This summer, Kevin Durant will be the big domino to fall — all signs point to Durant and the Suns parting ways in a trade. Don’t take my or any other reporter’s word for it, listen to what Suns owner Mat Ishbia — whose “all-in” aggressive style led to the trades to acquire Durant and Bradley Beal — told ESPN’s Tim MacMahon:
According to Ishbia, a “pivot and reload” around Booker could be the direction the franchise chooses this summer.
Plenty of front office people around the league think the Suns should take one more step: Trade Devin Booker. The Rockets are interested and control many of the future picks that Phoenix traded away (the Suns don’t fully control their own first-round pick until 2032). This situation could be similar to Brooklyn, where the team trades to regain control of its own picks, allowing for a true bottom-up rebuild.
That is not happening. Ishbia made that crystal clear.
“Never happen,” Ishbia said, interrupting the question. “It’s silly. So here’s what I’ll tell you: I have Devin Booker in the prime. In order to win an NBA championship, you got to have a superstar. You got to have a great player.”
What’s more, Booker doesn’t want it. Booker has long idolized Kobe Bryant, one of the few players in recent decades to spend his entire career with one team, and Booker wants to follow in those footsteps.
“I take pride in the community in Phoenix, the people that have supported me since I was 18 when things were ugly. And the people that are with us, we just fell short of accomplishing what we want. So I want to do it, and I want to do it here. That’s the responsibility of being a franchise player, and I wear that with honor. So it might not look the most pretty right now, but we got to get it done and I’m going to do it.”
There should be no doubt Booker means every word of this. However, the list of superstar players who have said they never wanted to leave a city and then asked for a trade a few years later is longer than we have room for on the Internet. The real question is how Booker feels in a couple of years (as his next contract starts to come up) if the team isn’t contending and he sees no path forward.
Ishbia doesn’t plan to find out because he wants a quick pivot to move this team back into contention. Fast. How the Suns do that while also reaching the goal of getting under the second tax apron next season will be a Herculean task for GM James Jones.
It’s going to be a wild summer in Phoenix. Just don’t expect a “trade Booker” wild summer. He’s staying.
