Babby: Suns won’t necessarily use cap space

For the first time in a long time, the Phoenix Suns will
have substantial room under the NBA’s salary cap heading
into an offseason.

With six players under contract and Robin Lopez a
restricted free agent, the Suns’ front office has some
hefty decisions to make about the makeup of their 2012-13
roster in the coming months.

Lon Babby, the team’s president of basketball operations
held a “State of the Suns” lunch with the media Wednesday
and said the money under the cap won’t be burning a hole
in the Suns’ pocket.

“Cap space doesn’t mean you’re going to go out and sign
free agents,” he said. “I could also mean we’re going to
make one-sided trades and there is a distinct possibility
that we don’t use our cap room this summer.

“We’ve worked hard to put ourselves in this position to
have this kind of flexibility to have a range of
opportunities, but I am absolutely determined that we are
going to be disciplined in how we approach this because we
cannot get ourselves right back in the same spot that we
were in by doing bad contracts, not assessing value
properly and not making the right choices in terms of
personnel.”

The Suns are about to head into a free agent market with
plenty to spend, but not too many attractive options to
spend it on.

And Babby is obviously wary of repeating in signing
contracts like the ones the Suns tendered to Hakim Warrick
(4 years, $18 million) and Josh Childress in 2010 (5
years, $34 million).

Needless to say, it’ll be an interesting offseason for
Babby and company.

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