Suns make a splash, without a lifejacket

Phoenix pays big to get Durant in the biggest NBA trade-deadline deal

Kevin Durant

The Phoenix Suns might know something we don’t. Their intelligence department might have learned that the NBA, troubled by absent superstars, will experiment with 4-on-4 basketball to keep one starter fresh at all times.

When that happens, the Suns will have Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, Devin Booker and DeAndre Ayton as their starting unit, and nobody else will.

Since there is no sign that the NBA is leaning that way, it appears the Suns fetched Durant because of Mat Ishbia, 43, their new owner. What better way to introduce oneself than to deal for a former MVP and 3-time Olympic gold medalist who is averaging 25 points at age 34?

Ishbia bought the Suns and the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury for $4 billion, and the league approved the sale last week. Since then he has gone about proving he is not Robert Sarver, the disgraced and reclusive owner who preceded him. He has promised to treat the employees like family, as he did at United Wholesale Mortgage, where he retained everyone during the pandemic, and is renowned for making personal calls on employees’ birthdays.

But Kent Somers, the Arizona Republic columnist, also pointed out the pivotal word: Mortgage. The Suns, the 2021 finalists who have won nine of their past 11 and are 3-0 on a current trip that began in Boston, can win the NBA title if their connective tissue holds up. If not, they won’t escape the West, and each season becomes more precious as Durant (34) and Paul (38) proceed down the back nine.

Bridges might be the least appreciated player in basketball, outside Phoenix, where he is, or was, beloved. In this 11-game surge, Bridges averaged 23.1 points and 37 minutes. He was the runnerup for Defensive Player of the Year, an award that went to Boston’s Marcus Smart in 2022 but usually is reserved for a shot-blocking center. Bridges is a small forward who is seventh in minutes played and played every game on the schedule for three consecutive years. He also has made himself a 38.7 percent 3-point shooter.

On the everyday NBA treadmill, his personality bubbles, while Durant’s is notoriously full of toil and trouble, fueled by his inexplicable hunger to read social media. Recently he took issue with Stan Van Gundy’s observations on players who miss too many games, then backed down when the Turner Sports analyst and former NBA coach maintained he was challenging the league to look at its training methods.

No one should be surprised if Bridges becomes an All-Star in Brooklyn. He is accompanied by Cam Johnson, a 26-year-old like Bridges, who takes 5.8 three-pointers a game and hits 45.5 percent of them.

Those are ascending players. Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith are squarely in their primes, and the Nets got them from Dallas in exchange for Kyrie Irving and the cloud that follows him around.

The Nets already have Nick Claxton, the league’s leading shot-blocker, and Joe Harris, who has twice led the league in 3-point accuracy, and Cam Thomas, who recently strung together three 40-plus games. Patty Mills and Seth Curry must be guarded beyond the arc in every situation. That’s a lot of talent for coach Jacque Vaughn to sift, and far less drama to endure, and maybe the Nets will use this time to learn how Ben Simmons made three All-Star teams. If they can discover that secret and Simmons can apply it, this is a team that might win playoff series, not just qualify. Beyond that, the Nets picked up four first-round picks from the Suns.

Bridges and Johnson attended Brooklyn’s home win over Chicago Thursday and said they would be uniformed for Saturday’s home game with Philadelphia. Durant, an apparent believer in load management when he’s between teams, is not expected to play for Phoenix until the All-Star break passes, which means he’ll be in there on Feb. 24. Bridges and Johnson will have played three Nets’ games by then, Dinwiddie and Finney-Smith four.

The Suns will be somewhat unguardable if their four main players are healthy, and Ayton, who has been thriving lately, should get plenty of one-on-one chances in the paint. But the bench will be uncomfortably thin unless the Suns get into the buyout market and find someone like Reggie Jackson, late of the Clippers. Paul has been hurt in the past two playoff seasons, and Booker is just back from hamstring problems.

Still, the NBA is famous for its star-for-entourage trades, in which the team with the best player is the one that profits. Exhibit A, so far, is the Lakers’ procurement of Anthony Davis from New Orleans in exchange for Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart, Lonzo Ball, a millenium’s worth of draft picks and exclusive rights to the upcoming biopic of P-22, the celebrity mountain lion.

The Lakers won the NBA title with Davis in 2020. The Pelicans are only now approaching contention. They are closer to the title than the Lakers are, but fans aren’t privy to the complexities of roster construction, nor should they be. Most of them recognize that Davis brought what the Lakers needed.

You need time to properly measure a trade’s impact, particularly when so many future draft picks are involved. Carmelo Anthony wanted out of Denver and got his wish in 2011. The Knicks traded four useful players, a first-round pick and two seconds, for Anthony. In his seven years the Knicks played four playoff series and won one. The first-round pick turned out to be Jamal Murray, who was one of the best players in the 2020 playoffs and is getting back to that form. He and the Nuggets have the best record in the NBA West.

Much of the NBA’s elite sat out the trade-deadline dance. Milwaukee did pick up Jae Crowder, a playoff-tough swingman who couldn’t find agreement with Phoenix and hasn’t played this season. The Clippers rearranged the furniture and picked up Mason Plumlee to back up Ivica Zubac, and subtracted Luke Kennard while they added Eric Gordon. They also got Bones Hyland, the bench catalyst whom Denver no longer wanted.

Atlanta got better when Detroit dropped Saddiq Bey into its lap. Detroit might have gotten better, long term, by getting James Wiseman from the Warriors. Wiseman is a former second-overall pick who played virtually no college basketball, and, paired with Jalen Duren down low, has possibilities.

The Lakers freed themselves from Russell Westbrook and picked up old friend D’Angelo Russell, who can ring the bell from outside. They also got Jarred Vanderbilt, who is exactly the type of no-frills rebounder, defender and zealot they didn’t have. They undid some of that solid work by shipping Thomas Bryant, an increasingly useful big man, to Denver and getting Mo Bamba from Orlando. Bamba has a 7-foot-10 wingspan but hasn’t yet learned to fly.

Bryant will be a significant backup center to Nikola Jokic, although one can envision the two playing together, and Jokic filling Bryant’s backpack with dunkable passes.

It was exactly the type of caffeinated week that a sleepy NBA regular-season needed. It also shifted the league’s collective gaze to Phoenix, where the interest rate has skyrocketed, but insurance is scarce.