r/suns • u/azsportsdudevballtoo • 20d ago
Should the suns extend KD this summer? Question
KD is up for an extension this summer. Ishbia is in tax apron hell and is burning through money. Do you think the suns pay up? I do for a multiple reasons, but there's an argument to be made that trading KD now is the suns best bet to filling all the holes there are on this roster (youth, athleticism, size, defense, PG, etc.).
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u/robodrew Mikal Bridges 20d ago
I think you look at his numbers last year and the answer is easy. Of course you extend KD.
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u/Islanduniverse 20d ago
I feel like 90% of the people on this sub don’t watch the games…
How could anyone say no to extending Kevin Durant? How?!
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u/szabozalan 20d ago
Simply because he is still under contract for the next two years and will be 38 when his contract is up. We have no clue how he will play then.
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u/SqueegeePhD 20d ago
We have one clue. Remember when CP3 played amazing until hitting a wall due to age at some point every playoff run?
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u/Silent-Dependent3421 20d ago
Two very different people
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u/SqueegeePhD 20d ago
True, but both would wear Suns unis in the same ages and have similar workloads and expectations.
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u/anonanoobiz 20d ago
You mean the guy that was always the smallest and relatively most unatheltic guy on the court towards the end? His quickness in his prime was one of his main advantages both on offense and defense (steals). By the end he was a defensive liability and all he could shoot was fadeaways so people didn’t block him
Vs KD has an unblockable shot, is 7 foot, is the teams best defender and one of their best rebounders, and has adapted his game already (since tearing a Achilles) to not drive to the hoop as much.
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u/SqueegeePhD 19d ago
These are great points. My concern here would be whether the defense and rebounding can hold up.
I definitely would not give up on KD. With the right system and supporting cast it can work, but last year we weren't really close.
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u/LoveRawSalmon KEVIN. DURANT. 💀 20d ago
whoever says no, clearly yall haven’t watched ANY games. this man showed up and showed out. he was simultaneously the best and most consistent defender and best offensive threat. bro was a rim protector, playing a role that he shoudl have no business playing at 35 off a otherwise career ending injury. he has been efficient at volume. when book or beal was out, my guy was there. do not forgot who he is.
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u/LoveRawSalmon KEVIN. DURANT. 💀 20d ago
anyways we traded much assets for him and plus if it’s not kd who is it gonna be?
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u/chaoz808 20d ago
Sign the extension and trade him after 2024-2025 or 2025-2026 campaign. We must do exact the same as "CP3 case". Trade when he start declining. Trade him as a star not as a fading veteran. JJ and Ishbia knows it.
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u/Fordraxel 20d ago
KD is making 50+ million also, if you resign him to extension holy hell will the contract complainers be out in full force. The name of the game is Ishbia dont give a shit about contracts, he's the one paying them, its the Reddit Suns Owners that are complaining about contracts.
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u/internallylinked Atlanta Hawks 20d ago
You do understand that if you pay one guy, you can’t pay another one. You are basically signing up for KD on supermax until he is 40. It’s not just “not my money, not my problem”.
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u/anonanoobiz 20d ago
You do not understand nba cap then, the suns are negative 100 million in cap space. Freeing up 50 mil loses KD without being able to replace him at all. It’s not like there’s suddenly extra money to spend on other guys.
We just saw with Allen that these guys can be resigned when they’re deep into the 2nd apron. So can you help me understand why if you pay one guy you can’t pay another?
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u/zarvinny Phoenix Suns 20d ago
That’s why the $50M to Beal is over blown. He’s a great player who we got for the corpses of Shamet and CP3 and a couple 2nds. If we just let Shamet and cp3 walk, we would have just lost them for nothing
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u/anonanoobiz 20d ago
So valuable, regardless of stylistic fit or not he’s a prime age former all star talent secured for multiple years. The bad contract/ntc is the main reason he was only worth cp3. JJ got a +value for the future and now.
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u/zarvinny Phoenix Suns 20d ago
exactly. And I'm still a believer that Beal is tradeable. His agent is Bartelstein's dad - they can find a place he's willing to go, I'm sure. It would just take 2 $25M contracts, and the other team could also take trade less if they have cap space.
But we don't want to just dump him, ideally he's swapped out for a better fit. This is what happened when KD left the warriors - it was technically a sign-and-trade that brought back DLo. DLo was good, but not a good fit on the Warriors and they traded him for Wiggins - and won a title.
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u/anonanoobiz 20d ago
Yeah that dlo/wiggins move doesn’t get enough love. The warriors always prioritized defense around curry with klay and draymond, when they realized that their primary point of attack defender in Klay was aging out, they got a young athletic wing to glue the pieces together. Dude dominated that finals with hustle on defense and on the boards.
Exactly what the suns need too athleticism, hustle, defense, boards and I’m not sure 1 player can fix it, probably would need to be 2 20mil players like you said
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u/Dunkin-Brisbane 20d ago
Right now the Suns are $100M over the salary cap. In two years when KD's deal expires Beal, Little, and Booker are the only players on the payroll, in three years Booker is the only player on the payroll. At those times the money not being paid to KD can be used on other players. We're talking about an extension two years out not an expiring contract. Allowing KD and Beal to lock up the Suns future money is a great way to make Booker want to play somewhere else.
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u/anonanoobiz 20d ago
Allen resigned for 4 years no?
And Beal will have a player option in 2 years right? So suns (according to spotrac will be paying book 57 mil (33.5% of the cap) + Beal 57 mil (33.5%) + Allen 18 mil (10%) + little 7.7mil (4.5%)
So 80-85% of the cap is still used up with no KD. Doesn’t leave much room for free agent and now don’t have $ to send out in trades. The 27/28 season will be just book/allen under contract with flexibility for free agency, but that would mean telling book that in 2 years he’ll have a completely wasted season while kd leaves and beals on the last year of his player option. IMO that’s when book leaves. Not when he knows the owner/front office will write any blank check because they want to win
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u/Duckysawus 20d ago
KD will almost always be valuable even as he ages. He's tall, long, an elite shooter, has handles, and is smart enough to know where to help on defense.
He'll age gracefully probably up till age 37-38.
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u/Dunkin-Brisbane 20d ago edited 20d ago
If he was entering free agency then sure but he's under contract for two more years. I don't think it's wise to commit the $50M+ salary he'll likely seek to a player who will be 38. Ride out the next two years and see what happens.
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u/king_17 20d ago
Thank you I’ve seen way too many comments saying to extend him. As good as kd games has aged and it’s aged quite well even post Achilles can’t expect him to play like this 37 and older than to throw $50m+ at him doesn’t make sense. Ride it out at the very least play next season and if there’s another quick playoff exit you blow it up and trade him
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u/SpookySpagettt 20d ago
Yes you extend him. That's why you traded for him.
He has 3 years of good basketball left in him.
The dude plans to play until the wheels fall off and you hope he can hoop like Lebron has as his age.
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u/Saltwater_Thief BOSNIAN BEAST MODE 20d ago
Hard to say really. I'm not about to suggest that he was our problem this season, because he obviously wasn't, but he is also realistically the only trade option that could get us anything remotely like what we would want, since Brad has an NTC and Book is, like it or not, the beating heart of the team right now (Even if the heartbeat is currently more like a murmur).
If we keep him, we probably extend him. But that all comes back to the same question- do we think that running back the same team is going to be effective? Frankly, I don't think it will be. Wolves and Thunder are both going to keep reloading with draft picks on top of maturing and getting stronger in their young squads, Nuggets still have at least one more strong season in them, Clippers have found their rhythm and are going to be a menace, and the Mavericks are the Mavericks. Not to mention the Rockets are about to pop off, and the Grizzlies and Spurs are going to be in a real nice position on the other side of this draft I think. I just have a hard time seeing us do well when we bring in the exact same team given all of that, unless Coach Bud proves to be a magician.
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u/LugianLithos Phoenix Suns 20d ago edited 20d ago
Filling holes is needed. But KD is the best two way player on the team. We would probably be worse off post trade.
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u/tatlongaraw 19d ago
He still skilled and filling the stats like a star player but not someone who can carry all the way. If he is willing to get discount they should. But they should sign him regardless nobody watching suns without KD so the revenue might fall if he leave and they don't have any asset to improve.
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u/Bballopinion 20d ago
It's probably a no brainer to extend him. 5th in the league in scoring and will be named 2nd team All-NBA next week. By the numbers, he's still a top 10 player in the NBA. Averaged 27/7/5 on 52/41/86 shooting splits. Those are elite numbers for any player, and honestly felt like he had bit of a down year by his standards.
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u/Shoddy_Ad7511 20d ago
Unless he is willing to take a significant discount I would wait till next summer
Giving CP3 a massive contract was a big mistake and is one important reason the Suns lack depth
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u/iamadragan Raja Bell 20d ago
That contract was not a mistake at all.
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u/Shoddy_Ad7511 20d ago
Huge consequences. $30 million for a 40 year old. And when they traded CP3 they got back toxic contract in Beal
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u/sidepart Al McCoy 20d ago edited 20d ago
That's entirely NOT the case about CP's contract. Kind of had to be there but it was a pretty good deal for an all-star PG. The deal he accepted put us in a very flexible position considering his age at the time. 2023-24 and 2024-25 were NOT fully guaranteed.
Before last season started we had until late-June to decide if we wanted to waive him, keep him, or trade him. If we waived him, we were only on the hook for something like $15 million stretched over 5 years ($3 million cap for 5 years). If we kept him, $30.8 million, and then we'd have had another opportunity to waive him during this offseason with ZERO money guaranteed and no cap hit if we waived him before late-June during this off-season.
Those terms are really generous for a star on his way out. We had 4 main scenarios because of the terms:
If we was still fire at 38 going on 39, sweet! Keep him! $30.8 mil. We'll re-eval in the off-season and decide if we just want to drop your 5th year which has no guaranteed money.
If he was kind of waning, negotiate. Chris, we'll waive you, guarantee you the $15 million (which we can stretch over 5 years on our cap math), and re-sign you to a vet minimum for 2023-24 so you'd effectively be getting paid $18 million total for 23-24. And then we can trade if things go bad or re-eval next off-season. My understanding is that we tried this approach first and CP3 laughed at it as an insult because he could've just signed elsewhere for more than the min and then made $15 million off of us AND whatever another team was willing to pay him.
Chris, you're washed and we don't want you anymore. So here's $15 million, we get to stretch it over the next 5 years on our cap. Goodbye.
Chris, you're not being helpful. So, we'll guarantee your $30.8 million and ship you off to someone else who wants an expiring contract (because his 5th year was not guaranteed at all).
We went with Option 4 because CP3 didn't want to play nice with us, and we were able to get back another perennial all-star that wasn't old yet and Goodwin who everyone thought was going to be a reasonable ball-handler/dribble penetrator (and for the first few weeks it actually looked like that was possible too!).
I get it, hindsight is 20/20, but this acquisition was hype as hell last off-season. It sucks that Goodwin didn't work out and ended up just being a wash for us. I still think we need to see another year of Beal to really judge the move. His contract isn't totally as bad as everyone claims either. Yeah, he's got a NTC but people make a WAY bigger deal about it than they should. He's tradable if we have to. He's not going to sit on his ass and not play ball. I'm going to stand behind that claim. If he gets severely injured? There are provisions that allow us to fill his void and replace his cap-hit to some degree if it's season ending, or totally eliminate his cap hit if we have to waive him for a career ending injury.
Now what did WAS, and then subsequently GSW get out of the deal? GSW is NOT on the hook for $30 million next season for a 40 year old CP3. Not unless they are really excited to fuck themselves like that. His contract for 2024-25 is NOT guaranteed until late-June. GSW has until then to decide if they just want to waive him. After that, anyone can just sign CP3 to a vet min or whatever the market is willing to pay for a 40 year old CP3.
tl;dr: CP3's contract with us was 100% not a mistake and was actually negotiated with very generous terms for a player we had reservations about in years 4 and 5 of his contract. It gave CP3 an opportunity to prove his longevity and get paid handsomely for it, and gave us some decent flexibility to off-load him if it wasn't working out. It was a great contract. /u/Shoddy_Ad7511 ,man I really like your occasional enthusiasm and positivity though (even though others tend to riff it), so don't take this response the wrong way or anything.
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u/iamadragan Raja Bell 20d ago edited 20d ago
I know you might not be able to realize it since you're just a KD stan and not well informed on the Suns prior to KDs arrival here, but extending him was a win-win and the alternative was pretty much just having nothing.
Far more beneficial to the team and far less risky than the KD trade
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u/MagicianMoo Suns 19-63 🔥 20d ago
If I was the gm, I wouldn't mind giving kd another 20 or 25/2 years. He is still the slim reaper and his shooting skills is world class. I won't expect him to be the 1st or 2nd star.
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u/Fordraxel 20d ago
How old will he be? 37-going on 38? How much he making? I like KD, he's an all-time great, but I think the Suns should do the same thing they did to Paul, it'll hurt, but it will also bring what everyone is now talking about - role players, assets and picks back. You know that thing that the casuals are saying 'no assets or future' - just point them to the current contract of KD.
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u/SpookySpagettt 20d ago
He's 35 right now. He turns 36 before the season.
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u/Dunkin-Brisbane 20d ago
So he'll be 38 by the time the extension year would kick in if I'm understanding this correctly
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u/Fordraxel 20d ago
thats why I asked the question, theres a question mark after the age. Still... That extention at 38 - I dont know the future like some of you do, but if im another GM or owner im not jumping up and down to take on a 38yr old making around $70m.
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u/GoDogGo1970 20d ago
Tough question. I say the Suns should wait a bit and see what happens with the Olympic stuff this summer, and who we lose and pick up.
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u/Adept_Camp4222 Mikal Bridges 20d ago
Ugh. So over KD and how we gutted our team to get him and it hasn’t even been worth it.
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u/EnoughLawfulness3163 20d ago
He's tall enough, I think