The Phoenix Suns are attempting to remove themselves from a bad position at the moment, and there’s no sugarcoating it. They are more than two years removed from the blockbuster trades that brought both Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to Arizona — deals that initially inspired optimism but have since loomed over the Valley as some of the most detrimental mistakes in franchise history.
But how big a mistake did the Suns make?
ESPN’s Zach Kram ranked the league’s biggest roster decisions since 2020, and the Suns’ two trades combined to rank as the second-worst roster decision in the last five years.
The only reason the Suns weren’t graded with the worst mistake was because of the Dallas Mavericks’ decision to trade Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers earlier this year, one of the most shocking and polarizing trades in NBA history.
Kram believes the Suns’ insistence on winning in the present led to their bad decision-making. The Suns mortgaged their future by giving away 10 picks in total (four first-round picks) in the combined deals for Durant and Beal.
Kram writes:
The total cost for Durant and Beal, counting the extra picks that Brooklyn and Washington landed when they rerouted Bridges, Johnson and Paul, was 12 first-round picks and six swaps, plus by far the most expensive roster in the NBA and extraordinary punishments wrought by the second apron.
And the reward for all of that aggressive spending? A second-round playoff loss in Durant’s first season, a first-round sweep in his second (Beal’s first) and an 11th-place finish in the West last season.
Now Durant has been traded away for much less than what brought him to Phoenix; Beal has been bought out and stretched, and will count $19.4 million against the Suns’ cap for the next half-decade; and the Suns don’t control their first-round pick until 2032. No franchise in the NBA is in a worse long-term situation than Phoenix.
The insistence on building a championship-level super team started the moment Mat Ishbia assumed control as the Suns’ new owner in February 2023. Just a day after he took over, he set in motion the mammoth deal made with the Brooklyn Nets that resulted in the acquisition of Durant.
In the summer, the Suns went a step further, trading Chris Paul for Bradley Beal, whose no-trade clause and $207.7 million left on his contract plagued the Suns’ financial flexibility throughout his entire tenure with the team before he was bought and stretched out last week.
The gamble was a monumental miss for the Suns as they never even won a playoff game with the trio of Devin Booker, Durant and Beal. In their lone trip to the playoffs in 2023, the trio was swept by Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round.
The failed Durant and Beal experiment not only resulted in the loss of numerous first- and second-round picks but also in the departures of talented Suns players in Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson and Chris Paul.
The Suns’ future is looking bleak at the moment, as they aren’t in control of their first-round picks until 2032 and their cap space is in a severe situation with Beal’s contract being stretched out for the next half-decade.
They were able to begin their roster rebuild over the offseason with the return haul from the Durant trade, which resulted in the arrival of Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks and the 10th overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, Duke center Khaman Maluach.
The Suns also used their late first-round pick to trade for Hornets center Mark Williams.
The Suns will head into the new season with Booker at the helm once again but with a new task of rebuilding the team with an entirely new core around him.
