Phoenix Suns GM: Glad we didn’t trade up in NBA Draft
Jun 27, 2014, 5:24 PM | Updated: 5:24 pm
Many people try to predict what will happen in the NBA Draft.
For the most part, they fail.
Some picks make sense, others do not. There are also always a handful of trades.
It was believed that the Phoenix Suns, with a trio of first-round picks and a seeming lack of desire to add three rookies to the roster, were going to be one of the teams that made a deal.
They did not, though that doesn’t mean they never came close.
“We certainly considered it, and that’s always the challenge,” Suns GM Ryan McDonough told Doug and Wolf on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Friday morning. “We did have the pick assets to do it with the 14th, 18th and 27th picks.
“But at the same time, we had a good feeling about the guys we thought were going to be there. And that’s the challenge, you never know how it’s going to go.”
Of course, it’s not like the Suns will be adding all three first-round selections to the roster this season. The plan is for Bogdan Bogdanovic, the 27th pick out of Serbia, to continue playing in Europe for the foreseeable future.
But the chance to nab both T.J. Warren and Tyler Ennis was, for all intents and purposes, too good to pass up.
“We had T.J. and Tyler rated a lot higher than they were selected, and we were certainly happy they were there,” he said. “In retrospect we’re glad we didn’t cash out two assets to move up to get one of those guys or somebody like that because we got both of them.”
McDonough added that while the team did consider moving up, they were never really close to a deal. Part of the issue was that there was a limit to how high they could get, and unless they could move into the top five or six — which wasn’t an option — the decision was made that they would be better served staying put.
“Short of that, we had the players rated fairly evenly in kind of that mid to late lottery range.”
