Phoenix Suns Would Need Monster Offer to Consider Eric Bledsoe Trade
Eric Bledsoe can't catch a break.
Year after year, the Phoenix Suns point guard awaits a time when he can run his own team. So far, that moment hasn't happened.
With the Suns reportedly reaching a five-year, $70 million agreement with no-longer-free-agent-to-be point guard Brandon Knight, according to Gery Woelfel of the Racine Journal Times (via Sean Highkin of ProBasketballTalk), Bledsoe will once again have to share duties with another floor general—unless, of course, he doesn't.
Now, the Suns are "dangling" Bledsoe in the trade market, as reported by Sporting News' Sean Deveney last week.
Deveney added to that report Monday:
"The Kings, one source said, are expected to express interest in Bledsoe. While Sacramento has been buried in rumors involving center DeMarcus Cousins, a league executive said the Kings have been far more focused on improving the point guard position. The Kings started Darren Collison at the position, but would like to move him into a backup role. And if Sacramento keeps Cousins, bringing in his former Kentucky teammate and good friend surely would help to keep him happy.
The more likely scenario, though, will have the Suns approaching the Bledsoe situation with patience. There is more cap space available out on the free-agent market this summer than there is talent, and that could leave some teams desperate by mid-July, when the first wave of top free agents signs, and few players are remaining.
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It's almost like Bledsoe is cursed. He just can't find a basketball situation that works for him.
First, he was stuck under the wrath of former Los Angeles Clippers head coach Vinny Del Negro, who was responsible for pulling him from games upon singular, isolated mistakes early in his career.
Bledsoe averaged only 20.4 minutes per game during his and Del Negro's final season in Los Angeles, playing behind Chris Paul when he could've scored more time had he played alongside Paul more often. But I'm done striking up the memories of Bledsoe's stage plopped on the bench. It's too painful for Clippers fans.
When the Clippers traded him to the Suns, he was finally going to have his chance. Instead, he ended up splitting point guard duties with Goran Dragic, who had a breakout season playing the 2 alongside Bled, who works best when he does most of the handling.
This past season put Bledsoe in an even worse situation, even if he did hit 2,000 minutes for the first time in his career. The Suns' three-point-guard experiment didn't work. Their remedy? Trade Dragic and the newly acquired Isaiah Thomas and bring in another point guard, Brandon Knight, in the process.
Now, it's happening again. With Knight re-signing for the same amount of years and dollars as Bledsoe, one of the most powerful and exciting 1-guards in the league, someone who hasn't gotten the national spotlight because he's been hidden for most of his career, is continuing to float into the NBA abyss.
So just as we hear the same stuff we once did in Los Angeles—"Bledsoe never caused any issues publicly or privately, sources said, but his performance suffered," Deveney wrote—Bledsoe's name comes up in trade rumors once again.
But the Suns can't just deal their best player because of a complication they created with their never-ending assembly line of point guards. Even if they're worried about how the roster might mesh, giving away Bledsoe at a discount would contradict the logic Phoenix used when it started accumulating all those point guards last summer.
The result of the three-point-guard experiment was a disaster. There's no question about that. A season after winning 48 games and falling just one win short of a surprise playoff appearance, the Suns fell below .500. And some of the blame for the falloff has to be attributed to the chemistry issues that surfaced because of that three-headed monster at the 1.
There was logic to the original decision-making process, though.
Phoenix put its faith in assets over all else. It's a similar, but less masochistic, spin on what Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie is doing 2,300 miles east. Pick up guys on undervalued contracts and then flip them when they're at the peak of their powers (or at least the peak of their value).
The Suns didn't head into the previous offseason seeking out a third point guard when they already had Bledsoe and Dragic. They merely read the market, saw that Thomas wasn't fielding huge offers and signed a 20-point-a-night scorer to a team-friendly, four-year, $27 million contract. Predictably for some and unpredictably for others, egos got in the way of the process playing out the way general manager Ryan McDonough had hoped.
When Phoenix traded Thomas and some others, at least it got back a haul that included Knight and a draft pick. It gave up an asset and received two more. If the team is to deal Bledsoe, a two-way point guard who's the obviously superior player to Knight, it can't settle for 90 cents on the dollar.
Accruing assets only to turn them over for fractions of their value defeats the whole purpose of the method.
We're talking about a 25-year-old with All-Defense potential, someone with the brawn and athleticism few or no other point guards not named Russell Westbrook can match—someone who slashes to the rim with ferocity, who drives and kicks like one of the 10 best 1s in the league, who has shot a phenomenal 67 percent at the rim since coming to Phoenix.
The injury history (he had knee cartilage problems that led to surgery in 2011-12 and meniscus surgery on that same knee in 2013-14) contributes to a decreased trade value, and you have to wonder how the reputation of the Suns training staff affects the way other teams evaluate the health of Phoenix players.
Phoenix has the most respected training staff in the NBA. It's possible that teams are thinking, "Sure, Bledsoe stayed healthy this season, but how am I supposed to know he can do that once he leaves the Suns' ridiculous training regimen?"
Grant Hill broke down after leaving, when the Suns kept him healthy for years. Steve Nash, too. Of course, those guys were of far more advanced ages than a point guard who's barely old enough to rent a car in all 50 states.
But that's all speculation.
In the end, Bledsoe is just a going-on-sixth-year point guard who's yet to find a team to place him in a role that fits. If the Suns do unload him, we should all hope—for our sake and his—that one of the NBA's most exciting players ends up embedded in a cranny in which he can truly shine.
Follow Fred Katz on Twitter at @FredKatz.
All statistics are current as of June 30 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com unless noted otherwise. Salary information is courtesy of Basketball Insiders.
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