I don’t get this trade at all. The main reason is, Ayton’s stock has taken a huge dip in the last few months. Rather than give up and cash out, we should have held out if there wasn’t a good deal. Ben Simmons was an negative asset, and by waiting 6 months, Philadelphia got James Harden back by waiting. There is zero reason to give up.

Second off: this doesn’t help the team. The biggest weakness the team has is that it is very reliant on 3 star wings that have an injury history. Ayton isn’t the healthiest, but is 4 years younger than Nurkic, and has played more in general. If we had solid backups, that my be fine, but the team is very weak at the big positions. And it isn’t like Grayson Allen is some HUGE pickup that to overcome the weaknesses we take on with downgrading at center. The team seems objectively worse.

Third off: I have had one championship in my lifetime (Diamondbacks in 2001). That team was a bit of a unique situation because they were an expansion team that got all the right pieces early, but I still loved the big players. Johnson, Schilling, and Gonzales all joined the team at 30 or layer, and stayed 4-7 more years with the team. They felt like they wanted to be in Phoenix, and be on that team. The community loved them, and they loved them back.

This current Suns team is 15 months away from a 64 win season, and the only players who saw any consistent play time still on the team are Devin Booker and Bismack Biyombo. The rest of the team are guns for hire. They will do their job, but move on to the next place in a few years. Even if the Phoenix Suns organization wins the championship, it won’t be won by a team that I watched struggle to get there.

I really thought that Booker, Johnson, Bridges and Ayton was a solid core that would put the Suns near the top of the league for a decade. It is so sad to all of it gone.