Pacers’ rise in NBA postseason a reminder of Suns’ past failures

Hindsight is the devil for all failed regimes. But if James Jones had only known then what he knows now, the Suns wouldn’t be in a dire predicament.

At the NBA draft in November 2020 – a strange date and a strange scene necessitated by the pandemic – Jones selected Jalen Smith with the 10th overall pick. He passed on Tyrese Haliburton, the star point guard from Iowa State. Haliburton had fallen into Jones’ lap. Jones refused to take the gift. It felt like madness in real time.

For the next two years, it hardly seemed to matter, a time when James nearly became immortal in Arizona. He was two wins away from delivering a championship team that he built from scratch while operating under the budget of a frugal owner. If there were a Hall of Fame for general managers in sports, Jones was on the doorstep.

Yet Haliburton was his most befuddling move. At the time, Jones believed he needed to bolster the team’s frontline to compete with the Lakers, a team that had just won an NBA championship in the Orlando bubble after acquiring Anthony Davis.

What James didn’t know was that a fog of parity was about to descend on professional basketball.

The NBA is about to crown a seventh different champion in a seven-year span. That has never happened before. There are many speculative reasons for the stunning changes in a sport that once was so predictable, from financial guardrails now restricting the most expensive teams to the staggering depth in the NBA. It’s also true that the league’s No. 1 player is no longer so superior that he can carry his team to a conference championship every year, all by himself. That may change in the near future.

Jones strategized around a miscalculation, believing the Lakers were on the brink of another dynasty. Meanwhile, Haliburton has played a starring role for Indianapolis, a true pass-first point guard with undeniable ability in the clutch.

For the record, Haliburton isn’t the Suns’ only contribution to the Pacers’ current run for a title. In July 2022, the Pacers extended a $133 million offer sheet to Deandre Ayton. They did so after considering a sign-and-trade for the Suns center, giving up Myles Turner in exchange. The Suns matched the offer sheet for Ayton, and it was all downhill from there.

Turner is now a key member of the Pacers while Ayton remains an enigma entering the final year of his contract.

Every team has its gaffes. The Suns once thought they had negotiated a trade for Steph Curry. They once had a pre-draft trade lined up to acquire Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. But revisionist history can especially cruel on our ringless 57-year-old franchise. Especially if Indianapolis gets its first championship before we do.

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