2014 NBA re-draft: Suns mostly did well with three picks in shallow class

There are many different ways an NBA Draft class can swing in one direction or another.

For the 2014 NBA Draft, almost everything went wrong. Unfortunately for the Phoenix Suns, owning three first-round picks in a shallow draft pool wasn’t ideal.

The good news is they drafted two of the better players in the class. T.J. Warren is a useful offensive weapon, and ditto for Bogdan Bogdanovic, though the timing never worked out and he was traded to the Kings before he made his NBA debut. As for taking Tyler Ennis one spot before Harris? Well …

It’s time to rehash the 2014 draft. So Empire of the Suns‘ Kellan Olson and Kevin Zimmerman decided to do just that to find out what talent Phoenix would’ve ended up with if every team had the power of foresight.

The same rules apply as last year.

We projected how each player would fit on the team drafting them beginning in 2014-15. Also, we kept draft-day trades. In parentheses, you’ll find where the player we drafted was actually selected.

If you want to hear us attempt to explain our evaluation of most of these players, listen to the podcast at the top of this page.

Here are the results.

What went wrong from top to bottom of the 2014 draft in the four years since? Underwhelming development from the top two picks. One All-Star in the class — potentially only two total. No real “steals” in the second round outside of that one potential All-Star. No hidden star power in the second half of the first round.

What hurts the class the most, though, was a chunk of prospects who projected to have NBA skills. Instead of turning those into a long, serviceable careers, many of those players are already out of the league four years later.

Nik Stauskas, Adreian Payne, James Young, Tyler Ennis, Bruno Caboclo, Mitch McGary and others flamed out in a hurry.

After Gary Harris was picked No. 19 in the first round by the Denver Nuggets, there are only 11 more players who are on an NBA roster next year. That’s over 70 percent of the players from 20-60 out of the NBA in four years.

Luckily, this class had Nikola Jokic turn into one of the best second-round gems of the past decade, or else this could be one of the worst draft classes in recent memory. What happens to it if Joel Embiid’s medical history catches up to him before he even enters his last 20s?

This made it a rough re-draft exercise to undergo, but we got it done.

Find the results of our re-draft in the gallery above.