The Phoenix Suns avoided disaster on Monday, and with that, they should strike on the new opportunity presented to them in their summer all about Kevin Durant.
Phoenix’s first-round pick in 2025, owned by the Houston Rockets, did not move up in the draft lottery and sits at 10th. With Houston looking primed to be a Durant suitor and facing a crucial offseason in a way very few are discussing, the Suns should prioritize that selection being included in a potential package.
This has nothing to do with Phoenix getting its own pick back, for what it’s worth. It just happens to be a coincidence.
The Suns have virtually no path toward bringing in high-end, young talent over the next few years. The first-round picks Phoenix does possess will almost certainly be in the 20s for at least the next three years, and the odds are it will be until at least 2032 before the Suns pick in the lottery again.
Given the Suns’ unwillingness to entertain trading Devin Booker, they have only one major trade chip to change that. It’s Durant, and again, because of Booker sticking around, the Suns should invoke that change immediately.
There is some perfect symmetry lining up with the Rockets that could give the Suns the chance to do this.
Here’s the bottom line with Houston and what should really be the topic of conversation: It’s not about the Rockets being interested in Durant. It’s about how the Rockets should be interested in reshaping their roster this summer, and how the Suns are the perfect team for Houston to trade with in order to do so cleanly.
Why? The Rockets have two young players with questionable value right now in Jalen Green and Jabari Smith Jr., who they can use as the core of the return for a top-10 player in the league. Once more, it just so happens those are the guys who make the salary math work.
Beyond that, why are those two names relevant right now?
Well, it’s all rainbows and sunshine while the Rockets joyfully prance through the process of being a young team on the rise — until your draft picks sign their second contracts. Then it’s serious decision-making time, unless Houston is cool with becoming a major tax-paying team really soon.
The new deals of Green and Alperen Sengun kicking in next year are a bump of almost $50 million, already making Houston a tax team with its 12 salaries as is, per Spotrac. While Fred VanVleet’s player option could come with a reworked, cheaper extension instead, more new deals for former draft picks will be coming up..
Smith and Tari Eason would start coming into effect for the 2026-27 season, and then the big one will be for Amen Thompson in 2027-28. This is essentially what happened in Oklahoma City with Josh Giddey last year, as the Thunder had to decide somewhere to cut bait for a guy that wasn’t the cushiest fit anyway, with more of those choices coming later down the line.
And while the Rockets have a nice thing going, it’s nowhere in the same stratosphere as where the Thunder are. They’ve got a long way to go and an incomplete roster when it comes to true star power.
The Athletic’s writeup on the Rockets’ potential star hunting this summer is heavily weighted toward Houston’s commitment to its youth, without mention of this rapidly approaching dilemma. It instead mentions how much cheaper Green is than Booker, who is not available, and how Houston no longer has interest in Booker.
It also notes Houston has “significant reservations” about trading for Durant. Again, the Rockets’ reservations should be (and honestly probably are) more about how the price of their roster is not going to match the quality. Durant would make that extra money a worthwhile payment.
The current layout would not, and the Rockets’ playoff performance was further evidence of this immediate future.
Jalen Green and Jabari Smith Jr. are at a crossroads with Rockets. So could they fit in a trade for the Suns’ Kevin Durant?
Houston spent portions of crunch time in the fourth quarter of a first-round loss without Green and/or Smith on the floor, instead turning to Steven Adams as that fifth guy alongside VanVleet, Thompson, Sengun and Dillon Brooks. It was a multi-faceted reveal of how bad the Rockets’ offensive creation problems are.
Instead of spacing the floor with a 6-foot-10 shooter (Smith) for their leading scorer, an explosive, quick-twitch two-guard (Green), they relied on VanVleet or two non-shooters in Thompson and Sengun. They struggled to find shots they’re comfortable with from 15 feet in during tight situations. Relying on the pure chance of offensive rebounding via Adams was more worth it to them. When Green was in there, the ball was either not in his hands or it went poorly when it was.
Green was the second overall pick in 2021, and Smith went third a year later. It is incredibly damning they weren’t out there, speaking to a lack of short-term belief Houston has in the duo. That, in turn, could further illuminate a lack of long-term commitment.
The 23-year-old Green has a three-year extension kicking in next season for $106 million, with a $36 million player option in Year 3. He shot 37% in the seven games, and outside of his 38-point outburst in Game 2, he managed four field goals or less in each of the other six games to go 19-of-61 (31.1%) for 9.2 points per game.
Houston has seen stretches from Green, such as the 29.2 PPG 15-game surge at the end of the 2023-24 season, when he looks like the guy it needs. Most of the time, though, the question has lingered. He’s got a long way to go with processing defenses and making the right reads, which is why he sat on the bench at times in postseason crunch time when Houston yearned for someone to do exactly what he is supposed to do and what Durant has done better than almost anyone in league history.
Smith is the type of winning player most teams want to have. Concerns out of Auburn about his lack of on-ball juice and aggression as a scorer have proven warranted, as the pitch of All-NBA bucket potential combined with 3-and-D glue guy stuff was always a bit farfetched. He’s more of the latter, and that’s fine.
The issue is Smith, who turns 22 on Tuesday, is about being pricey when it’s not exactly clear what he is great at. Paying $15-million-plus a year for a fine defender, very good rebounder and career 34% 3-point shooter who had 60 assists and 61 turnovers this season is going to muddle his value. He had a few nice moments in the first round, but it was nothing to suggest Houston should do absolutely everything to keep him, like taking on a deeper tax bill.
So that’s where the confusion lies. Green and Smith are definitely young and definitely have potential. But there is not a ton of concrete evidence on how good of players they are at the moment and how important they are to the Rockets’ long-term picture. If anything, the former top-3 picks have definitively been usurped as franchise pillars.
To put it more simply, the argument is that makes Green overpaid and that Smith is about to be. Maybe Houston actually is confident that both players will improve with those pay raises. Seems doubtful. So if Houston wants to make a jump next year, all while being uncertain on what to do with those two, the choice is obvious.
If the Rockets want to go for Giannis Antetokounmpo (if he’s available), go right ahead. It’s going to cost ’em one of Sengun or Thompson. A platter of picks and filler won’t do it. It would, though, for Durant because of his leverage on the Suns. He could shoulder the offense to end his career, all while Houston watches Sengun and Thompson take the next steps.
With all that said, to act like Green and Smith take up the majority of the value in a potential Durant return is foolish. As far as the rest of the deal, that’s where the No. 10 pick comes in.
Yes, Phoenix’s own picks in 2027 and 2029 are there too. But the push from the Suns, especially with their plan to keep Booker, would make it more worthwhile to target that sole pick as opposed to more that come later down the line.
The other small part of this conversation is Reed Sheppard, the third overall pick in last year’s draft, who pretty much didn’t play as a rookie. The 2024 class was rough, meaning Sheppard definitely isn’t going third or in the top-5 most years, but he’s got big-time offensive potential as a lead guard. Then again, if Houston is OK with trading him just a year in after not playing him, that sets off alarm bells.
That makes Sheppard an odd evaluation from afar in a space like this, so I reached out to The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie for his thoughts on the hypothetical of having either Sheppard or the 10th pick as the centerpiece of a deal like this. Here’s what Vecenie had to say:
I prefer Sheppard over the No. 10 overall pick. Reed’s upside is still quite strong even if this year did not go well in Houston. It’s hard to find elite shooters who can pass and have the vision that he does.
Having said that, my general basketball philosophy at this point is to avoid smaller players at basically all costs, so I likely would not rank Reed as highly as I did in the 2024 NBA Draft if I was doing that over again.
To bounce off his point, it’s a rule of thumb that front offices are always going to be higher on their guys as it is, so if that’s how a national draft expert feels, you can imagine Houston is likely still believing in Sheppard long term. And moving Green allows it to insert Sheppard into the offensive-minded role.
Another salary has to go in to make the math work, so here’s Cam Whitmore. He was a borderline top-5 pick for some in 2023 and a pretty safe bet to go in the lottery before tumbling to 20th, which reportedly came down to a combination of uninspiring interviews/workouts and medicals.
His two years so far have unfortunately proven those concerns valid. Whitmore’s body language is often all over the place, he has 82 assists in 92 career games as a score-first wing and faded out of the rotation in his second season. He can also explode for 20-plus any night and is fearless on the court, as his rookie year showed when he went right back at Booker. It’s the type of throw-in that makes sense for both sides.
So that’s the deal. To be clear, it does not sound like one the Suns want.
Mat Ishbia’s “pivot and reload” sounds like targeting players in their prime who are best suited to help right now. This is more about establishing a foundation for the next couple of years. On top of that, would Ishbia really make the prime asset in a Durant deal one of only four picks he gave up to get him? That is the equivalent of planting yourself under the basket, tossing an alley-oop off the backboard and waiting to get dunked on in terms of the optics and level of taking the L that would be. Doubt it would ever happen.
To continue with the thought exercise, Phoenix would ideally like to loop in a third team to take on Green, as it does not offer the real estate required to see out Green in his second contract and properly assess if he can be a top-two scoring option on a good team. With Booker in the way as a fellow two-guard, the Suns would be best finding another home for him.
That’s never as easy as it sounds, and at that point, Phoenix would be exploring the benefits of swapping Green for a useful role player against just looking at expiring contracts, using this deal as another way to clear up the cap sheet for the future. But it is, uh, not appealing to essentially then have the framework of the Durant deal just be Smith and a top-10 pick.
Smith is exactly what the Suns should be targeting: players that grade out highly on the physical profile scale. The sell here is not that Team 2 could suddenly lead to Smith’s breakout, but a reset for him after he got lost in the shuffle during Thompson’s emergence with a far more defined role would help him settle in as a quality NBA player. Phoenix would have to sign him to an extension that is in some ways a gamble, just making sure it’s not the one Chicago placed on Patrick Williams for five years and $90 million.
And then there’s the 10th pick, which we’ll have a full-blown look at in the second part of this writeup.
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