Championship or bust is an unfair standard. So many variables beyond the control of even the smartest NBA teams have to flip the right way to win four playoff series. The diciest one is health. The last team standing is usually among the healthiest. Maybe you can overcome an injury to a role player or two, but not a star.
Giant sports science staffs and fancy technology can maybe forestall the effects of age, or reduce the chances of suffering some particular wear and tear injury. They can't make collisions less violent, or prevent someone from landing on someone else's foot at the wrong time. Lots of championship-caliber teams never won championships.
So, yes, championship or bust is an unfair measure of success. It's also the cruel reality of making a trade like the Phoenix Suns did in reshaping the landscape of the league -- trading three very good support players (Mikal Bridges, Cameron Johnson and Jae Crowder, though Crowder of course was not playing for the Suns) and every unprotected draft asset available (four first-round picks, one swap) to the Brooklyn Nets for Kevin Durant and T.J. Warren.
Durant is one of the dozen greatest players ever, at worst. He has maybe been the league's best all-around player when healthy this season. Players like that rarely get traded, ever.
The risk is enormous. Ask the Nets, and it's telling that "ask the Nets" can now refer to two mega-trades in the last 10 years; the Houston Rockets control every Brooklyn first-round pick through 2027 via the James Harden trade, and those picks have become more valuable with every Nets melodrama. (The Nets did well to recoup a bundle of very good players, five first-round picks, and a bonanza of second-rounders in the Kyrie Irving and Durant trades. They are a good bet to hang on to a playoff spot.)
You can ask the Clippers, too. They traded Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, now an All-NBA-level player, and a half-decade's worth of draft equity to the Oklahoma City Thunder to unite Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. Four years later, skeptics wonder if LA would have been better off just keeping Gilgeous-Alexander -- even if such stubbornness would have cost them Leonard too. (Those skeptics are wrong, but still.) And that's after the Clippers made the deepest postseason run in their (very sad) franchise history, reaching the conference finals in 2021.
And if they're being honest, most of the LA brass would concede the Leonard-George era will go down as a failure -- a bust -- if they never win the title. Even if the standard is unfair, that's how it feels in the muck of it. The Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday mega-trades will always be worth it because the Los Angeles Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks won titles. How would Lakers fans feel today had Davis turned an ankle in the 2020 bubble? They'd probably feel the way most franchises end up feeling a few years after they fork over everything for a superstar: Man, this hurts. The history of these trades is not pretty.
Sure, the Clippers could pivot if they sense this era going off the rails, or if one of their stars grows discontented; they're a creative franchise with bottomless resources, and their two stars are 32 and 31 years old -- still in their primes. They were 28 and 29 when LA acquired them.
Durant is 34. He hasn't played more than 55 games since 2018-19. He's injured now. Chris Paul is 37. He's in decline. He seems to get injured every postseason. Every team is at risk for injuries. The Suns have created a team that is probably more vulnerable to injury than the average top-heavy title contender. If they suffer an ill-timed injury, they won't necessarily be able to shrug and wail: How could we have seen that coming?
Meanwhile, Bridges is maybe the league's most durable player -- an archetypal 3-and-D guy on a killer contract. Johnson is a top-20 shooter who holds his own at multiple positions on defense. Both could start on title teams. They are more than footnotes to this trade. They leave voids.
The downside for Phoenix is Devin Booker potentially looking around in three seasons and wondering how in the hell he can win his first ring with whatever is left there and zero controllable first-round picks coming.
Fair or not, for this deal to feel like a win, the Suns almost have to win the title in the near future. When you trade this much, the goal is to be a clear favorite -- to be so good, people at least pause to think whether they'd take your team or the field to win the title. Remember last summer, when one of the big NBA debates was whether Boston should offer Jaylen Brown (and lots of other stuff, in fairness) to the Nets for Durant -- aging themselves up almost eight years? At that moment, the Celtics were arguably already the favorites to win the 2022-23 NBA title. The case in favor of going all-in for Durant anyway was the difference between maybe being slight favorites in a crowded field and overwhelming favorites over everyone.
This trade doesn't make the Suns overwhelming favorites. They might not even be the overall title favorites; Boston and Milwaukee both made small improvements at the trade deadline. Several Western Conference contenders took swings of varying degrees. The Denver Nuggets have a giant lead in the standings, enviable continuity, and a new backup center -- Thomas Bryant -- who should help them avoid falling into a total sinkhole whenever Nikola Jokic rests. (People are beating the Nuggets up for making only fringe moves, but they had no first-round picks available to trade.)
The No. 2 team in the West, the Memphis Grizzlies, found some much-needed shooting in Luke Kennard. Opposing offenses will hunt Kennard in the playoffs -- this is almost certainly why the Clippers traded him, along with concerns about Kennard's sometimes passive approach on offense -- but the Grizzlies are betting they have the defensive infrastructure to protect him. Even so, lineups with Kennard and Ja Morant will be shaky at the point of attack. Playing those two with Desmond Bane may make the Grizzlies too small. But the Grizzlies needed shooting, badly, and got one of the best shooters in the world.
They also aimed higher. The Nets have been aware since July that Memphis was ready to trade every pick and swap of its own for Durant, sources said. (The Grizzlies have remained steadfast that Bane, Morant, and Jaren Jackson Jr. are 100% off the table in all talks, sources across the league said.) They didn't get far. Durant wanted the Suns, and the Nets worked with him to make that happen.
They offered three first-round picks to the Toronto Raptors for OG Anunoby, sources said, but Anunoby remains a Raptor. The Indiana Pacers also offered three first-round picks for Anunoby, sources said, but could not get a deal done. (The Pacers own extra picks from Boston and the Cleveland Cavaliers.) The Raptors made it clear in trade talks they wanted a high-level player or prospect along with draft picks in any Anunoby deal, sources said. The New Orleans Pelicans, another rumored Anunoby suitor, did not hold serious talks about him with the Raptors, sources said.
Saying the Durant deal leaves the Suns short of clear outright favorite status is not the same as saying they should not have made the deal, or that it is a bad one. With Paul at 37, they had two choices: trade Paul, take a step back, and rebuild around Booker or go all-in now. (It was reported elsewhere the Suns contemplated a middle way in which they might have traded Paul, Crowder, and a draft asset to Brooklyn for Irving. Something about that never passed the smell test. The Suns were rising in the Orlando bubble, before Paul got there, but Paul stamped them as a serious franchise for the first time since Seven Seconds or Less and helped them to their first Finals since 1993. He is dropping off with age, but you're trading that player -- plus other valuable stuff! -- for an impending free agent with, let's say, occasional availability issues? That seems like a lot.)
As our Adrian Wojnarowski reported, the Suns were on the verge of pivoting to a 3-team trade that would have netted them the Atlanta Hawks John Collins -- without trading any of the players they ended up sending to Brooklyn, per league sources. That is another sort of middle approach -- beefing up around Booker and Paul, but something short of a drastic all-in move. The Suns were 9-2 in their final 11 games before the trade deadline. Paul played in the last nine of those after returning from injury. Booker is back now. They won 64 games last season. Could they have added one more player -- i.e., Collins -- and vaulted back toward the top of the conference without surrendering Bridges, Johnson, or any picks?
Toward the top? Sure. At the top or over it? Probably not -- not with Paul's up-and-down play at age 37, or what we glimpsed of the Suns in last season's playoffs. The Durant path gives them better title odds now and for the next two or three seasons.
The revamped Suns are going to be awesome. Durant is the most malleable superstar in NBA history -- comfortable with or without the ball, elite at literally every subset of offense. He has also been a terror on defense this season, and the Suns will need him to defend and rebound at peak levels. (Rebounding looms as a weakness.)
With decent health, he should age about as well as any star player ever (other than perhaps the two guys who exchanged the all-time scoring record this week.) Even if Paul is gone from Phoenix in two seasons, the Suns could still have a window to contend around Booker and Durant. That alone bolsters the case for this deal.
Durant and Paul are two of the greatest midrange shooters and crunch-time players in the history of the sport. Booker is one of their heirs in that regard. In high-stakes games, Monty Williams can keep two of Durant, Paul, and Booker on the floor at all times.
The NBA world is down on Deandre Ayton, and the relationships between Ayton and some of the team's key stakeholders have been frosty at times.
But Ayton is a good player. He is a solid and versatile defender. There are not many big men who can corral pick-and-rolls at the 3-point arc and jostle with Nikola Jokic in the post. Ayton is one. He is going to walk into 18 points screening for Paul, Booker, and Durant, and rumbling to the rim. One of those three ball handlers -- Durant -- is an accomplished screener who can set picks for Booker and Paul. Switch, and Durant abuses smaller players in the post. Hedge, and he flares for open 3s or slips to the rim for 4-on-3 situations. Drop back, and the midrange gods rain midrange fury.
Paul and Booker are good screeners in their own right. Booker has a bruising post game. If it comes to it in the playoffs, the Suns will have myriad ways to go at Jokic.
The depth is shaky, but workable. Torrey Craig has been invaluable as a fill-in starter all season, and probably rounds out the starting five for now. Warren logged only 19 minutes per game for Brooklyn, but he's shooting 57% on 2s; he'll either challenge Craig for that starting spot or provide bench scoring and lineup versatility. (If the Suns want to play Durant at center in some matchups, they have just enough perimeter players to do it.)
The rest of the bench is pretty anonymous, but those anonymous guys -- Damion Lee, Josh Okogie, the double-headed center of Bismack Biyombo and Jock Landale -- have been doing sturdy, tough work on both ends all season. Cameron Payne and Landry Shamet form a legit postseason backup backcourt, and the Suns will explore the buyout market -- looking frothy by buyout market standards! -- for more help.
There's enough here for a title run. No one else in the West did anything to terrify Phoenix. The Clippers exchanged Reggie Jackson, John Wall, and Kennard for Bones Hyland, Eric Gordon, and Mason Plumlee. They got nowhere close on Fred VanVleet, sources said; the Raptors would have required Terance Mann and maybe more draft equity than the Clippers can offer. They never had serious talks on D'Angelo Russell or Kyle Lowry, sources said. They waded into the Mike Conley sweepstakes, but it escalated out of their price range. They are better and more versatile than they were yesterday, but it's not clear by how much.
The Los Angeles Lakers did fantastic work flipping some ill-fitting talent and only one of their available first-round picks for a slew of helpful players in D'Angelo Russell, Malik Beasley, and Jarred Vanderbilt. Mo Bamba and Davon Reed -- acquired in separate deals -- are nice deep bench options. Given the respective contracts involved, the Lakers can easily open north of $30 million in cap space this summer if they want to (and are OK parting with Rui Hachimura).
Three teams ahead of them -- the Oklahoma City Thunder, Portland Trail Blazers, and Utah Jazz -- acted more as sellers than buyers, raising the possibility that the Lakers could climb over all of them. But they are far, far behind the best teams, and these deals don't add quite enough defense to create a contender. (Davis, of course, is always a health risk.) It may be enough to stifle whatever wanderlust LeBron James may feel, and that is justification enough for the roster remake.
The Warriors punted on the sad James Wisman era to reunite with Gary Payton II. They know Payton, and he'll help. But the Warriors have a ton of guards already; they added to a position of strength. What they really need is another big wing. They engaged with the Raptors on Anunoby too, sources said. The two sides do not appear to have gotten all that close, and talks petered out before the deadline. The Warriors likely would have had to include Jonathan Kuminga as the centerpiece of any Anunoby deal, sources said.
The Suns have a real chance at the title -- and probably a better one than they had two seasons ago, when they got within two wins of the ring. They are neck and neck with Denver for favorite status in the West. If they can get through their own conference, a fair fight against a beast from the East awaits. (The gap between the Celtics, Bucks, and Philadelphia 76ers and the rest of the East got wider on Thursday.)
Do those kinds of title odds justify this outlay of assets? Most executives around the league would swallow hard, pray to the basketball gods, and say yes. You can work 20 years and not have a realistic shot to win the title. It's Kevin freaking Durant.
It's also risky, and history says it's more likely to result in broken hearts than a title. But that's also true of the more conservative alternate path. That road not taken may be more stable than this all-in wager, but it's also unlikely to ever produce a title -- and maybe less likely to do so than this high-risk, high-reward gambit.
The downside here is uglier than it might appear today, and could come faster. You have to enjoy the journey, because in the end it really might be championship or bust for the Suns.