the goofy part: the Suns clearly had no interest in Rivers, so their original deal was solely to nab Dillon Brooks and get Ariza out of town. Brooks is on a cheap multi-year deal that runs through 2020. But having failed to get him, the Suns took on Oubre, who (again) will be a restricted free agent in the summer. The whole trade was a farce. Trading your major free-agent pickup on the first day possible for Dillon Brooks would have been a sign of failure. Then downgrading the return package to Oubre is laughable.
Does this sound like a team on the verge of breaking through?
The Phoenix Suns’ blueprint is to be awful until they’re not. That’s not original or innovative in any way, and that’s fine. The problem is that the Suns have deluded themselves and perhaps some within the fandom (for example, this is a SPICY take) that the franchise has something it doesn’t. This season and the team’s record have laid that bare. The failed Trevor Ariza experiment has laid that bare. The weekend trade fiasco has laid that bare.
Devin Booker is good, Deandre Ayton has potential, the Suns’ 2019 draft pick should be highly valuable. All of that is good for about 20 wins and another summer of uncertainty about where Phoenix is in the process and probably yet another bad season next year. This season proves that the Suns won’t decide when their rebuild is over. The rebuild will decide for them.
