Phoenix Suns Now All in on Championship After Kevin Durant Trade
The Phoenix Suns have done the unthinkable. Kevin Durant is officially a Sun.
Phoenix traded Cameron Johnson, Mikal Bridges, Jae Crowder and four future first-round picks in exchange for Durant and TJ Warren late Wednesday night.
The Suns have been a winning organization over the past two seasons and built a solid young core headlined by Devin Booker, Deandre Ayton, Bridges and Johnson. So what went wrong for Phoenix and what propelled them to make this sort of a drastic trade?
After the Suns heartbreaking loss in the Western Conference Semi-Finals last year to the Dallas Mavericks, it was very clear that despite their tremendous regular season success they were not fully equipped to win a championship.
Through the first 56 games of this season, the Suns have a solid record of 30-26 but something just has not felt right. When Booker missed 21 straight games with a groin injury, the team seemed to self-implode. Despite a hot stretch toward the backend of those 21 games, for the majority of them nobody on the team seemed willing to step up and command the offense.
Booker has had to carry the Suns on his back over the course of his eight-year career so this is nothing new to him. The difference now compared to early on in his tenure is that Phoenix now has championship aspirations, and their window to win an NBA title was dwindling with each game lost.
It was clear change was absolutely necessary if the Suns were going to go anywhere.
That change came in the form of billionaire Mat Ishbia buying the Suns. Not even 24 hours removed from Ishbia’s introductory press conference, the team pulled the trigger on a trade for Durant, a rumor that's been swirling around the basketball community since the summer.
What does acquiring Durant mean for Phoenix going forward?
At 34-years-old, Durant is still playing at an extremely high level, averaging 29.7 points, 6.7 rebound and 5.3 assists.
With the addition of Durant, Phoenix potentially has the best duo in the NBA. Booker and Durant will be a nightmare for opposing teams to deal with once they share the floor together. Teams won’t be able to double both Durant and Booker and the extra attention that those two superstars command will result in even more opportunity for Ayton and Chris Paul who are fringe all-star players themselves.
An argument proposed against this trade is that Phoenix is losing tremendous depth with the loss of Johnson and Bridges. While this argument is not entirely wrong, just take a look at all of the past NBA champions over this decade. Almost every single team had at least two superstar caliber players whether it was the Heat with LeBron James and Dwayne Wade, the Warriors with Durant and Steph Curry or the Lakers with James and Anthony Davis.
Having depth is nice on paper but the NBA is a star-driven league. If teams don’t go all out to get at least assemble two, they can forget about competing for the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
The Western Conference is as wide open as it will ever be. The Denver Nuggets are the number one seed, a team the Suns swept just two years prior in the Western Conference Semifinals while the next two seeds are taken up by the Sacramento Kings and Memphis Grizzlies, both of whom don't have any experience past the second round.
The time to strike was now for the Suns and they delivered in a big way. Having Durant in the playoffs against players that are not generally accustomed to playing basketball into June, will be a huge advantage for Phoenix.
Durant’s resume speaks for itself: two championships, two finals MVPs, one regular season MVP and four scoring titles.
Over the Suns' 55 years of existence, the team has never won a championship and only have three conference titles and eight division titles to write home about. Heartbreak after heartbreak continues to transpire for the team that resides in the Valley.
Charles Barkley and the Suns lost in the 1993 NBA Finals to the hands of the Chicago Bulls. Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire’s Suns teams continuously came up short of their goal of reaching an NBA Finals during the 2000s. Phoenix collapsed in the 2021 NBA Finals to the Milwaukee Bucks after leading 2-0 in the series.
This is what Suns fans have had to put up with all these long and dreadful years.
Durant is here to change all that and finally bring the Larry O'Brien Trophy where it truly belongs: right here in Phoenix.
