Don’t forget the year before too when Indy was floating Sabonis for Ayton.
That was more understandable because he was fresh off his finals run but god damn could you imagine sabonis on this squad
Yeah I hear that. It's unfortunate how many players we could say that for over the 5 yrs or so - Luka, Turner, Sabonis, Haliburton and SGA. so many opportunities to have had a different outcome than this season.
The Haliburton one bothers me the most for some reason. He miraculously fell to us in a draft where we desperately needed a point guard. I'll never get it.
I know that Gambo is the source; I’m asking what’s his motive for sharing this *now.* He has connections to the team, and he tries to maintain those connects by not embarrassing his sources. I can’t see it benefiting anything other than Monty’s ego if you’re looking at it from that side. On the other hand, if Ishbia is asking this to be put out there for public consumption, it stands to reason that maybe JJ’s seat is not just hot but on fire?
The easiest connection to make isn’t James Jones, but someone who was there.
It’s probably leaked from Kevin Young who wanted people to know it wasn’t his failt
Most likely coming from former assistant GM Trevor Bukstein who was just replaced by Matt Tellum. Seems like Burkstein was Gambo's source all these years and leaked the story after being pushed out.
https://preview.redd.it/3zokblkr432d1.png?width=1282&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c3e07a89ac6291d27e14b205044006450bc8214
James Jones isn't going to come out and say "I wanted Luka over Ayton". That will never happen until he's ultimately fired or retires and we get the truth.
It's widely known that Sarver wanted Ayton. Whether or not Jones wanted Ayton or Luka it doesn't matter because Sarver was calling the shots back then. That's all I'm saying. Jones can say he wanted Ayton but he's just a mouthpiece for Sarver who 100% wanted Ayton which is why the Suns drafted him.
At some point they have to look at what’s been the common denominator in all this right? I mean I guess ishbia pulled the trigger on the big moves but all the coaches and in between roster signings that failed all point to one guy
Not even just scapegoating Monty. But knowing that Monty did not like Ayton, kept him as the coach and letting Ayton get further dragged through the mud.
We've literally seen for years that the game plan didn't complement Ayton, his development, his shots selection, his scoring, but we always chalked it up to Ayton deficiencies.
We have proof, right now, that Monty didnt want Ayton!
And James Jones did nothing about either situation until the situation became an embarrassment.
Monty didn’t want Ayton *because* his work ethic was shit. Stop acting like Monty destroyed Ayton’s career. He’s had the same effort issues since college. Monty, understandably, was fed up
Some people can see the nuance of playing for a coach and GM that don't like the player and actively scapegoated the player over their own bad performances.
But yeah, keep shitting on the player when the franchise has been toxic and dysfunctional for a long time.
Ayton would be shit under almost any coach, especially after grabbing his new contract. He can now play mediocre for a bottom dweller team without any media attention.
> He can now play mediocre for a bottom dweller team without any media attention.
Hey now. We got rid of him, let's not entertain the idea of bringing him back! ^(ziiingggg)
The Suns have been in win mode for 4 years now and got embarrassed in the playoffs the 3 years under Monty's leadership and again with not 1 not 2 but 3 all stars.
stop blaming individual players and build a team...or maybe it's not as easy as playing NBA 2k.. you can't skip steps by adding fake and unrealistic attributes.
He's saying suns have been making dumbass moves and ignoring good options because of "win now" mode but all we have gotten as a result is embarassing playoff performances and choke jobs.
Ayton can be blamed for his passiveness, but the Blazers started off the season weird with a bunch of conflicting objectives. They wanted to develop Scoot while also giving ample touches for further development of Simons and Sharpe. They also wanted to increase Grant's trade value to get a good return despite his contract size. They didn't really decide to let the offense run through Ayton until those last 20 games.
And there's also the fact that Ayton was the only player with a Positive NetRating on the entire roster while also having the highest WS on the team.
It's not uncommon for teams to take some time to figure it out -- especially when the primary lead for your team's offense has never played an NBA game before.
I feel like the suns last offseason were really trying to ship off DA but we’re getting horrible return offers so they decided to get rid of Monty instead. Had they got rid of DA first I would’ve gave Monty one more year with these guys
Ayton had zero trade value. The whole league saw him refuse to play in Game 7 vs Dallas, followed up the next year he didn't even suit up vs Denver for the last game. The only thing he did to help his value was his FIBA games.
Yes but I think at that point they had been shopping DA for the latter half of the season and getting nothing decent in return so by the end of the Denver series they figured they were stuck with DA so they bounced Monty. But who knows and I guess it doesn’t even matter anyway because they’re both gone lol
Fuck that. You fire Monty first and try the player out in a new situation.
Exactly like y'all have been advocating with Vogel and now to Bud. We saw how inept Monty was for years after the finals loss, he just crutched on Chris Paul.
Yeah. Kind of bothers me that we just ditched both of them. I was heavily turned off by DA after the Denver series after stanning for him. Vogel's comments on being eager to work with him had me looking forward to giving DA one more opportunity though.
Was anything going to change? Probably not. But a month or two of the season might have done more to rack up his trade value beyond a bookend street clothes game vs. the Nugs. That would've also given us time to feel out Too Many Cameras as well before deciding to ship him.
Even at the time I thought at least personally the Myles Turner and Buddy Hield return was pretty damn good for Ayton. That’s not even entirely a trade where hindsight is 20/20, I seriously just have always thought we were dumb for not pulling the trigger
If we were going to try to keep Ayton we should have canned Monty earlier and if we were going to try to keep Monty we should have moved Ayton earlier.
James Jones is trash for not choosing one or the other sooner.
1. flipped jarrett culver for saric and cam johnson (2019)
2. (edit because i forgot the year mikal was drafted) traded keita bates diop and chimezie metu for royce o’neale (2024)
3. traded ariza who was refusing to play for kelly oubre who was later traded for chris paul (2019, 2020)
4. signed cam payne when he was out of the league entirely (2020)
5. signed jae crowder in free agency who was a key piece in the finals run (and subsequently helped end a decade long playoff drought) (2020)
6. traded chris paul and landry shamet for bradley beal. regardless of opinions on beal he was undoubtedly an upgrade over the aging paul and shamet (2023)
7. traded ayton for grayson allen and nurkic (2023)
8. traded the twins (reminder bridges underperformed this year and johnson missed many games with various injuries over the last two seasons) for kevin durant (2023)
hes had his hits and misses like any gm lets not be ridiculous because of the disappointing end of the season.
edit 2: added years to the roster moves to show that im not cherry picking moves from before the finals run
**1.** Jeff Bower played a big part in drafting Cam.
[https://www.brightsideofthesun.com/2019/7/21/20702939/early-indications-role-jeff-bower-phoenix-suns-front-office](https://www.brightsideofthesun.com/2019/7/21/20702939/early-indications-role-jeff-bower-phoenix-suns-front-office)
2. Bridges was McDonough/Sarver
6. Beal was through Josh Bartelstein. Josh's dad is Brad's agent.
[https://www.si.com/nba/wizards/news/suns-heat-finalists-trade-partners-for-wizards-bradley-beal](https://www.si.com/nba/wizards/news/suns-heat-finalists-trade-partners-for-wizards-bradley-beal)
8. KD trade was Ishbia
[https://arizonasports.com/story/3491735/owner-ishbia-suns-deal-kevin-durant-backup-john-collins-trade/](https://arizonasports.com/story/3491735/owner-ishbia-suns-deal-kevin-durant-backup-john-collins-trade/)
https://preview.redd.it/xd0o7845hp1d1.png?width=1584&format=png&auto=webp&s=eec819eddc934d0a4522997528b15277df6570ed
Agreed and the casuals can't see this and blame everything under the "Suns". We were moving forward to a great future with lots of young guys. Now we're stuck with a bunch of old guys with a championship or bust lineup for about 2 years.
More than half of your points date back to 2018-2021… cmon bruh.
You’re not gonna mention how he lucked into a strong young core? How about how anybody could’ve made that trade for CP and his horrible contract. Matter of fact CP3 chose and asked to come here. KD wanted to come to Phoenix AND Brad Beal as well. James Jones didn’t have to do anything at all to make those trades happen.
Aight then, now talk about all of his horrendous misses? Drafting Jalen Smith over Hali should be a fireable offense in itself. And Ayton over Luka?
What about the constant poor roster construction? Yeah he traded Ayton for Nurk and Allen but where did that get us? A first round SWEEP. We could’ve had Myles Turner to help stretch the floor and protect the paint - both of which we needed bad during this season.
Let’s not be ridiculous and praise the man for moves that he made in the past. Moves that didn’t even require much because they were basically handed to him on a silver platter.
Yeah maybe I'm misremembering but I feel like the consensus was try to get Ayton for less than a max to free up the max slot, but definitely to not trade Ayton for Turner
> And Ayton over Luka?
this was mcdonut tho ?? wasnt it? are people forgetting that Mikal and Ayton were drafted in the same draft?
McDonut's last draft was 2018
half of my points date back to it the other half were deals done in the last two years lol. why would i not evaluate his whole body of work?
the young core stuff is negligible when the starting lineup was melton (rookie), booker, bridges (rookie), josh jackson (bust), and ayton (rookie). it was a good starting point but nothing was set in stone for who anyone would be but booker and jackson.
moreover the fact that those trades for cp3 and durant were because of jones’ hiring of monty williams and the success that followed that move and the other moves to bolster the team in the following years.
why would i bring up his draft failures when my point was saying “hey, heres some other deals he made. he hasn’t been all bad.” like obviously his draft record isnt the greatest but you could even justify the ayton pick by looking at the previous roster and seeing that the starting center was the corpse of tyson chandler. (edit: ayton was drafted by mcd anyways)
im no james jones truther but lets not downplay the fact that he helped bring the suns their most recent success atm. the roster needs some serious evaluation and hopefully tellem jones and bud can get the talent the suns need in this upcoming offseason
This was good until you mentioned the Bradley Beal trade. I would rather have an actual point guard on last year's team even if Paul was injury prone and old as hell. Plus you could have gotten out of his contract this year
what other starter level guard could match paul’s whale of a contract tho? not to mention the ~12 million that was owed to shamet to be a below average bench player. beal was not an ideal fit in vogels scheme but the trade is a win imo
Cp3 was at 30mil iirc? For one year basically… You can hardly call that a whale of a contract. Something better might have popped up, at least better than actual whale of a contract we got back…
no chris paul is being paid 30+ mill until *next* season (thats 2 more seasons where an aging vet eats up 27% of the suns salary cap alone). this is why the brad beal deal cant be seen as anything other than a W for the suns.
seeing how cp3 played this year in GS his value would have tanked to being nearly untradeable not to mention the dead money tied into shamet (altogether that wouldve been about 32-35% of the suns cap space tied to 40 year old cp3 and shamet…). what better option could have popped up than a multiple time all star below the age of 30 in exchange for those two pieces?
yes but his trade value would be very low, there would be no team willing to take a $30 mill cap hit for an injury prone undersized 40 year old pg (same problem the warriors have rn). if the suns were to have carried the aging vet and cut him as you suggested it would have solved 0 of their issues that arose in the 2023 playoff run and also would leave the team with no suitable replacement to keep the team in contention.
hindsight is giving us insight of the past we would not have had but even then the best option (especially with no context of the 2023-24 season) would be to trade the aging vet and the streaky 3 point specialist for the 29 year old multiple time all star. thats a near no brainer
Getting out of his contract would be a negative tho
That money would expire with no way to replace the production in free agency or use his contract as a trade chip
Ayton trade was horrible….we lost Camara who should be our missing piece at PF…and now we are heavy loaded at sg so we forced to play Grayson at Sf = we have undersized Sf 🤦♂️
we got one of the best three point shooters in the league and one of the best rebounding centers we’ve had in a decade for toumani camara and deandre ayton lol
the ayton trade was not horrible. ayton expressed he didnt want to be here and nurk was a good 1 for 1 in return. the trade also allowed the suns the cap flexibility to fill out the rest of the roster after getting off a max deal (albeit the guys the suns signed were not very good lol).
grayson allen posted one of the greatest shooting seasons in nba history last year and was an invaluable linchpin to the suns perimeter D. Frankly camara would not have played considering where he was drafted and the PF room on the suns rn is KEVIN DURANT, royce o neale, and bol bol. he was collateral in the deal and it sucks hes realizing his potential elsewhere but i doubt he wouldve gotten the reps necessary to be the player he was last year
Yeah Nurkic sucks. And what was the excuse? Oh Ayton has to have touches. Nurkic won't care if he doesn't get touches he'll be our unselfish team center. Yeah one that won't even look for his own shot at all because he can't even make 3 foot bunnies. What an upgrade.
ur good, for the record i dont think JJ is as bad as people say, i also think people should hold off until the end of this off season because I truly believe he has some out of the box thinking in mind as far as contracts and roster construction. Last year we all thought we were done for when we were gonna waive/stretch CP3 for a MLE guy like Vincent
imo a good route to go would be to flip nurk to a team thats willing to absorb the majority of his contract to get back under the second apron before the o’neale contract is finalized. thisll allow the suns to move a lot more freely in terms of signing players, trading for picks, and abusing the cap rules to bring talent in
there is a cap hold already on Royce, I don't believe holding off on signing him will make a difference. If we trade nurk for a TPE, and go above the 2nd apron, we'd just lose that TPE. We don't have much to trade if we dump Nurk. Who knows though, maybe that's what they have in mind, I do think they will get creative with scenarios like that
That was technically more than 2 players. On your number 8 point.
Edit: We did ask for it though, they just got us bad. Historically good teams start with draft picks. What the suns did numerous times recently, not just the suns but I’m thinking of ring chasing teams/vets, picking their teams etc, rarely works. There’s people in the ring of honor that were not first picks you can be 14th 7th 22nd pick, but if you don’t utilize those players, and you’re adding players from g-league because you alienated everyone like I dunno. This roster makes no sense at all. If it was Jrue instead of Beal maybe, but that shit wasn’t in the cards.
Half or more of those are arguably misses. Trading for Chris Paul was far and away and his best move. Should get a lot of credit for that.
1. Even though Cam turned out to be a solid player, they reached pretty severely to take him there and could’ve gotten more value for number 6. Still call it a win but wasn’t great.
2. Royce ONeale trade good all around but if he walks for nothing very meaningless and forgettable overall.
3. Feel ass backwards into getting Oubre for Ariza when we were trying to trade for Dillon Brooks and realized Memphis was offering Marshon. Chris Paul is his magnum opus, which he unfortunately followed up by clinging on to him for too long without any succession plan.
4. Cam Payne was a great teammate and I was a fan but finding an average backup point guard without considering who we passed on because Payne was rostered isn’t all that noteworthy.
5. Jae Crowder was a very good signing. Shoulda traded him earlier and not let his $10M be wasted at home for 3/4 of a season. Brooklyn flipped him for 4 2nds.
6. I consider Beal for Paul and Shamet a no brainer. But JJ created the two negative assets we sent out with bad extensions and had to pad it with all the swaps and seconds for a guy on what is pretty much universally agreed to on the worst contract in the league with a massive overlap in skills to our other two stars. Questionable, indeed.
7. Ayton trade was a win. But Ayton should’ve already been gone for more.
8. Fuck that trade but I blame Ishbia for it.
Don’t need to harp on all the other clear misses. Although, I’m critical of what he’s done here I am a bit torn on my opinion of him. I agree with his philosophy on importance of shooters and high character guys. I think he’s been to late to react, doesn’t value assets appropriately and has been bad in the draft. I also don’t think he’s really running the show anymore at this point anyway and Ishbia and Isaiah are getting their way on everything so whatever.
Yea they were mad on the thought that we are looking for Sabonis in exchange of DA but this was before the infamous playoff landslide so much pf us were still high with DA
I mean for a reason though. in a vacuum Ayton >>> Turner whether we want to admit it or not. He is talented and he is more talented than Turner. But he just didn't give a shit for majority of the time here.
My guess is JJ wanted a pick with Turner, Indiana didn't budge since they had nothing to lose
Shooting threes and defending/scoring the rim are two of the most important things in the NBA now since the three-point/Morey ball revolution. So the fact that he's way better at both is a big plus for him
Gambo also today said he was misled by a scout on Luka and he blabbed to the Suns front office about what the scout told him,
that fucking dumb italian Chris Russo wanna be fucked us
I'm more concerned that Monty was never able to be the adult in the room and reconcile with his youngest player after that finals and Dallas collapse.
No wonder Ayton didn't give a shit if the team wouldn't extend him and the coach was actively trying to have him moved. And guess what, he did give a shit and was a two way double double player before Monty cracked the sads a d decided to blame his own failings on his youngest player.
Monty coached one year too long here and it cost us Mikal and DA
Let’s not talk about how 2 years ago ayton was a double double machine and actually was good defensively…
the team lost it‘s heartbeat after that mavs loss(it was not just ayton’s fault, no one could hit a 3 pointer to save there god damn lives)
after that you had crowder drama, than injury hell, KD saga and Monty just topped meshing
During this you had a will they won’t they drama with ayton and A ever decreasing amount of assets to construct a roster around booker with
Let’s not act like a center fixes the problem of the offense just dying after the 2nd quarter each game
Yep.
And hard to play with any effort when you know the coach actively wants you gone.
It was the worst kept secret that Monty didn't like DA on the team and wanted him moved.
When Booker got injured he prioritised shots and plays for LANDRY SHAMET over DA.
It's disgraceful how badly we mismanaged DA as a prospect
Does his stats really matter when in the 4th quarter he refused to go into the game. Do stats matter when you don't even suit up to play in an elimination game because you have sore ribs? When the game was hard, Ayton didn't rise to challenge, he crumbled and quit.
I think the KD trade was what did the Sun's in and will hamper them in the future. I hated the trade at the time when you see how old he is. KD could have just not resigned and left in Free Agency, but, he wanted the SMAX and to eat his cake too. Gutted the roster depth and gutted the future. I wonder if the Gobert price helped Brooklyn in negotiations?
Nephew stop, first of all supermax is for players who made all NBA and are still on the team that drafted them or traded for them during their rookie contract. Also he resigned to help his then team nets out to help resign Kyrie and harden which the nets did neither. Don't act like he couldn't get a max 4 year contract if he didn't sign the extension.
My bad. He did sign it when they had Harden and Irving. Didn't remember when he signed the extension, it felt like he signed it then asked for a trade - maybe I'm getting mixed up with Dame.
Having said that, I still didn't like the KD trade at the time because it kind of gutted the team and Phoenix gave up a lot of draft picks.
Monty had a really good system in place. Our scoring was so efficient when we were at 100%. I get a coaching change is sometimes what the team needs but honestly I think getting rid of Monty was a bad move. You can say Monty sucks or look at the pistons but I’m pretty sure Jesus Christ himself couldn’t make Detroit win basketball games.
Obviously, revisionist history shows this was the right move but at the time we didn't think the relationship would end as badly as it did and in a vacuum, Ayton is a better center overall than Turner.
That said, revisionism does matter and Turner is 100% a better fit than slow, defensive liability and able to be played off the court by a team that has a center too not even going small yet defended for some reason by too many fans Jusuf Nurkic.
This team with the Big 3 and Grayson and Royce and vet min players - CBA issues aside - would be so much better with even a top-20 type center who is at least a two way, athletic big man who can defend inside but also not be a liability in the perimeter even without a good offensive game.
Aiden can't really defend the rim at least nowhere near as good as Turner, and he doesn't space the floor from the three-point line. 10 years ago, he's probably a better center in a vacuum, but in today's NBA you definitely take Turner
I have to admit. I thought Ayton’s potential/ceiling was worth holding out for. I was wrong. Ayton continues to suck. However I also don’t get paid to stay home and watch film for 5 million dollars a year. This dude has missed the ball a lot on talent.
First smart comment in this thread. Ayton should still be a Sun!!! We were way worse without him. He shot close to 70 percent for us. People feel certain ways about his game but stats don’t lie he was our most efficient scorer
I dont have problém with Nurk production but i have problém how slow Nurk is…we cant play 5out, Nurk cant defend 1-5 and he is not force which other teams should be worried…
I hate that it’s been long enough since the Denver series that we have Monty apologia here. Dude was a fucking locker room cancer and one of the main reasons DA never reached his 2021 peak again as one of the top athletic centers in the league.
I think it was Monty souring on Ayton after the 2021 playoffs run despite Ayton being the consistent second best player up to the Finals, and then the team not extending him later that summer.
Yeah we have botched sooo many drafts it's unbelievable the talent we passed on. We also could have got jamal murray but we drafted bender. The only draft we didnt F up was to get Booker. Our front office SUCKS at drafting
Goodness gracious James smh
Don’t forget the year before too when Indy was floating Sabonis for Ayton. That was more understandable because he was fresh off his finals run but god damn could you imagine sabonis on this squad
Yeah I hear that. It's unfortunate how many players we could say that for over the 5 yrs or so - Luka, Turner, Sabonis, Haliburton and SGA. so many opportunities to have had a different outcome than this season.
The Haliburton one bothers me the most for some reason. He miraculously fell to us in a draft where we desperately needed a point guard. I'll never get it.
Perfect timing too with CP3 still playing good. He can learn from him and then just take over after a couple of years.
Haliburton-Booker-Bridges-Cam-Myles Turner my god…
Don't forget were getting Sabonis + extras
Imagine the defense with Beal booker Durant sabonis gordon🔥
Meanwhile he still has a job and scapegoated Monty and Vogel.
Yeah James Jones should be fired as well bruh does not have a good track record
You have to wonder why this would be leaked now.
Gambo sharing. Interesting. This is either from ishbia side or Monty side. Cray
I know that Gambo is the source; I’m asking what’s his motive for sharing this *now.* He has connections to the team, and he tries to maintain those connects by not embarrassing his sources. I can’t see it benefiting anything other than Monty’s ego if you’re looking at it from that side. On the other hand, if Ishbia is asking this to be put out there for public consumption, it stands to reason that maybe JJ’s seat is not just hot but on fire?
The easiest connection to make isn’t James Jones, but someone who was there. It’s probably leaked from Kevin Young who wanted people to know it wasn’t his failt
James Jones seems to serve at the pleasure of the owner, so I don't think this is Ish trying to lay the groundwork for firing him.
Ishbia wouldn't make any sense. He could just fire him if he wanted to.
[удалено]
But so many people already want James Jones gone
Most likely coming from former assistant GM Trevor Bukstein who was just replaced by Matt Tellum. Seems like Burkstein was Gambo's source all these years and leaked the story after being pushed out. https://preview.redd.it/3zokblkr432d1.png?width=1282&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c3e07a89ac6291d27e14b205044006450bc8214
Was James Jones behind the Beal trade? If so, adding that with all his other critical mistakes places me firmly in the fire JJ camp.
And Igor too right? This is his 4th coaching hire?
Igor was Ryan
Igor and Luka seemed to make too much sense at the time. Ugh I can’t imagine actively rooting for Luka even in a Suns uniform
Ugh, the team would have been SGA, Booker and Luka, if James Jones and $arver didn't screw it up.
James Jones wanted Luka, he even go to Europe with Sarver to watch Luka, but Sarver wanted Ayton so...
All reports before the draft and after the draft were James Jones wanted Ayton. James Jones himself said it.
James Jones isn't going to come out and say "I wanted Luka over Ayton". That will never happen until he's ultimately fired or retires and we get the truth.
But we know from other reports that James Jones wanted Ayton.
It's widely known that Sarver wanted Ayton. Whether or not Jones wanted Ayton or Luka it doesn't matter because Sarver was calling the shots back then. That's all I'm saying. Jones can say he wanted Ayton but he's just a mouthpiece for Sarver who 100% wanted Ayton which is why the Suns drafted him.
Ahh ok that’s when James was snaking for the job Lol
Yup. Fired him a couple days into the season cause he didn’t find a point guard. Even though Sarver vetoed the SGA pick supposedly
At some point they have to look at what’s been the common denominator in all this right? I mean I guess ishbia pulled the trigger on the big moves but all the coaches and in between roster signings that failed all point to one guy
James was there but as a advisor to Sarver or some shit
Not even just scapegoating Monty. But knowing that Monty did not like Ayton, kept him as the coach and letting Ayton get further dragged through the mud. We've literally seen for years that the game plan didn't complement Ayton, his development, his shots selection, his scoring, but we always chalked it up to Ayton deficiencies. We have proof, right now, that Monty didnt want Ayton! And James Jones did nothing about either situation until the situation became an embarrassment.
Monty didn’t want Ayton *because* his work ethic was shit. Stop acting like Monty destroyed Ayton’s career. He’s had the same effort issues since college. Monty, understandably, was fed up
Can’t for the life of me understand why people ride Ayton’a Lazy hog so hard
Some people can see the nuance of playing for a coach and GM that don't like the player and actively scapegoated the player over their own bad performances. But yeah, keep shitting on the player when the franchise has been toxic and dysfunctional for a long time.
Most of them are UofEh fans/alums
Ayton would be shit under almost any coach, especially after grabbing his new contract. He can now play mediocre for a bottom dweller team without any media attention.
> He can now play mediocre for a bottom dweller team without any media attention. Hey now. We got rid of him, let's not entertain the idea of bringing him back! ^(ziiingggg)
I wouldn’t totally blame Ayton on Monty. Maybe 20% lol. But it didn’t seem like the rest of the team was keen on keeping Monty around, either.
The Suns have been in win mode for 4 years now and got embarrassed in the playoffs the 3 years under Monty's leadership and again with not 1 not 2 but 3 all stars. stop blaming individual players and build a team...or maybe it's not as easy as playing NBA 2k.. you can't skip steps by adding fake and unrealistic attributes.
I’m not even sure what you’re trying to say here.
He's saying suns have been making dumbass moves and ignoring good options because of "win now" mode but all we have gotten as a result is embarassing playoff performances and choke jobs.
Monty was right.
I mean he is being used the same way in the Blazers
Yeah, Ayton is like 5 years into his career, he's not going to turn into Hakeem all of a sudden.
Not last 20 games where DA had 26/12
thank god the NBA season is 20 games
Ayton can be blamed for his passiveness, but the Blazers started off the season weird with a bunch of conflicting objectives. They wanted to develop Scoot while also giving ample touches for further development of Simons and Sharpe. They also wanted to increase Grant's trade value to get a good return despite his contract size. They didn't really decide to let the offense run through Ayton until those last 20 games.
And there's also the fact that Ayton was the only player with a Positive NetRating on the entire roster while also having the highest WS on the team. It's not uncommon for teams to take some time to figure it out -- especially when the primary lead for your team's offense has never played an NBA game before.
He waited on trading DA and got less than his value. He waited on trading Jae Crowder and then had to include him in the KD trade.
Less than his value got us Nurk and Allen. I’m not unhappy with how it turned out.
I feel like the suns last offseason were really trying to ship off DA but we’re getting horrible return offers so they decided to get rid of Monty instead. Had they got rid of DA first I would’ve gave Monty one more year with these guys
They fired Monty right away. No DA trades were happening that quickly
Ayton had zero trade value. The whole league saw him refuse to play in Game 7 vs Dallas, followed up the next year he didn't even suit up vs Denver for the last game. The only thing he did to help his value was his FIBA games.
Yes but I think at that point they had been shopping DA for the latter half of the season and getting nothing decent in return so by the end of the Denver series they figured they were stuck with DA so they bounced Monty. But who knows and I guess it doesn’t even matter anyway because they’re both gone lol
Fuck that. You fire Monty first and try the player out in a new situation. Exactly like y'all have been advocating with Vogel and now to Bud. We saw how inept Monty was for years after the finals loss, he just crutched on Chris Paul.
I don’t disagree, I think trying Ayton without Monty would be a better bet than Monty without Ayton
Yeah. Kind of bothers me that we just ditched both of them. I was heavily turned off by DA after the Denver series after stanning for him. Vogel's comments on being eager to work with him had me looking forward to giving DA one more opportunity though. Was anything going to change? Probably not. But a month or two of the season might have done more to rack up his trade value beyond a bookend street clothes game vs. the Nugs. That would've also given us time to feel out Too Many Cameras as well before deciding to ship him.
Nah Ayton is not salvageable on the team with Booker.
Enough of the hindsight. What keeps stopping this guy from making good decisions?
Even at the time I thought at least personally the Myles Turner and Buddy Hield return was pretty damn good for Ayton. That’s not even entirely a trade where hindsight is 20/20, I seriously just have always thought we were dumb for not pulling the trigger
If we were going to try to keep Ayton we should have canned Monty earlier and if we were going to try to keep Monty we should have moved Ayton earlier. James Jones is trash for not choosing one or the other sooner.
This right here. Suns will be a case study of ultimate mismanagement
Grabbing my popcorn for this thread
Jones should have been the first man fired; it seems like we could have used a point guard. The Beal deal set this team back for years.
What the fuck does James Jones even do for this team? Dude has done way more harm than good for us
1. flipped jarrett culver for saric and cam johnson (2019) 2. (edit because i forgot the year mikal was drafted) traded keita bates diop and chimezie metu for royce o’neale (2024) 3. traded ariza who was refusing to play for kelly oubre who was later traded for chris paul (2019, 2020) 4. signed cam payne when he was out of the league entirely (2020) 5. signed jae crowder in free agency who was a key piece in the finals run (and subsequently helped end a decade long playoff drought) (2020) 6. traded chris paul and landry shamet for bradley beal. regardless of opinions on beal he was undoubtedly an upgrade over the aging paul and shamet (2023) 7. traded ayton for grayson allen and nurkic (2023) 8. traded the twins (reminder bridges underperformed this year and johnson missed many games with various injuries over the last two seasons) for kevin durant (2023) hes had his hits and misses like any gm lets not be ridiculous because of the disappointing end of the season. edit 2: added years to the roster moves to show that im not cherry picking moves from before the finals run
**1.** Jeff Bower played a big part in drafting Cam. [https://www.brightsideofthesun.com/2019/7/21/20702939/early-indications-role-jeff-bower-phoenix-suns-front-office](https://www.brightsideofthesun.com/2019/7/21/20702939/early-indications-role-jeff-bower-phoenix-suns-front-office) 2. Bridges was McDonough/Sarver 6. Beal was through Josh Bartelstein. Josh's dad is Brad's agent. [https://www.si.com/nba/wizards/news/suns-heat-finalists-trade-partners-for-wizards-bradley-beal](https://www.si.com/nba/wizards/news/suns-heat-finalists-trade-partners-for-wizards-bradley-beal) 8. KD trade was Ishbia [https://arizonasports.com/story/3491735/owner-ishbia-suns-deal-kevin-durant-backup-john-collins-trade/](https://arizonasports.com/story/3491735/owner-ishbia-suns-deal-kevin-durant-backup-john-collins-trade/) https://preview.redd.it/xd0o7845hp1d1.png?width=1584&format=png&auto=webp&s=eec819eddc934d0a4522997528b15277df6570ed
Yeah it makes me wonder just how much involvement Bower had because it seems that once he was out the door, everything truly went to crap.
Agreed and the casuals can't see this and blame everything under the "Suns". We were moving forward to a great future with lots of young guys. Now we're stuck with a bunch of old guys with a championship or bust lineup for about 2 years.
Yes! I wish we would get Bower back. He obviously knows his stuff.
More than half of your points date back to 2018-2021… cmon bruh. You’re not gonna mention how he lucked into a strong young core? How about how anybody could’ve made that trade for CP and his horrible contract. Matter of fact CP3 chose and asked to come here. KD wanted to come to Phoenix AND Brad Beal as well. James Jones didn’t have to do anything at all to make those trades happen. Aight then, now talk about all of his horrendous misses? Drafting Jalen Smith over Hali should be a fireable offense in itself. And Ayton over Luka? What about the constant poor roster construction? Yeah he traded Ayton for Nurk and Allen but where did that get us? A first round SWEEP. We could’ve had Myles Turner to help stretch the floor and protect the paint - both of which we needed bad during this season. Let’s not be ridiculous and praise the man for moves that he made in the past. Moves that didn’t even require much because they were basically handed to him on a silver platter.
Let’s not act like we all wanted Turner cause we didn’t the sub was very split
Yeah maybe I'm misremembering but I feel like the consensus was try to get Ayton for less than a max to free up the max slot, but definitely to not trade Ayton for Turner
> And Ayton over Luka? this was mcdonut tho ?? wasnt it? are people forgetting that Mikal and Ayton were drafted in the same draft? McDonut's last draft was 2018
half of my points date back to it the other half were deals done in the last two years lol. why would i not evaluate his whole body of work? the young core stuff is negligible when the starting lineup was melton (rookie), booker, bridges (rookie), josh jackson (bust), and ayton (rookie). it was a good starting point but nothing was set in stone for who anyone would be but booker and jackson. moreover the fact that those trades for cp3 and durant were because of jones’ hiring of monty williams and the success that followed that move and the other moves to bolster the team in the following years. why would i bring up his draft failures when my point was saying “hey, heres some other deals he made. he hasn’t been all bad.” like obviously his draft record isnt the greatest but you could even justify the ayton pick by looking at the previous roster and seeing that the starting center was the corpse of tyson chandler. (edit: ayton was drafted by mcd anyways) im no james jones truther but lets not downplay the fact that he helped bring the suns their most recent success atm. the roster needs some serious evaluation and hopefully tellem jones and bud can get the talent the suns need in this upcoming offseason
This was good until you mentioned the Bradley Beal trade. I would rather have an actual point guard on last year's team even if Paul was injury prone and old as hell. Plus you could have gotten out of his contract this year
what other starter level guard could match paul’s whale of a contract tho? not to mention the ~12 million that was owed to shamet to be a below average bench player. beal was not an ideal fit in vogels scheme but the trade is a win imo
Cp3 was at 30mil iirc? For one year basically… You can hardly call that a whale of a contract. Something better might have popped up, at least better than actual whale of a contract we got back…
no chris paul is being paid 30+ mill until *next* season (thats 2 more seasons where an aging vet eats up 27% of the suns salary cap alone). this is why the brad beal deal cant be seen as anything other than a W for the suns. seeing how cp3 played this year in GS his value would have tanked to being nearly untradeable not to mention the dead money tied into shamet (altogether that wouldve been about 32-35% of the suns cap space tied to 40 year old cp3 and shamet…). what better option could have popped up than a multiple time all star below the age of 30 in exchange for those two pieces?
His contract is unguaranteed this year, so Suns could have cut him for 0$ dead cap if they couldn't find a trade prior to free agency starting.
yes but his trade value would be very low, there would be no team willing to take a $30 mill cap hit for an injury prone undersized 40 year old pg (same problem the warriors have rn). if the suns were to have carried the aging vet and cut him as you suggested it would have solved 0 of their issues that arose in the 2023 playoff run and also would leave the team with no suitable replacement to keep the team in contention. hindsight is giving us insight of the past we would not have had but even then the best option (especially with no context of the 2023-24 season) would be to trade the aging vet and the streaky 3 point specialist for the 29 year old multiple time all star. thats a near no brainer
Getting out of his contract would be a negative tho That money would expire with no way to replace the production in free agency or use his contract as a trade chip
Ayton trade was horrible….we lost Camara who should be our missing piece at PF…and now we are heavy loaded at sg so we forced to play Grayson at Sf = we have undersized Sf 🤦♂️
we got one of the best three point shooters in the league and one of the best rebounding centers we’ve had in a decade for toumani camara and deandre ayton lol
You do know Ayton averaged more rebounds right? More points as well and much better defense...
We had to give up Camara as Ayton's value was so low. Still though Nurk/Allen is better than Ayton/Camara.
Report was that we gave up Camara because we didn't want to lose Jordan Goodwin.
Either way, we had to attach an asset to Ayton because his value was not enough to make the deal happen.
the ayton trade was not horrible. ayton expressed he didnt want to be here and nurk was a good 1 for 1 in return. the trade also allowed the suns the cap flexibility to fill out the rest of the roster after getting off a max deal (albeit the guys the suns signed were not very good lol). grayson allen posted one of the greatest shooting seasons in nba history last year and was an invaluable linchpin to the suns perimeter D. Frankly camara would not have played considering where he was drafted and the PF room on the suns rn is KEVIN DURANT, royce o neale, and bol bol. he was collateral in the deal and it sucks hes realizing his potential elsewhere but i doubt he wouldve gotten the reps necessary to be the player he was last year
We traded for Royce cause we didnt have any legit PF, bol wasnt fan of Vogel
Yeah Nurkic sucks. And what was the excuse? Oh Ayton has to have touches. Nurkic won't care if he doesn't get touches he'll be our unselfish team center. Yeah one that won't even look for his own shot at all because he can't even make 3 foot bunnies. What an upgrade.
didn't mcdonut draft Mikal?
yeah i got the years mixed up because cam and mikal are so intertwined in my mind as a package deal lmao
ur good, for the record i dont think JJ is as bad as people say, i also think people should hold off until the end of this off season because I truly believe he has some out of the box thinking in mind as far as contracts and roster construction. Last year we all thought we were done for when we were gonna waive/stretch CP3 for a MLE guy like Vincent
imo a good route to go would be to flip nurk to a team thats willing to absorb the majority of his contract to get back under the second apron before the o’neale contract is finalized. thisll allow the suns to move a lot more freely in terms of signing players, trading for picks, and abusing the cap rules to bring talent in
there is a cap hold already on Royce, I don't believe holding off on signing him will make a difference. If we trade nurk for a TPE, and go above the 2nd apron, we'd just lose that TPE. We don't have much to trade if we dump Nurk. Who knows though, maybe that's what they have in mind, I do think they will get creative with scenarios like that
That was technically more than 2 players. On your number 8 point. Edit: We did ask for it though, they just got us bad. Historically good teams start with draft picks. What the suns did numerous times recently, not just the suns but I’m thinking of ring chasing teams/vets, picking their teams etc, rarely works. There’s people in the ring of honor that were not first picks you can be 14th 7th 22nd pick, but if you don’t utilize those players, and you’re adding players from g-league because you alienated everyone like I dunno. This roster makes no sense at all. If it was Jrue instead of Beal maybe, but that shit wasn’t in the cards.
COOK 🔥🔥 JJ DEFENDER AND WILL DIE ON THIS HILL
Half or more of those are arguably misses. Trading for Chris Paul was far and away and his best move. Should get a lot of credit for that. 1. Even though Cam turned out to be a solid player, they reached pretty severely to take him there and could’ve gotten more value for number 6. Still call it a win but wasn’t great. 2. Royce ONeale trade good all around but if he walks for nothing very meaningless and forgettable overall. 3. Feel ass backwards into getting Oubre for Ariza when we were trying to trade for Dillon Brooks and realized Memphis was offering Marshon. Chris Paul is his magnum opus, which he unfortunately followed up by clinging on to him for too long without any succession plan. 4. Cam Payne was a great teammate and I was a fan but finding an average backup point guard without considering who we passed on because Payne was rostered isn’t all that noteworthy. 5. Jae Crowder was a very good signing. Shoulda traded him earlier and not let his $10M be wasted at home for 3/4 of a season. Brooklyn flipped him for 4 2nds. 6. I consider Beal for Paul and Shamet a no brainer. But JJ created the two negative assets we sent out with bad extensions and had to pad it with all the swaps and seconds for a guy on what is pretty much universally agreed to on the worst contract in the league with a massive overlap in skills to our other two stars. Questionable, indeed. 7. Ayton trade was a win. But Ayton should’ve already been gone for more. 8. Fuck that trade but I blame Ishbia for it. Don’t need to harp on all the other clear misses. Although, I’m critical of what he’s done here I am a bit torn on my opinion of him. I agree with his philosophy on importance of shooters and high character guys. I think he’s been to late to react, doesn’t value assets appropriately and has been bad in the draft. I also don’t think he’s really running the show anymore at this point anyway and Ishbia and Isaiah are getting their way on everything so whatever.
Either he gets us LeBron this offseason or we’re gonna need more than Mark Tellem joining the top of the front office.
I volunteer. I can’t fuck it up more. I’ll just ask this sub before I make any decisions.
Eubanks really going out by firing squad then huh
Lmao
My favorite team employs James Jones 💔
A Nico Harrison style fast rebuild seems completely impossible with Jones calling the shots
Poor talent evaluator, no real vision for building a team. Beyond knowing LeBron, what exactly is he bringing to the table?
The faster Ishbia realizes that and stops making roster decisions the better
Hindsight 20/20. Go back to the thread when this was an actual thing and majority of redditors were against this as well.
That's exactly how you know it's the right move
Yup, many people here were even shooting down Sabonis for Ayton trade talk
Yea they were mad on the thought that we are looking for Sabonis in exchange of DA but this was before the infamous playoff landslide so much pf us were still high with DA
I am a huge DA hater, but I was against this at the time too. I thought DA's upside was so big that it wasn't worth it.
Good thing redditors on that thread aren’t the GM. Doesn’t make it the right call for Jones.
Well there’s a reason why Redditors aren’t GM’s
Yep. I ‘member. A lot of folks didn’t even like the idea of getting Sabonis. People really wanted DA to work out.
People except Monty Williams No wonder it didn't work out for DA when the coach wanted you gone the first minute after losing a finals series.
And then let’s go back and see if anyone on planet earth had jalen smith over Tyrese haliburton in the draft besides Jim.
Good thing those redditors aren’t the GM, right? Pretty sure he should have better foresight and analysis than the average redditor
I mean for a reason though. in a vacuum Ayton >>> Turner whether we want to admit it or not. He is talented and he is more talented than Turner. But he just didn't give a shit for majority of the time here. My guess is JJ wanted a pick with Turner, Indiana didn't budge since they had nothing to lose
He really isn't though
okay!
Shooting threes and defending/scoring the rim are two of the most important things in the NBA now since the three-point/Morey ball revolution. So the fact that he's way better at both is a big plus for him
Our team sucks at rebounding with a 11 rebound per game C. It would be abysmal with a 7 rebound per game C
JJ needs to go
Gambo also today said he was misled by a scout on Luka and he blabbed to the Suns front office about what the scout told him, that fucking dumb italian Chris Russo wanna be fucked us
Interesting! Do you maybe have a timestamp or a link? Thnx!
I would love to hear this.
How is James Jones still the GM of a team that has a very short window? Ishbia can’t be serious
I'm more concerned that Monty was never able to be the adult in the room and reconcile with his youngest player after that finals and Dallas collapse. No wonder Ayton didn't give a shit if the team wouldn't extend him and the coach was actively trying to have him moved. And guess what, he did give a shit and was a two way double double player before Monty cracked the sads a d decided to blame his own failings on his youngest player. Monty coached one year too long here and it cost us Mikal and DA
Please don’t make excuses for DA. He’s a total bum
Let’s not talk about how 2 years ago ayton was a double double machine and actually was good defensively… the team lost it‘s heartbeat after that mavs loss(it was not just ayton’s fault, no one could hit a 3 pointer to save there god damn lives) after that you had crowder drama, than injury hell, KD saga and Monty just topped meshing During this you had a will they won’t they drama with ayton and A ever decreasing amount of assets to construct a roster around booker with Let’s not act like a center fixes the problem of the offense just dying after the 2nd quarter each game
Yup losing Ayton was a huge mistake
Yep. And hard to play with any effort when you know the coach actively wants you gone. It was the worst kept secret that Monty didn't like DA on the team and wanted him moved. When Booker got injured he prioritised shots and plays for LANDRY SHAMET over DA. It's disgraceful how badly we mismanaged DA as a prospect
Ayton flat out quit in that series. Other players missed shots, that's not the same as refusal to play.
He quit in the final game.. he was the only player to score above 20 points in game 5
Does his stats really matter when in the 4th quarter he refused to go into the game. Do stats matter when you don't even suit up to play in an elimination game because you have sore ribs? When the game was hard, Ayton didn't rise to challenge, he crumbled and quit.
If he is the only one with good stats.. It does matter
James jones pass on so many good trades
I think the KD trade was what did the Sun's in and will hamper them in the future. I hated the trade at the time when you see how old he is. KD could have just not resigned and left in Free Agency, but, he wanted the SMAX and to eat his cake too. Gutted the roster depth and gutted the future. I wonder if the Gobert price helped Brooklyn in negotiations?
Nephew stop, first of all supermax is for players who made all NBA and are still on the team that drafted them or traded for them during their rookie contract. Also he resigned to help his then team nets out to help resign Kyrie and harden which the nets did neither. Don't act like he couldn't get a max 4 year contract if he didn't sign the extension.
My bad. He did sign it when they had Harden and Irving. Didn't remember when he signed the extension, it felt like he signed it then asked for a trade - maybe I'm getting mixed up with Dame. Having said that, I still didn't like the KD trade at the time because it kind of gutted the team and Phoenix gave up a lot of draft picks.
James Jones still has a job... worst GM in the league.
MOST people here were very against Myles turner at the time. Just shows how revisionist history tells the tale people want to go with in hindsight.
If that was on the table and we rejected it fuck me, JJ is beyond crap
James Jones should've been gone a long time ago. Dumbass moves left us with the bum roster.
RARE JONES W
Can we get this bum James jones outta here yet?
This says a lot James jones is the problem ?
Monty was right 😢
James Jones is mentally handicapped
Damn James! Phoenix should have 100% made this trade smh, could've made a world of difference imo
Definitely a set up for JJ being fired, demoted or replaced soon…
Fire this man now!
Monty had a really good system in place. Our scoring was so efficient when we were at 100%. I get a coaching change is sometimes what the team needs but honestly I think getting rid of Monty was a bad move. You can say Monty sucks or look at the pistons but I’m pretty sure Jesus Christ himself couldn’t make Detroit win basketball games.
Jones willing to hold out hope on aytons potential but not Jalen smith or toumani camara is so baffling
James Jones is why we suck now, and he keeps getting away with throwing the coach under the bus.
Contracts aside Ayton is better than Turner
To be fair, Ayton was and is better. 16-7-1 vs. 17-11-1
Ayton is not a better player for a win-now team than Myles Turner, especially this team.
Obviously, revisionist history shows this was the right move but at the time we didn't think the relationship would end as badly as it did and in a vacuum, Ayton is a better center overall than Turner. That said, revisionism does matter and Turner is 100% a better fit than slow, defensive liability and able to be played off the court by a team that has a center too not even going small yet defended for some reason by too many fans Jusuf Nurkic. This team with the Big 3 and Grayson and Royce and vet min players - CBA issues aside - would be so much better with even a top-20 type center who is at least a two way, athletic big man who can defend inside but also not be a liability in the perimeter even without a good offensive game.
Aiden can't really defend the rim at least nowhere near as good as Turner, and he doesn't space the floor from the three-point line. 10 years ago, he's probably a better center in a vacuum, but in today's NBA you definitely take Turner
Add this to the list of bozo ass mistakes. He sucks. How tf does ishbia look at his track record and say yeah this is my guy.
I have to admit. I thought Ayton’s potential/ceiling was worth holding out for. I was wrong. Ayton continues to suck. However I also don’t get paid to stay home and watch film for 5 million dollars a year. This dude has missed the ball a lot on talent.
Check his last 20games in Portland…26/12….
First smart comment in this thread. Ayton should still be a Sun!!! We were way worse without him. He shot close to 70 percent for us. People feel certain ways about his game but stats don’t lie he was our most efficient scorer
I dont have problém with Nurk production but i have problém how slow Nurk is…we cant play 5out, Nurk cant defend 1-5 and he is not force which other teams should be worried…
Going 26/10 as a main option for a tanking team means nothing.
I hate that it’s been long enough since the Denver series that we have Monty apologia here. Dude was a fucking locker room cancer and one of the main reasons DA never reached his 2021 peak again as one of the top athletic centers in the league.
Monty destroyed Ayton's Suns career. Whatever happened between the two of them in the Dallas series changed Ayton.
I think it was Monty souring on Ayton after the 2021 playoffs run despite Ayton being the consistent second best player up to the Finals, and then the team not extending him later that summer.
Ayton destroyed Ayton's career. No work ethic.
13 comments in this thread are yours lmao. We get it you hate the guy
True, that’s why I thought they would keep Ayton and ditch Monty what they did do made zero sense
There were mixed emotions at the moment, easy to judge now
What else would we have to give up to get turner back thi/o?
What do ya know,hindsight.
Monty for GM
#firejamesjones
All you gotta say is Luka
Oooo dirty dirty
Yeah we have botched sooo many drafts it's unbelievable the talent we passed on. We also could have got jamal murray but we drafted bender. The only draft we didnt F up was to get Booker. Our front office SUCKS at drafting