Report: Suns, Pacers Engaged in Trade Talks for Deandre Ayton
The countdown is now on for the Phoenix Suns.
The organization will have 48 hours to decide if Deandre Ayton is worth a four-year, $133 million contract after the Indiana Pacers sent an offer sheet his way.
ESPN's Brian Windhorst dove deep into the issue and said the Pacers were interested in Ayton from the very beginning of free agency:
"The Pacers have been lining this up since the first day of free agency. They met with Deandre Ayton coming right out of the gates, expressed their interest in him. And as the Suns elected really not to seriously engage on the type of contract that Deandre Ayton wanted, the Pacers made moves to make this possible, specifically trading Malcolm Brogdon to the Boston Celtics to open up the space to do this," said Windhorst.
"The Pacers don't like to do offer sheets, how much they not like to do them? This is the second one they've done in 40 years and the last one was for a very low level role player."
There's been some confusion as to whether or not Ayton has actually signed his offer sheet, which would be an important detail in determining whether or not Phoenix could work out a sign-and-trade with the Pacers.
However, Windhorst says the two sides tried to reach an agreement earlier and failed to do so.
"So they (Indiana) wanted to negotiate a sign-and-trade with Phoenix and had discussions to that end. They couldn't agree to terms. There was some consideration that this could be a part of a bigger deal. We've talked about that on the show this week. But the Pacers are tired of waiting and they went forward and made this move," said Windhorst.
"Now the real question is do the Suns match? The concept of losing a player like Deandre Ayton for nothing which would happen if they didn't match in 48 hours would be a devastating blow to Phoenix. We almost never see the loss of a restricted free agent to this level, but they do not believe that Ayton is a max player. They didn't believe he was a max player during the extension talks last fall.
"They do not believe he's a max player now. Matching this would make Deandre Ayton untradeable until January 15, so he couldn't be used in any kind of Kevin Durant trade even if they kept him and it would push the Suns about $15 million dollars into the luxury tax. A very penal place that they have almost never gone before. So we are all going to be having our popcorn watching the Suns maneuver when they get this offer sheet and we see what bells and whistles are in it to see how toxic the Pacers might have made it."
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported earlier today Phoenix is expected to match the offer sheet, but time will tell if the Suns are willing to commit deeply to a player they've had issues with doing so in the past.
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