Free Ballin’

I guess it’s a philosophical question. Which is worse:

1. Being the fan of an incredibly incompetent franchise like the Knicks, who are willing to spend ungodly fortunes for a crappy team without batting an eye.

2. Being the fan of a highly competent franchise like the Phoenix Suns, who torture their fans by refusing to add talent to a contending team that has hovered just on the edge of dominance the past few years, because it would put them over the NBA salary cap and require them to pay the luxury tax.

Frankly, I think it’s worse to be a Suns fan. It’s better to support a team that has bottomless pockets and is managed poorly, because you at least have the hope that someday the owner will replace the management. An owner who isn’t willing to pay a penny of luxury tax to improve a 60-win contender is never going to change.

Consider this, in the Steve Nash era, the Suns’ biggest weakness has been lack of depth. Every off-season the Suns say they’ll cut back on their franchise point-guard’s minutes, as he turns 34 this February and suffers from chronic back pain. However, the Suns have never had a reliable backup point-guard for Nash. Leandro Barbosa is the ostensible back-up, but he’s used exclusively as a scorer, frequently playing alongside Nash, and otherwise always paired with Grant Hill, who helps with the ball-handling duties.

The Suns shouldn’t have any back-up point-guard problems, considering they’ve drafted three solid point-guard prospects in the past two years—Rajon Rondo, Sergio Rodriguez, and Rudy Fernandez—but traded them all away for garbage.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll start with Sergio Rodriguez (salary $900K). The Suns drafted SerRod 27th overall in 2006 and immediately traded him to the Portland Trailblazers for…cash. That was understandable, since they had already drafted Rondo (salary $1.1M) with the 21st pick in the same draft. However, Rondo was also traded that day, along with negligible Brian Grant, for a 2007 first round pick and…cash. What did they do with that pick? They used it to draft Rudy Fernandez. Then they traded Fernandez and useful bench player James Jones (salary $2.9M) to the Portland Trailblazers for…cash.

Are those three guys all-stars? No, but all three are hot prospects and Rondo is already a major contributor to the Celtics. At the very least any of them would have eased Nash’s burden for a few minutes a game. Nash is the Phoenix Suns. Without him, they’re a playoff team, but hardly contenders. Any smart team with a 34 year-old franchise player has to keep one eye on the calendar, carefully preparing for the transition to life after their superstar has retired or lost effectiveness. What more could the Suns ask for than a young (cheap) talented point-guard to spell Nash and prepare to take the reins? Opportunities like that are not common for teams that don’t have high draft-picks, yet the Suns refused to take advantage of the opportunity that would have cost them $1.2M or less. The Trailblazers aren’t even paying Fernandez, who’s still playing in Europe this season.

Those moves are pretty awful, right? It gets worse. In 2004, the Suns had the 7th pick in the draft, good for $2.2M according to the rookie salary scale–a paltry sum for big-upside talent. However, signing Nash left them right on the edge of the luxury tax and rather than pay the $2.2M in tax, the Suns traded the rights to big prospect (and current budding all-star) Luol Deng for the Bulls second round pick (they used it to draft Jackson Vroman) a future first round pick, and…cash.

The one good thing about the Deng deal is that it bow-ties this piece very nicely. See, the first-round pick the Suns acquired in that deal turned out to be the 21st pick of the 2005 draft and they used that pick as part of a package to acquire Kurt Thomas. Though he was 33 and expensive, he was an excellent defender and rebounder who gave the Suns muscle and smarts in the paint. Most importantly, Amare Stoudemire was out for the whole season, recovering from microfracture surgery, and the Suns needed someone to hold down the fort. Thomas did an excellent job and when Stoudemire returned the next season (‘06–’07), having Thomas allowed them to ease Stoudemire back in, increasing his minutes-per-game over the first half of the season. It also gave the Suns the roster-flexibility to play Stoudemire at the power-forward spot against some of the more physical centers on the opponents’ teams.

This year, Kurt Thomas (salary $8.1M) plays for the Seattle Supersonics. What happened? Oh, you know the theme by now, the Suns traded Kurt Thomas and two first-round picks to Seattle for a future conditional second-round pick and…cash. To keep Thomas and sign their two first-round draft picks, it would have cost Phoenix $12M in luxury tax. Owners who are serious about winning, like Paul Allen or James Dolan, would pay the tax without blinking, but I suppose you couldn’t call an owner cheap for wanting to move Thomas’ contract. KT’s a hot chip this year. Not only is he a useful player, but since he’s in the last year of his contract, his salary will come off the books and clear $8.1M in cap-room for whom ever has his rights—not the Suns, of course.

Finally, this past off-season, future Hall-of-Famer Grant Hill signed a two-year deal with Phoenix for the veteran’s minimum salary, $1.8M. His agent said of the signing:

“‘Obviously money wasn’t the biggest factor here. He had offers for a lot more money. Grant wants a chance to win a championship and he wanted to go to a place that would give him a chance to contribute. Phoenix was the perfect fit.’”

Hill was one of the NBA’s best players in the 1990s (and put Sprite commercials on the map) until ankle injuries upended his career. He underwent eleventy-thousand surgeries and missed all or most of four seasons right in the middle of his peak years. It took him a lot of work to come back and he’s been a very effective if somewhat brittle player since returning. One of the reasons the Suns’ offer was attractive to him was that they already had a fearsome squad. He would play limited minutes off the bench to add some talent to their reserve unit. However, due to the thinness of the Phoenix bench, coach Mike D’Antoni has been compelled to play Hill for 34 minutes a game, far more than either player or coach had intended. Are you going to tell me that it didn’t give Hill appendicitis?

I’m not even sure if I was being ironic in that last sentence. I don’t actually think it’s possible to intentionally give someone appendicitis, but the Suns owners have done so much to undermine the efforts of their players and coaches in the past few years, I wouldn’t put anything past them.