Trading Robin Lopez this year isn’t a good idea
Jun 21, 2011, 4:24 PM | Updated: 5:34 pm
It’s no secret that Robin Lopez was a disappointment last season for the Phoenix Suns. That disappointment has lead many people to speculate that the center’s day’s in the desert are numbered.
Don’t count Sports 620 KTAR’s Ron Wolfley as one of them. On the Doug and Wolf show Tuesday he made it very clear he wants to see the center and his unique hair at the US Airways Center for at least one more season.
“This is the year Robin Lopez can dispel everything he did last year — and everything he did last year really kind of sucked buttermilk. It really did,” Wolf said. “There’s no other way to say it. I will say this, in his second season he was critical. He was important to the point where Alvin Gentry said he was the second most important guy on our roster. I wouldn’t give up on Robin Lopez [now], I would after this year.
“If he comes in he’s out of shape, he looks like his intensity level is down again, boom move him. Done, cut him. I don’t care. But right now, based on what he did in that second season, I’d give him another chance.”
Keeping Lopez for one more year makes a lot of sense. At just 23-years-old he still has a lot of potential and showed flashes of brilliance in the second half of the 2009-10 season. As Wolf said, if there was ever a season the big man would show his true colors, it would be this upcoming one.
With that said, if the price is right Lopez should be up for grabs. If a team, like say the Golden State Warriors, is truly willing to part with a lottery pick and a young player with a ton of upside, it’s a deal the Suns have to do in a heartbeat.
If you’re the Suns you don’t just trade Lopez to trade him. One disappointing season doesn’t make a career. Two in a row? Well now that’s a different story.
