Phoenix Suns look to be ‘aggressive’ in free agency, target veteran PF

PHOENIX — For a team that floundered through a 23-win season, its worse since its inaugural campaign nearly 50 years ago, the Phoenix Suns are far from a finished product.

In other words, there is no quick fix.

Yes, there are some attractive free-agent repairs that can be made to instantly improve the look, but the Suns want a solid foundation from which to build a contending team

So, what does that mean for the Suns when free agency hits at 9:01 p.m. Thursday?

Not much in terms of a major splash. Instead, look for the Suns to dip their toe in the waters, at least at the onset.

The just-completed draft was a clear indication of how the Suns plan to move forward.

“We certainly didn’t anticipate getting both of these power forwards in Dragan Bender and Marquese Chriss. Honestly, we would’ve been happy to have either one of them or just one of them on the roster,” general manager Ryan McDonough said. “It is going to cause us, I think, to take a step back and re-evaluate our free agency strategy, but the good news is we have a lot of young talent on the roster. We have much better positional balance on the roster now.”

McDonough promised to take an aggressive approach to free agency — “which we have been in the past,” he said — though swinging for the fences is likely not an option this offseason.

Neither of the top two names on the market, LeBron James and Kevin Durant, are headed to the Valley. James is expected to re-sign with Cleveland and Durant does not have Phoenix on his reported list of teams he plans to meet with.

The Suns made a run at James two years ago and just missed out on LaMarcus Aldridge a year ago. Both those pursuits came at a cost, however.

“In the past couple of years we had to make some tough decisions about letting free agents go to other teams or trading players on our roster to position ourselves to do big things. We certainly don’t regret those decisions. I think you win in this league with elite, special players,” McDonough said.

“We’ll continue to look at being aggressive. We still do have roster spots open. I can see some scenarios that we aggressively go after a player or multiple players and if we get them, great; and if not, our roster is relatively balanced and has, I think, pretty good depth with our young talent, so I think we’d kind of be OK. Obviously, we prefer to get the elite guys if we go after them, but if we don’t, we’d be happy and take more of a developmental track as well.”

With a salary cap projected at $94 million, the Suns will have plenty of dollars “to play with,” according to McDonough. He estimated a range of $25-$30 million.

Of course, the Suns aren’t the only team flush with cash this offseason. A majority of the 30 NBA teams have significant cap space entering free agency.

Tops on McDonough’s free-agent wish list is a veteran power forward, a player such as Brandon Bass, Jared Dudley or David West. All three are unrestricted.

Then there are in-house candidates Jon Leuer and Mirza Teletovic, both of whom served the Suns well last season.

“We are interested in potentially signing (those two),” McDonough said. “We’ll keep in touch with those guys and look at other guys at the power forward spot because I think most likely that Dragan Bender and Marquese Chriss will be kind of in a more of a developmental situation. I don’t think at this point that we would put either one of those guys out there as our opening night starter at 18 or 19.”

McDonough made it clear that whomever the Suns target their role will be clearly defined.

“I think we probably will look to sign maybe one veteran guy at the ‘4’ who is probably OK being a starter — everybody is OK being a starter, I guess,” he said, “but comfortable being a starter for the next year or two and then maybe at some point transitioning to a bench role as (Bender and Chriss) emerge and develop because down the road we do view them both as potential starters and hopefully high-level players in the NBA.

“We’re excited to see what we can do in free agency.”

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