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The Phoenix Suns have officially pulled the trigger on a franchise-altering move, sending 15-time All-Star Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets. After weeks of speculation, proposals, and rumored multi-team negotiations, the final deal was surprisingly straightforward. Two teams, one superstar, and a future reset in motion.
When the news broke, most Suns fans weren’t surprised by one of the core pieces coming back to Phoenix: Jalen Green. The former No. 2 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft was always going to be part of the return package. He had to in order for the money to work.
But his fit in Phoenix? That’s where things get murky.
Green is, for all intents and purposes, a shooting guard. A 6’4” scorer with athleticism to spare. So is Devin Booker. So is Bradley Beal. And now, if the roster remains unchanged, Phoenix will allocate an eye-popping $140.1 million next season to the shooting guard position alone. That’s over 90% of the projected salary cap dedicated to three players who thrive in the same space on the floor.
It’s a logjam. An expensive one.
So surely, logic says Jalen Green is being acquired with another move in mind. Maybe Green is a trade asset in waiting. Maybe flexibility is the real prize here.
But if you ask Arizona Sports insider John Gambadoro, that’s not the case. According to his reporting, the Suns fully intend to keep Green and pair him in the backcourt alongside Devin Booker.
That’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it leads to playoff wins…or just another episode of “Whose Team Is It Anyway?” starring Devin Booker and friends.
It’s déjà vu all over again. A decade ago, the Suns trotted out a three-headed point guard experiment with Eric Bledsoe, Goran Dragic, and Isaiah Thomas, a trio that looked great in NBA2K but had all the chemistry of oil and water in real life.
Now? It’s the remix. Three shooting guards, all under 6’6”, all wired to score, and all sharing one basketball. If they’re all still on the roster when media day arrives the least they can do is recreate that iconic photo, the modern-day version of “who gets the last shot?” just with slightly different hairstyles and slightly bigger paychecks.
From a roster construction standpoint, it feels like the Suns are trying to run a triangle offense without any corners. Three talented guards, one shared skillset, zero clarity.
One of the few logical conclusions to draw from the current state of the Suns’ roster is this: they’re preparing to move on from Bradley Beal. And after the Kevin Durant trade, the path to doing so becomes a bit more intriguing.
A buyout-and-waive of Beal — which would put nearly $97 million on the books in dead cap over five years (roughly $19 million annually) — is the nuclear option. It might create some short-term financial flexibility, but it would cripple the Suns competitively. No contending team survives with that much dead money weighing them down.
But Phoenix didn’t just ship out Durant. They restocked their war chest. In the trade with Houston, they regained their own 2025 first-round pick — now the No. 10 selection in this year’s draft — along with five second-rounders, including pick No. 59. For a team that’s been asset-poor for years, that’s a notable shift.
And suddenly, the math changes.
Could the Suns now package Beal and the No. 10 pick to make a trade more palatable to potential suitors? Could attaching draft capital help unload Beal’s contract and, in the process, give Phoenix a chance to reshape the roster with more balance and positional logic?
It’s all speculation for now. But the clock is ticking. The draft is days away.
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