It was never going to be a home run for the Phoenix Suns this offseason when trading Kevin Durant but this contact off the bat isn’t even leaving the infield, all while their opponent clobbered one over 500 feet.
Phoenix completed a deal with the Houston Rockets on Sunday, acquiring shooting guard Jalen Green, wing Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft and five second-round picks, Arizona Sports’ John Gambadoro confirmed.
You might be asking yourself a wise question. “How do you only get that for Kevin Durant?!”
Well, there were six factors at play that worked against the Suns and led us to this point.
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The first is Durant’s low trade value in the first place. He’s about to turn 37 and is on an expiring contract. The return was always going to lack major oomph.
But the second is Durant’s ability to sign a two-year extension this summer and how he was always going to have the ability to use that as leverage to go where he wants. He did that to tremendous effect.
Next are more direct faults of the Suns.
The entire league knew they, more or less, had to trade Durant. An illogical response would be the Suns could have run it back. In that scenario, Phoenix brings back someone who wanted to be dealt and didn’t get dealt. Also, the Suns would be reattempting a team connection that clearly did not jell at all for the third straight year while trying to enter a new era of basketball and establish a culture. Oh yeah, and he would have left for nothing the following summer or gone for even less at the deadline. Had to trade him.
Part of the reason why is that Phoenix put itself in this position. By unsuccessfully attempting to trade Durant behind his back in February, an absolute no-no to star players, they soured the relationship. Before that, Durant was for all intents and purposes committed to re-signing. This summer could have been easier had they not agreed to a deal with Golden State that Durant shot down, never tried to trade him at all or actually traded him at the deadline. Good on Durant for taking control after how the Suns did him, something you can tell is still fresh on his mind when speaking with FanDuel’s Kay Adams once the news dropped.
This precarious position was put in the hands of a first-time general manager with only one year of legitimate front office experience, one the rest of the league knew it could attempt to swindle with all the oldest tricks in the book. This was all with a franchise reeking of internal issues after its owner told his basketball operations staff he would now be more involved with his “innovative mindset.” Brian Gregory and owner Mat Ishbia got worked.
Lastly, Phoenix’s positioning in the second apron greatly restricted the amount of permutations a potential Durant deal could take on. More salary structures, such as including players from its own end to get more from Houston, could have helped this thing out a whole lot.
So there you have it. That is how they got that.
It’s hard not to feel like Phoenix got punked in this deal based on what the player return is and isn’t, backed into a corner forced to cough up their lunch money.
Green is as redundant as it gets for putting someone alongside Devin Booker in a backcourt. He’s a shoot-first guard, owning one of the worst assist-to-usage ratios in the league the last few years among combo guards, per Cleaning the Glass. Green has been a below average 3-point shooter to start his career, although he improved his catch-and-shoot percentage from deep to 40.9% this year. He still doesn’t have much of a skill set off the ball and is at best an average defender.
Brooks is in his prime right now, a 29-year-old menace unlike any other player in the league. He is the squarest possible peg to go in the square hole for the bullet points Phoenix’s front office harped on this offseason regarding grit, toughness and any other basketball cliche you can blindly pull out of a hat. Brooks is a much better fit on a contender, and given how Phoenix isn’t going anywhere anytime soon with an extremely limited amount of long-term assets, flipping Brooks to a playoff team trumps the value of culture building in this instance a la Aron Baynes or Jae Crowder.
Not coming away with Houston forward Jabari Smith Jr. is the baffling part of the negotiation aspect of this. Houston will now have Durant, Amen Thompson and Tari Eason on the wing, as well as Smith. Trade talks indicated Eason was never up for grabs in the first place, so the Suns really couldn’t get the Rockets to give them their fourth wing? Houston could be high on Smith’s potential still and that’s fine but he played 20 minutes per game in the playoffs. The Rockets at times closed with center Steven Adams over him, taking chances on playing “throw the ball off the rim and see if the big guy can grab the miss” offense instead of having another perimeter shooter and defender out there.
Durant’s large salary forced Green and either Brooks or Smith to be in the trade. By being in that aforementioned corner, Phoenix couldn’t even get other salaries into the mix, sprinkles of value beyond the second-rounders that would have been pretty meaningful. The Suns were never getting Reed Sheppard, the No. 3 overall pick last year, but could have snagged Cam Whitmore’s upside. Even former Suns Jock Landale or Aaron Holiday would have been something.
To make up for that, the Suns really couldn’t get another first-rounder from Houston? Not even their own in 2027 or 2029 back, mind you. Something of the Rockets’ directly a few years down the line? Even with some protections? No dice? Just a handful of seconds, huh?
This could be partially salvaged if the Suns rerouted Green. Gambadoro, however, is reporting that will not be the case.
That emphasizes the low value Green holds and a lack of interest in him on the trade market. Phoenix will instead choose to be stubborn and, let me know if this sounds familiar, try to prove everyone else wrong by rehabilitating his standing.
Green’s got a three-year, $106 million extension kicking in that has a player option on the third year. The No. 2 overall pick in 2021 was too inconsistent to warrant the typical max or close to it that most young guys with a high reputation get in their second contract.
Houston’s reluctancy in how the contract was shaped speaks for itself. The Rockets got better when Green wasn’t on the court, with the last three years representing a positive net rating change of 6.8, 3.1 and 1.5 respectively when Green was on the bench. His dud performance in the first round of the playoffs this year showed how long he has to go as a primary perimeter scorer on a good team.
Green’s at a weird crossroads because someone with his skill set failing to a certain degree could have been talked into how it’s time for a role transformation five years later into his career, embracing the use of their freakish athleticism on the defensive end while focusing on spot-up shooting and supplementary buckets. For a current archetype, look at Andrew Nembhard as an example currently in the spotlight. But Green isn’t turning 24 until February and has had a few different stretches where he’s looked like a future All-Star.
The issue, however, is he is going to require some very cohesive form of synergy on the pieces around him for this to succeed. Asking Booker to Point Book in a way that is based around elevating everyone else on the floor instead of maximizing what he does best is some flimsy and wobbling structure for an offensive identity.
Could Green come off the bench? Would he even buy into that? Wait a minute, this sounds familiar!
What’s an absolute certainty is that there is no room for Green and Bradley Beal on the roster. Everything Green would be trying to do is what Beal tried to make happen the last two seasons, and a much worse version of it at that.
In some kind of sick joke from the basketball gods, after the Suns were severely handicapped athletically last season by having too many similarly-sized players on the perimeter right around 6-foot-5, they traded their most athletic player (Durant) for two more guys that are around 6-foot-5. This makes it even more necessary to move off Beal, and others like Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale.
The only major plus of the deal is the 10th overall pick. Phoenix’s plan to reload its roster around Booker in the hopes of contending once more with him sometime in the near-ish future was only going to happen in its position by landing a high selection in the next draft or two. This year’s class includes a handful of prospects with high ceilings and loads of upside in that range. The selections at Nos. 10 and 29 are pivotal, and Suns fans better hope the Suns realize that instead of trying to trade them.
It is good for the Suns to replenish their collection of second-round picks as well. Gambadoro reports those five are No. 59 this year, two in 2026, Boston’s in 2030 and Houston’s in 2032. That’s not much in terms of adding to a young core but having those to flip in deals later is always nice.
To go back to the “pivot and reload” plan on Booker, that was always ambitious and would be for any front office. The Durant trade was Phoenix’s one premium chance to round up the long-term pieces to make that happen.
It was also our first chance to see how capable this iteration of the Suns front office is of achieving that, in some eyes, insurmountable goal. Confidence in its ability to do so has now reached an all-time low, and given how they got here, they have no one to blame but themselves.
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