ESPN: Suns’ future remains fairly bleak
May 30, 2013, 8:24 PM | Updated: 8:50 pm
The Phoenix Suns have worked hard to get themselves in position to turn things around.
A lottery team for three consecutive seasons following a trip to the Western Conference Finals, they’ve gone through a couple general managers as well as a couple different coaches.
The hope is that the combination of Ryan McDonough as GM and Jeff Hornacek as coach will stabilize things, and a bevy of draft picks over the next few years will help get the team back on track.
However, the folks over at ESPN.com are not terribly optimistic about the franchise’s trajectory.
In their latest “Future Power Rankings,” which is an Insider piece, Phoenix comes in at No. 29. Of 30 teams.
The overall ranking is based on a criteria that includes players (30th), management (29th), money (25th), market (11th) and draft (3rd).
Saying that bad draft picks, poor free agent decisions and misguided trades have set them back, Chad Ford (who wrote the Suns section) notes that there is some hope going forward.
The Suns have the No. 5 and No. 30 picks in this year’s draft and have a total of six first-round picks in the next three years. They also got a small bump in Management thanks to the hiring of former Celtics assistant GM Ryan McDonough.
But other than that? Not much. With no cornerstones for the Suns to build around, it’s going to be grim for a while. The loaded 2014 draft might be their best way out of the mire.
Indeed, the 2014 draft is regarded to boast one of the better crops of talent of any in recent memory. But if the Suns are in as rough shape as ESPN seems to believe, even that might not be enough to get them going again.
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