Sports360AZ
By Gerald Bourguet
It’s neither new nor groundbreaking analysis to point out the Phoenix Suns’ use of draft picks has been unconventionally bold — and some would even say reckless — over the last few years.
Obviously the majority of the Suns’ draft cupboard was emptied by the Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal trades, but once they took a definitive step back from the Big 3 era in order to move forward with their retool, Phoenix routinely favored quantity over quality.
From splitting their unprotected 2031 first-rounder into three less valuable picks from the Utah Jazz, to picking up extra second-rounders wherever they can, to their latest marquee move in trading for Miles Bridges, the Suns’ valuation of their own draft capital goes a little something like this: As long as we’re still good by then, those picks won’t have much value, and we can continue reshuffling the deck to acquire other picks in the short-term.
General manager Brian Gregory basically said as much during Wednesday’s introductory press conference for Miles Bridges when he was asked about sacrificing Phoenix’s valuable 2033 first-rounder.
“I think the one thing you have to look at when you’re talking about an unprotected versus least favorable among two teams and different things like that, we’re always gonna be good,” Gregory explained. “So where are our draft picks gonna be? Especially with the new rules and all those different things, that pick value down the road was not the same as it was a year ago because of the changes in the draft lottery and different things like that.”
Gregory isn’t wrong; the new draft lottery reforms introduce an element of chaos, making it harder for the worst teams in the league to land top picks by flattening the odds and punishing repeat tankers who finish at the bottom of the standings. If the Suns have blown it up or are just plain bad 5-7 years from now, whatever teams own their picks will no longer have higher odds at landing a game-changing selection.
But there’s also the flip side of the equation, where non-playoff teams (and even play-in teams) who would’ve had minuscule chances of jumping up in the lottery now have much better odds of doing so. If Phoenix is near the middle of the pack, or even if they’re a lottery team that gets “lucky” for someone else, those picks could suddenly vault towards the top of the pecking order.
So once again, we’re back to the crux of it all: If the Suns are contenders or at least a certified playoff team 3, 5, 7 years down the road, then the picks they’ve traded away won’t come back to haunt them.
But that’s a long time from now, and despite Gregory’s confidence that Phoenix will always be good over that stretch, that’s impossible to forecast this far out. And if the Suns are a lottery team or a play-in team at that point, when Devin Booker will be in his mid-to-late 30s, and if these new lottery reforms stick beyond 2029, anything goes as far as where those picks could land in the top-16.
Where they ultimately land isn’t the only reason for concern, or the only way to judge these trades, however, and it’s the one area where the Suns’ aggressive approach has come up short: the current valuation of those picks.
I’ve had Pokemon cards that I was more hesitant to trade than the Suns act with their own first-round picks, and Phoenix’s view of that seventh-grader who will be a draft selection seven years from now basically amounts to the Michael Jordan “f**k them kids” meme.
Owner Mat Ishbia told the world as much during his exit interviews back in 2024.
“If fans like to look in the future and say, ‘Hey, I really like that 2031 draft pick, because maybe that seventh-grader is gonna be really good and we’re gonna draft them and one day he’s gonna be a player,’ you ain’t going to like the Phoenix Suns,” Ishbia said. “Because we’re gonna say, ‘Draft picks are to get great players.'”
There have been plenty of missteps in that approach. Because even as the Suns have shifted gears in recent years to start restocking their empty draft cupboard with more picks and more rookies taken on draft night, they haven’t always maximized the market value of their picks.
The Miles Bridges trade is the latest example. Despite the widespread reports that other teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers were interested in Bridges, no one was going to offer Charlotte a pick as valuable as Phoenix’s 2033 first-rounder for him here in the year 2026.
“We felt very comfortable,” Gregory said. “We thought it was a fair deal, but most importantly, we got Miles Bridges. So that, in my opinion, tipped the scales for us.”
It probably shouldn’t have! Not only does Bridges come with a ton of off-court baggage that has rightfully divided the fanbase, but he’s an average starting 4 who’s slightly undersized for his position, can’t shoot, has lost a lot of his trademark athleticism, and has never played a single playoff game. His on-court fit is questionable at best.
Naturally, the Suns disagree with that assessment of Bridges, which is where the majority of the disconnect lies here.
“When you talk about value, there’s also, like, the real value when you’re out there talking to other teams about what they’re willing to do to get that particular pick,” Gregory said. “So we feel very comfortable with that. Again, getting another first-round pick out of it and an additional second-round pick to get a player of Miles’ caliber, we feel very, very comfortable with that.”
The Suns may feel comfortable, but that’s kind of the problem: They routinely zig where the rest of the league zags when it comes to valuing players over distant picks, and their tunnel vision for certain players sometimes prevents them from extracting the most value out of those trade assets.
In Bridges’ case, outbidding the competition so drastically for a good-but-not-great player would’ve been bad asset management without the fact that he pled no contest to a felony domestic violence charge in 2022. Add it all up, and no matter where the Suns’ pick lands in 2033, the fact is that it had more trade value now. Instead, Phoenix wasted that trade chip — their last, best chance at adding a significant piece to this current core — on Miles Bridges.
But Bridges is just the most egregious example. Turning their own unprotected 2031 first-rounder into first-round picks in 2025, 2027 and 2029 admittedly gave the Suns more trade flexibility in terms of which picks they could wheel-and-deal. Phoenix turned that 2025 pick (No. 29, the least valuable between Cleveland and Minnesota) and the 2029 pick into Mark Williams, they still have the 2027 pick, and they ultimately got the 2029 pick back from Charlotte in the Bridges trade.
But the 2029 pick was now even less valuable as the worst selection between four teams, the 2027 pick is the least valuable selection between three teams, and basically every first-round pick the Suns possess between now and 2030 will be less valuable than whatever selection they’re sending out.
Phoenix has also occasionally had to attach draft capital to atone for their past mistakes. It took the Suns’ 2026 first-rounder to dump Jusuf Nurkic on the Hornets, and although they got a 2026 second-rounder back as part of the deal, they had to watch Charlotte turn right back around and turn Nurk (plus a 2030 second-round pick) into Collin Sexton and a 2031 second-rounder.
Again: The Suns aren’t the best when it comes to appraising their own trade assets, and their pride in assuming those picks won’t hold value because they intend to be good every year has hurt them in some of these maneuvers.
Between the Suns’ outright disdain for actually holding onto their future picks or properly valuing them, their brazen approach to trades and the second apron, and how hard they fell on their faces in 2025, it was easy to clown their aggressiveness as recklessness. Much was made about how Phoenix “didn’t control its own first-round pick for the next seven years,” how the Suns didn’t properly value the contributions of rookies on cheap contracts, or how James Jones’ scouting department was a famously barebones operation.
But in their defense, perception is not always reality. Although the Suns have routinely turned their own first-round picks into less valuable ones, that hasn’t stopped them from assembling an intriguing group of youngsters who may be responsible for ushering in a new era beyond Devin Booker.
Just months after Ishbia took the stage to talk about how draft picks are for adding good players, the Suns traded down from No. 22 to No. 28 in the 2024 NBA Draft, snagging three extra second-rounders in the process. They drafted Ryan Dunn at No. 28, then repackaged two of their seconds to move up to No. 40, where they took Oso Ighodaro.
In 2025, while only landing one first-round pick (No. 10) in the Kevin Durant trade was deemed a disappointment, the Suns also added five second-rounders to their stash. Phoenix took Khaman Maluach at No. 10, moved the No. 29 pick they owned and a future first-rounder for Mark Williams and a future second. Then they packaged a bunch of those extra second-rounders to move all the way up to No. 31 for Rasheer Fleming and No. 41 for Koby Brea.
And then this year, the Suns started out draft night with No. 47, but packaged that, two future second-rounders and cash to move up to No. 30 for Koa Peat.
Credit where credit is due: No team in the NBA over the last three years has been as aggressive about moving all over the draft, especially moving up from/in the second round. The Suns repeatedly target second-round picks that other teams view as throwaways, which then become trade chips for Phoenix to move up just far enough on draft night for someone they like.
All of that would be meaningless if the Suns hadn’t beefed up their scouting and player development departments over the last few years, or if their recent draft selections all looked like busts. But considering where they’ve been picking from, Phoenix is extracting pretty great value from the draft.
Maluach didn’t play much as a rookie, but he was always going to be a long-term project, he showed real flashes when he did get minutes in the second half of the season, and he balled out in Summer League, earning All-Summer League Second Team honors. Rasheer Fleming was an impactful bench player from mid-February onward, when Jordan Ott finally made him a consistent part of the rotation, and he probably would’ve been the team’s starting 4 if not for the Miles Bridges trade.
Koa Peat slid in the first round because of his lack of a 3-point shot, but landing him with the last pick in the first round was great value, and he impressed at Summer League as well. Oso Ighodaro was the Suns’ backup 5 last year and was highly effective in that role, bringing defensive mobility and playmaking that no other center on the roster can offer.
The only youngsters that leave the most room for doubt are Ryan Dunn and Koby Brea. But Dunn is still only entering Year 3 and deserves a deeper look even as his 3-point shot slowly comes along, and while Brea could very well be out of the league in a year or two, he was still a worthwhile swing at No. 41. They can’t all be winners.
But that’s kind of the point: If they can’t all be winners, you should probably give yourself as many bites at the apple as possible. And as great as Maluach looked in Vegas, do the Suns have a legitimate blue-chip prospect among their group of promising youngsters? Or are they all just solid rotation pieces who top out as one- or two-time All-Stars.
It’s still way too early to say, and we should give credit for the collection of young talent this front office has assembled despite a clear lack of valuable picks. That really isn’t a bad spread for a team whose “lack of draft capital” was being lamented league-wide just a year or two ago!
With that type of recent track record, and Brian Gregory’s propensity for continually finding new ways to weasel his way out of corners by acquiring new picks on the fly, it’s no wonder Phoenix saw no issues with trading their potentially valuable 2033 first-rounder for Bridges, a 2029 first-rounder that is the least valuable pick between four different teams, and an additional 2027 second-rounder.
“We feel very comfortable with overall all the different aspects of the trade, getting another first-round pick back,” Gregory said. “I remember multiple years ago, the question was, we have no first-round picks. With that pick that we acquired, we’re now gonna have seven straight years of first-round picks. Who would have thought it?”
The sentiment is understandable, but also flawed, and technically incorrect. The Suns have done a decent job of recouping some of the draft capital they lost in the trades for KD and Beal, but contrary to what Gregory said, he misspoke: They actually don’t have a first-round pick in each of the next seven drafts.
In 2027, they’ll have the least favorable pick between Utah, Cleveland and Minnesota, and in 2028, they’ll have a pick incoming from Brooklyn, Philadelphia or Washington thanks to their first-rounder being pick-swapped to hell. In 2029, they now have a first-rounder that will be the least valuable selection between Charlotte, Utah, Cleveland and Minnesota, and thanks to another series of pick swaps, they’ll get the least valuable selection between Memphis, Washington and their own pick in 2030.
It’s 2031 where Gregory’s assertion falls apart, since the Suns owe their first-rounder to Memphis thanks to that 2025 deal with Utah, where they split their 2031 first into three less-valuable selections. The Jazz sent that pick to the Grizzlies as part of the Jaren Jackson Jr. trade, so Phoenix’s 2031 pick is owed outright to Memphis now.
In 2032, the Suns still have their first-round pick…because it’s currently frozen as a penalty for their Scrooge McDuck dive into the second tax apron during the failed Big 3 era. And in 2033, thanks to this summer’s trade for Bridges, Phoenix owes its first-rounder to Charlotte outright. So all in all, the Suns have a first-round pick in five of the next seven drafts, not all seven in a row.
In terms of second-round picks, the Suns have one coming in 2027 thanks to the Miles Bridges trade, but it’ll be the least valuable pick between either Boston or Orlando. In 2032, they’ll either have their own second-rounder or Houston’s, whichever is less valuable.
Outside of that, they currently don’t have a second-rounder coming in 2028, 2029, 2030, 2031 or 2033, since the Suns owe their own seconds to somebody else in each those drafts. (That also applies for Phoenix’s 2027 second-rounder, but at least they have another one incoming from Boston/Orlando).
Add it all up and the Suns are playing a dangerous game. They prioritize using future first-round picks to land players they think can help them win now, and they believe they can acquire less valuable picks at any time to make up for the ones they’re shipping away…at which point they lean heavily on their revamped scouting and player development to maximize the value of those worse picks.
If things go belly up with the current Devin Booker era and they need to reset again, they believe they can always trade some of their expendable pieces for more draft assets, starting the cycle over again. In the meantime, they’ve assembled a nice young future core of Khaman Maluach, Rasheer Fleming, Oso Ighodaro, Koa Peat and (potentially) Ryan Dunn to develop on a winning team, in the hopes that if they have to turn the page, those guys will be ready to do so whenever the day comes for that next chapter to begin in earnest.
But at a certain point, this revolving door of trading their own picks for less valuable ones will catch up with them. Brian Gregory can only keep reshuffling the deck for so long, especially if the Suns’ current roster tops out as a first- or second-round playoff exit.
The Suns believe they’re building something that will eventually be good enough for the picks they’ve traded away to become irrelevant, especially if they can continue to be so effective later in the draft. They had better hope that’s the case, and that they continue to hit on those later picks, because their brash approach to pick valuation — and their unwavering confidence about trading them with no remorse — is a high-wire act that few other teams in the league are even considering.
For more of Gerald Bourguet’s Suns work, check back with Sports360AZ on a weekly basis, subscribe to his Patreon articles and podcast at Suns After Dark, or follow him on Twitter.
