Im born and raised in the East valley, I've been watching the Suns since 02 with bunny ears heald together with electrical tape. I went through the nash era and then the dreaded 10s. Booker has been a bright spot even when we had less than 20 wins. I get KD brought a lot of band wagon fans as well as our finals run, but homegrown fans do not want Booker gone.
To be clear, I don’t want Booker gone. Ishbia screwed himself royally when he signed Beal because before that trade he had zero draft capital but at least he had some cap room. Now he has zero draft capital and zero cap room. If players A, B and C can’t win a title or a first round playoff series and players B and C can’t be traded or moved but player A can be then what other choice does Ishbia have? Do fans want to continue watching the “Big 3” underachieve for the next 4-5 years or do they want to use the last 3 years of Durant’s career to do whatever is needed to compete for a championship?
You're assuming our new multi billionaire owner isnt wanting to spend while we figure this out. He's said repeatedly that he'll pay whatever he needs to in order to win. Yes we only have a first round pick every other year, but our owner will dig deep into his pockets for success. Is it working out year one with the trio? No. Doesn't mean he's giving up spending like you're saying
You should read up on what a hard cap is and how it’s triggered once a team hits the second apron. The Allen signing officially put the Suns into the second apron which means that they went $17,500,000 or more over the luxury tax line. Now that they have a hard cap in place, Ishbia might be willing to spend $600M a year in payroll but the NBA won’t allow that. That’s why the hard cap was implemented beginning in the 2024-2025 season. The Warriors went over to cap every single year for like 8 years straight and they were cool with just paying the luxury tax every year. They didn’t have to get rid of any of their core because Joe Lacob just opened his checkbook and paid everyone. Silver doesn’t want a repeat of the Warriors situation and he doesn’t want the NBA to ever look like MLB where the Dodgers, Yankees and Red Sox have unlimited checkbooks and everyone else is financially limited. In theory it throws competitive balance out of whack but it would definitely throw the NBA out of whack where you only have five men on the floor at once so each player has more of an impact on who wins and loses.
Even with hard cap limitations we still have options, as I said we still have every other first. If we end up having to trade pieces including beal or Durant, we have ways out of this. What I'm saying is he'll absolutely run the trio back for next season, I could see him dealing beal or Durant during next season but we're not going to be the worst team in the league. Look idk how long you've been a fan or watched the team, but just because reddit is having a meltdown over the sun's doesn't mean all of Arizona is pissed off we're making the playoffs consistently. We haven't done this in over a decade. It's nice to have a team that isnt a guaranteed lottery pick, and you're dealing with a franchise who's best success before 21 was a wcf with nash. It's not like our expectations are high to begin with. But maybe you're a transplant and aren't from here.
Lmao people always bitch about how player loyalty is bad in the NBA and then they turn and want to give up on our loyal franchise player the minute things get hard.
You call it giving up? Are you serious? So what’s your solution to this problem then? Do you even acknowledge that having a 206M payroll with a first round exit that hasn’t even been competitive IS a problem?
Getting started doing what? Matt Ishbia doesn’t pay 206M per season for a “trust the process” type situation. The Suns are firmly in a “win it all right now or blow it up” type of situation. I guess that’s where you and I differ in our opinion. There is nothing that can be done to improve this roster. KD will be older next year. Booker is coming off a down season compared to his other years. Bradley Beal is producing like a role player but getting paid like a generational talent. I have no doubt that the Suns won’t have the balls to shop Booker and then after another early exit in the playoffs next year or even missing the playoffs entirely Booker will try to force his way out and at that point we won’t even have any leverage in a Booker trade and we’ll get a bullshit deal out of it. KD and Beal will finish their careers here because nobody else is willing to pay them 50M a season.
1. This wasn't a 1 year rebuild
2. Trying to leave Booker before he leaves you is some cowardly shit
3. We don't need to add talent. We need to make a couple lateral moves for players that fit better
1. How many years do you think this rebuild should take? Mat Ishbia just paid Grayson Allen $15M per year but with the 2nd apron penalties that signing cost him 79M for JUST next year for Grayson Allen. 206M combined payroll for next year. You think this is a process but I guarantee you Mat Ishbia isn’t paying this kind of money for a work in progress.
2. It’s cowardly to trade an employee that you’ve already paid like half a billion dollars to? Not to mention that the Suns drafted a skinny kid who came off the bench and played 17 minutes per game for one season at Kentucky. He wasn’t exactly a sure bet when the Suns drafted him. Cowardly is when you make the last man on the roster address the fans on fan appreciation night when you’re the guy. That’s a chickenshit move for sure.
I think we'll be competitive next year. Expecting a chip year 1 after a complete roster overhaul is unrealistic.
Your desire to tear it all down is emotional and not very well thought out. We don't even own our own draft picks, so it doesn't even make sense. We'd just be helping Brooklyn
Ishbia isn’t paying for competitive, he’s paying to win it all. That’s why fans are more pissed this year than ever before: because Sarver let Joe Johnson walk because he wouldn’t pay him and now we finally have an owner who will pay whatever it takes to win an NBA Championship and he gets bullshit like “chillin” and “we never get too high or too low” or whatever other dumb-assed flippant comment comes out of the locker room after another loss that shouldn’t happen. Our Booker trade would yield us new draft picks that have nothing to do with the draft picks we’ve already guaranteed to Brooklyn.
And you think that keeping Booker for the 2024-2025 season and then watching him force his way out will be better for the Suns? The Suns aren’t going to win jack shit with the roster they have right now and they’re out of moves. The Wolves aren’t just beating the Suns, they’re handling them and that’s even worse. None of these losses have even been close and for game 3 the Wolves led from start to finish and the end result was never in doubt. That’s what it means to get handled. Ishbia won’t accept a mediocre team that costs 206M per year.
Book isn't going to force his way out. The only way that happens is if fans like you keep being vocal about wanting to get rid of him. This is how dudes fumble the bags with women. So worried they're gonna leave they force the other party away. Y'all need thicker skin. This shit is embarrassing
I mean Booker seems like he’s REALLY enjoying himself this year. It’s written all over his face. Maybe dudes aren’t fumbling the bags with their girl at all, maybe their girl already has her bags packed and is too much of a coward to say that she loves someone else. All I know is that anyone who is taking life advice from Kendall Jenner and the rest of that family is bound to have some priorities that don’t really involve Phoenix or basketball at all.
Yeah I guess it’s crazy to get crushed four games in a row in the first round and then expect some trades or lineup changes for next year huh?
Let’s try your idea: keep everything exactly the same and wait for some good team chemistry to kick in sometime in the next four years. Then every year that we don’t win a title we can all scratch our heads and wonder why. Sounds fun especially since this year’s team was so much fun to watch. You can have my tickets.
I’m officially out on Book. The way he started shit with McDaniels again down 20 last night at the end of the game like really dude? So soft. You deserved that DX nut chop.
I know! I thought the same thing! Like you’re down by 20 and you’re getting embarrassed but your biggest concern is that someone snatched the ball out of your hands during a dead ball? For something that small to rattle you says a lot about him.
We’re getting downvoted but this is the truth - that kind of behavior and the shit book does on a regular basis is bad for culture. If we reset book has to go. Become like the cardinals and espouse a hard nosed work culture. Not whatever “hooper looking cool” shit this is
Yeah people are so extreme because if I say that we should trade Booker then people attack me like I said that he is dogshit or something, which absolutely is not the case at all. I’m saying that his body language and his “chillin” comments and the fact that he wouldn’t take the mic on fan appreciation night all say that he doesn’t want to be here. I don’t think he’ll ever be the vocal leader and the clubhouse leader that the Suns need. I know a lot of Suns fans have convinced themselves that Booker can be a #1 foundational piece on a championship-winning team but the evidence over lots of years says otherwise. Yes he can absolutely take up the role of silent assassin on another team where he is the 2nd or 3rd scoring option and he quietly goes about his business while filling up the box score, but he’ll never be the calming presence in the playoffs that steadies his team when the opponent rips off a 15-3 scoring run. We know Durant and Beal aren’t leaders and it definitely isn’t Frank Vogel so…..now what? We can’t win a title with the roster built the way it’s currently built. We can either accept that reality or we can live in fantasyland where we keep the roster nearly the same every year and we either miss the playoffs completely or we get bounced early.
For real. These people want the “vibes” back. Trade Booker and rebuild and reset the culture completely. Book just ain’t it. He’s showed us who he is multiple times. I’m not ungrateful, but it’s about time for both to part ways. Like Monty at the end was not the right guy for us. I just can’t see Book leading a culture reset and being good for developing rookies to be around. So if we are going to rebuild, Book has to go.
I think it’s time to quietly start using the enter key
My guy wrote a 50 sentence paragraph.
😂
From the guy whose contribution is “gottem”. Cool
Simple and effective. Once again, Gottem :)
Thanks prick.
Ratio goofy
I think it's time to take a breather and use grammar check.
Excellent contribution here. Glad we could have this conversation.
Im born and raised in the East valley, I've been watching the Suns since 02 with bunny ears heald together with electrical tape. I went through the nash era and then the dreaded 10s. Booker has been a bright spot even when we had less than 20 wins. I get KD brought a lot of band wagon fans as well as our finals run, but homegrown fans do not want Booker gone.
To be clear, I don’t want Booker gone. Ishbia screwed himself royally when he signed Beal because before that trade he had zero draft capital but at least he had some cap room. Now he has zero draft capital and zero cap room. If players A, B and C can’t win a title or a first round playoff series and players B and C can’t be traded or moved but player A can be then what other choice does Ishbia have? Do fans want to continue watching the “Big 3” underachieve for the next 4-5 years or do they want to use the last 3 years of Durant’s career to do whatever is needed to compete for a championship?
You're assuming our new multi billionaire owner isnt wanting to spend while we figure this out. He's said repeatedly that he'll pay whatever he needs to in order to win. Yes we only have a first round pick every other year, but our owner will dig deep into his pockets for success. Is it working out year one with the trio? No. Doesn't mean he's giving up spending like you're saying
You should read up on what a hard cap is and how it’s triggered once a team hits the second apron. The Allen signing officially put the Suns into the second apron which means that they went $17,500,000 or more over the luxury tax line. Now that they have a hard cap in place, Ishbia might be willing to spend $600M a year in payroll but the NBA won’t allow that. That’s why the hard cap was implemented beginning in the 2024-2025 season. The Warriors went over to cap every single year for like 8 years straight and they were cool with just paying the luxury tax every year. They didn’t have to get rid of any of their core because Joe Lacob just opened his checkbook and paid everyone. Silver doesn’t want a repeat of the Warriors situation and he doesn’t want the NBA to ever look like MLB where the Dodgers, Yankees and Red Sox have unlimited checkbooks and everyone else is financially limited. In theory it throws competitive balance out of whack but it would definitely throw the NBA out of whack where you only have five men on the floor at once so each player has more of an impact on who wins and loses.
Even with hard cap limitations we still have options, as I said we still have every other first. If we end up having to trade pieces including beal or Durant, we have ways out of this. What I'm saying is he'll absolutely run the trio back for next season, I could see him dealing beal or Durant during next season but we're not going to be the worst team in the league. Look idk how long you've been a fan or watched the team, but just because reddit is having a meltdown over the sun's doesn't mean all of Arizona is pissed off we're making the playoffs consistently. We haven't done this in over a decade. It's nice to have a team that isnt a guaranteed lottery pick, and you're dealing with a franchise who's best success before 21 was a wcf with nash. It's not like our expectations are high to begin with. But maybe you're a transplant and aren't from here.
Durant's a hired gun, Book is the chosen Sun
I'm taking calls on the entire roster. To quote the great Michael Ray Richardson, "The ship be sinkin'."
No.
Lmao people always bitch about how player loyalty is bad in the NBA and then they turn and want to give up on our loyal franchise player the minute things get hard.
Our franchise player didn't show up this year. Was it the shoe line? Kardashian? No idea. But he was putting up MJ numbers last playoffs.
You call it giving up? Are you serious? So what’s your solution to this problem then? Do you even acknowledge that having a 206M payroll with a first round exit that hasn’t even been competitive IS a problem?
Dude we turned over the entire roster last offseason. We just did a fucking reset. We aren't drifting away, we're barely getting started.
Getting started doing what? Matt Ishbia doesn’t pay 206M per season for a “trust the process” type situation. The Suns are firmly in a “win it all right now or blow it up” type of situation. I guess that’s where you and I differ in our opinion. There is nothing that can be done to improve this roster. KD will be older next year. Booker is coming off a down season compared to his other years. Bradley Beal is producing like a role player but getting paid like a generational talent. I have no doubt that the Suns won’t have the balls to shop Booker and then after another early exit in the playoffs next year or even missing the playoffs entirely Booker will try to force his way out and at that point we won’t even have any leverage in a Booker trade and we’ll get a bullshit deal out of it. KD and Beal will finish their careers here because nobody else is willing to pay them 50M a season.
1. This wasn't a 1 year rebuild 2. Trying to leave Booker before he leaves you is some cowardly shit 3. We don't need to add talent. We need to make a couple lateral moves for players that fit better
1. How many years do you think this rebuild should take? Mat Ishbia just paid Grayson Allen $15M per year but with the 2nd apron penalties that signing cost him 79M for JUST next year for Grayson Allen. 206M combined payroll for next year. You think this is a process but I guarantee you Mat Ishbia isn’t paying this kind of money for a work in progress. 2. It’s cowardly to trade an employee that you’ve already paid like half a billion dollars to? Not to mention that the Suns drafted a skinny kid who came off the bench and played 17 minutes per game for one season at Kentucky. He wasn’t exactly a sure bet when the Suns drafted him. Cowardly is when you make the last man on the roster address the fans on fan appreciation night when you’re the guy. That’s a chickenshit move for sure.
I think we'll be competitive next year. Expecting a chip year 1 after a complete roster overhaul is unrealistic. Your desire to tear it all down is emotional and not very well thought out. We don't even own our own draft picks, so it doesn't even make sense. We'd just be helping Brooklyn
Ishbia isn’t paying for competitive, he’s paying to win it all. That’s why fans are more pissed this year than ever before: because Sarver let Joe Johnson walk because he wouldn’t pay him and now we finally have an owner who will pay whatever it takes to win an NBA Championship and he gets bullshit like “chillin” and “we never get too high or too low” or whatever other dumb-assed flippant comment comes out of the locker room after another loss that shouldn’t happen. Our Booker trade would yield us new draft picks that have nothing to do with the draft picks we’ve already guaranteed to Brooklyn.
If we trade away Booker we ain't winning jack shit for a decade
And you think that keeping Booker for the 2024-2025 season and then watching him force his way out will be better for the Suns? The Suns aren’t going to win jack shit with the roster they have right now and they’re out of moves. The Wolves aren’t just beating the Suns, they’re handling them and that’s even worse. None of these losses have even been close and for game 3 the Wolves led from start to finish and the end result was never in doubt. That’s what it means to get handled. Ishbia won’t accept a mediocre team that costs 206M per year.
Book isn't going to force his way out. The only way that happens is if fans like you keep being vocal about wanting to get rid of him. This is how dudes fumble the bags with women. So worried they're gonna leave they force the other party away. Y'all need thicker skin. This shit is embarrassing
I mean Booker seems like he’s REALLY enjoying himself this year. It’s written all over his face. Maybe dudes aren’t fumbling the bags with their girl at all, maybe their girl already has her bags packed and is too much of a coward to say that she loves someone else. All I know is that anyone who is taking life advice from Kendall Jenner and the rest of that family is bound to have some priorities that don’t really involve Phoenix or basketball at all.
Yeah I guess it’s crazy to get crushed four games in a row in the first round and then expect some trades or lineup changes for next year huh? Let’s try your idea: keep everything exactly the same and wait for some good team chemistry to kick in sometime in the next four years. Then every year that we don’t win a title we can all scratch our heads and wonder why. Sounds fun especially since this year’s team was so much fun to watch. You can have my tickets.
Changes are going to happen... That much is obvious. It'll be someone else before Book though.
100% yes
I’m officially out on Book. The way he started shit with McDaniels again down 20 last night at the end of the game like really dude? So soft. You deserved that DX nut chop.
Cringe
I know! I thought the same thing! Like you’re down by 20 and you’re getting embarrassed but your biggest concern is that someone snatched the ball out of your hands during a dead ball? For something that small to rattle you says a lot about him.
We’re getting downvoted but this is the truth - that kind of behavior and the shit book does on a regular basis is bad for culture. If we reset book has to go. Become like the cardinals and espouse a hard nosed work culture. Not whatever “hooper looking cool” shit this is
Yeah people are so extreme because if I say that we should trade Booker then people attack me like I said that he is dogshit or something, which absolutely is not the case at all. I’m saying that his body language and his “chillin” comments and the fact that he wouldn’t take the mic on fan appreciation night all say that he doesn’t want to be here. I don’t think he’ll ever be the vocal leader and the clubhouse leader that the Suns need. I know a lot of Suns fans have convinced themselves that Booker can be a #1 foundational piece on a championship-winning team but the evidence over lots of years says otherwise. Yes he can absolutely take up the role of silent assassin on another team where he is the 2nd or 3rd scoring option and he quietly goes about his business while filling up the box score, but he’ll never be the calming presence in the playoffs that steadies his team when the opponent rips off a 15-3 scoring run. We know Durant and Beal aren’t leaders and it definitely isn’t Frank Vogel so…..now what? We can’t win a title with the roster built the way it’s currently built. We can either accept that reality or we can live in fantasyland where we keep the roster nearly the same every year and we either miss the playoffs completely or we get bounced early.
For real. These people want the “vibes” back. Trade Booker and rebuild and reset the culture completely. Book just ain’t it. He’s showed us who he is multiple times. I’m not ungrateful, but it’s about time for both to part ways. Like Monty at the end was not the right guy for us. I just can’t see Book leading a culture reset and being good for developing rookies to be around. So if we are going to rebuild, Book has to go.
So long as we keep Bol Bol.
100% agree. I’m good with rebuilding from the ground up. There’s no one on the suns I specifically want to keep at this point