Suns Accomplished Their Offseason Goal
The Phoenix Suns entered this offseason with one goal: Add talent.
It's an easy task to discuss and plot, but much more difficult to carry out when push comes to shove - especially for a team that already touts the talents of Devin Booker and Kevin Durant.
The luxury tax added another hurdle for Phoenix to overcome, especially with the addition of Bradley Beal to the lineup via trade. The Suns were forced to hope talented vets would flock to the Valley on minimal deals in hopes of buying into the idea of winning a championship.
That's precisely what happened.
Right out of the gates, Phoenix was one of the more active teams in free agency, acquiring key role players throughout different positions to round out a roster that desperately needed the surplus. After the dust settled, free agents in Eric Gordon, Yuta Watanabe, Keita Bates-Diop, Drew Eubanks, Chimezie Metu and Bol Bol.
Fans loved it. Media hyped it. Current players seem excited about the new-look squad.
Even members of the organization say they accomplished their goal, as one anonymous member of the Suns put it to Spotrac's Keith Smith:
“We had a lot of rotation spots to fill. And we had to target specific players, because we weren’t bringing back a lot of depth. Overall, we feel as though we accomplished our goals of getting guys who will complement our starting group.”
Suns general manager James Jones recently said he believes Phoenix has what it takes to make a push for the title:
“Versatility and balance and more importantly, experience. It takes a unique combination of skill, and knowhow to navigate a regular season and a postseason. You have to have success and failures in the postseason to understand what it actually takes to, ultimately, to be successful and win a championship," Jones said in an interview with The Arizona Republic.
"I think we have a nice balance of experience from a coaching perspective and from a roster perspective and we have a few guys that are pushing for those things that haven’t really seen it. That unknown for them drives their focus and more importantly, I think when you’re trying to establish yourself like our guys are, our mid-prime veterans are, winning a championship goes a long way.”
