Ryan
McDonough is the new General Manager of the Phoenix Suns, a team that desperately
needs to rebuild after jettisoning their franchise point guard to the Los
Angeles Lakers last summer and they have yet to forge a new team identity. It used to be the run and gun Suns of the
west, led by former back to back MVP Steve Nash. With the twilight of his career always imminent
due to severe back concerns, for years the Suns tried to surround Nash with
enough talent to compete for a championship, but ill-fated pairings with
Shaquille O’Neal and Amarè Stoudemire netted them zero championships and since
Nash traded, there has not been any visible plan to build a competitive team in
Phoenix.
After Nash left, the Suns quickly
signed promising young point guard Goran Dragic, which would have been a great
move, had they not kicked him to the curb the year before, trading him to
Houston at the trading deadline. Then,
the Suns went after complementary wing players from Minnesota, Michael Beasley
and Wesley Johnson. One year later and
only Dragic remains on the roster, yet they are still paying Beasley not to
play for them. Next up, the Suns then acquire
coveted point guard Eric Bledsoe from the Clippers in a deal where they ship
out Jared Dudley. Bledsoe is certainly a
promising young player, even if there are questions about his ability to run a
team full time, but they already have Dragic at that position, so the Suns will
be asking them to share the ball and play together, which will be feast or
famine, but certainly not anywhere in between.
The main issue with the Bledsoe trade is that they did not sign him to
an extension, so at the end of the season he will be a restricted free agent
and someone will likely offer him a front or back loaded offer sheet that the
Suns could match, but it would mess up their cap space. It would be hard to imagine that Bledsoe
would have turned down a contract extension in the $8-11 million per year
offer, which might seem a bit high now, but this will seem very reasonable when
he is on the open market this summer.
So, without any expectations for
this year’s team, McDonough is content to acquire attractive young pieces to
see who he can grab in the 2014 draft and the players currently on the roster who
will be the best complimentary player to the draftees will be retained. So far Ryan has been extremely successful in
the pursuit of highly coveted 2014 draft picks, potentially owning four top 15
picks in the draft that they could package together to make a real splash by
potentially being able to get two top 5 picks.
There could be as many as eight potential all stars in this draft class,
and if the Suns were able to get an Andrew Wiggins or a Jabari Parker, they
have the roster flexibility to build around these players right away, and also
being bad enough that player’s rookie year to also get a high lottery pick in
the 2015 draft. This has been the model
that smaller market franchises have used since they saw what Sam Presti was
able to do in Oklahoma City after being tied to a more conservative budget after
the franchise relocated from the larger market of Seattle. McDonough’s legacy is going to be always
linked to the players he selects in the draft next year, and he should be in good
position to do so, having worked his way up from video coordinator to assistant
GM with the Boston Celtics in 2010 at the impressive age of 30.
Danny Ainge rebuilt the Celtics in a
traditional way in 2007, acquiring a couple veterans for young players and
draft picks. This is going to be the
first time that Ainge is going to have to build through the draft, as this time
he was the one who traded the veteran talent for young players and a plethora of
draft picks. Just because this is the
first time that Ainge has been tasked with this, does not mean that he has not
been prepared for this, with rumors circulating of trades of members of the big
three during the trade deadline in 2011, when Ray Allen was actively shopped
with the Celtics underperforming during the first half of the season. There have been countless other rumors of
failed Pierce and Garnett trades as well, with Ainge ultra-aware of the need to
get value for his veterans before while also ensuring that they would get one
last shot to compete for a championship.
With all these scenarios being tossed around in the front office in
Boston, it’s no surprise that new age GM Daryl Morey came from Boston as well
and has had success without rebuilding through many creative trades and draft
picks. McDonough is taking the surest
bet right now, taking over a team that already had no hope of contending, he
has acquired four first round draft picks in next year’s draft, while maintaining
salary cap flexibility as well.
With a family background in sports,
Ryan is no stranger to the business as well as the many ideas floated around by
sportswriters, particularly his father’s.
Ryan’s father was famed Boston
Globe columnist Wil McDonough, and his brother Sean McDonough is a
household voice, if not a household name, who currently broadcasts college
football, and was the formed voice of the Boston Red Sox. Ryan’s other brother, Terry, works in the NFL
in player personnel decisions, covering almost all of the major sports within
the McDonough family. Ryan himself
majored in Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North
Carolina, no doubt intending to follow in his father’s footsteps before
accepting a position with the Celtics’ front office. With Morey and McDonough coming out of the front
office, Danny Ainge has become the NBA version of Billy Beane, teaching his
workers the new era of working the front office in the league, acquiring young
talent with draft picks to develop or include in future blockbuster trades. This is the new model of the league, and
while Ainge started the trend, Sam Presti is looked to as the best example due
to the success he had in the front office with the Thunder, drafting Kevin
Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden, who made up three out of the best
five players in the entire league.
Presti needs to be given credit where it’s due, and he does not get any
for taking Durant, who was a no brainer after the Blazers selected Greg Oden
first overall. Presti’s genius comes
with the Westbrook drafting, who people said that they took him way too high
and he would not be able to convert from shooting guard to playing point guard
in the league. James Harden was a
heralded player at Arizona State, but no one ever really thought he would turn
into the player he has become today on the Rockets, first being able to step
out of the shadows into a leading man role, and finding a lot of success. With
the Thunder as the new model for rebuilding teams to follow, it is increasingly
harder to try and build this way, due to the nature of the new collective
bargaining agreement. The new CBA puts a
cap on the limit of draft pick salaries, in the same way the CBA in the NFL was
revised a couple years ago. This makes draft
picks much more attractive to all the teams with the restrictive nature of the
new salary cap, which penalizes teams over the cap with sever luxury tax
penalties. With a first round draft
pick, the player is locked up on rookie scale wages for a solid four years,
with the potential to sign and extension or issue a qualifying offer at that
time, making the player a restricted free agent, meaning the team he is on has
a chance to match any offer by another team.
Also new in the CBA are monetary incentives to stay with the current
team, who can offer another year and millions more dollars to their hometown
star than another team could in free agency.
This will not always work, as in the case of Dwight Howard this summer,
but the majority of the time, it should be enough to sweeten the pot for all
but the top tier superstars who can potentially make up for the lost guaranteed
salary in endorsement opportunities in larger markets. Bottom line is, it is harder than ever to
amass draft picks, and McDonough has succeeded in the best draft class in a
decade.
The most valuable draft pick the
Suns have will most likely be their own, where they have a good chance to
compete with the worst teams in the league for the most ping pong balls in the
tank for Wiggins. They also have a top
12 pick from Washington in the Marcin Gortat trade, a top 13 protected pick from
Minnesota from the Robin Lopez trade a couple years ago, and a lottery protected
pick from the Pacers. Most likely
scenario, they have the pick from Washington and the Pacers, which is looking
like it will be toward the end of the first round. If they have luck with their own pick, they
can select whichever player is highest on their board, see how the rest of the
roster will mesh, and plug holes with the other picks, or try and make a splash
and trade the picks to select again in the top five or ten, depending on how
the lottery plays out. In the NBA,
potential is valued perhaps more than any other league, and although Ryan
McDonough is showing great potential, his legacy in Phoenix rests on the bounces
of ping pong balls to determine the most important player they draft in 2014,
and what direction this franchise is going to take in the foreseeable future.
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