Phoenix Suns cashed in top trade chip in moving draft pick owed to them by Lakers

It was going to turn into a superstar.

Yeah, that’s it.

The draft pick the Phoenix Suns owned via the Los Angeles Lakers, one acquired in the trade that sent Steve Nash to Tinseltown in 2012, was going to net Planet Orange a stud.

Eventually. Maybe.

The pick would have only belonged to the Suns this year if it did not fall in the top five of the draft, and in 2016 and ’17 it is top-3 protected.

The Lakers have the fourth-worst record in all of basketball, though, and have shown few signs that things will turn around, meaning chances are the Suns would not have received it this season.

By the time they did, that pick may have been late lottery, at best, or late in the draft, at worst.

So, when it was a necessary part of the three-way trade that brought guard Brandon Knight to the Valley, the Suns were willing to move it.

“It was an important asset that, all things being equal, we would like to hold onto,” Suns president of basketball operations Lon Babby told Bickley and Marotta on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Friday. “But that’s why we got the pick; we got the pick to be able to use it to get what we hope is going to be a great player.

“At the end of the day, that was the judgment that Brandon was worth spending that pick.”

The 23-year-old Knight is averaging 17.8 points, 5.4 assists 4.3 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game while shooting 43.5 percent from the field and 40.9 percent from 3-point range.

A fourth-year pro who was taken with the eighth overall selection in 2011 out of Kentucky, the 6-foot-3, 189-pound guard very well could turn out to be better than anyone the Suns would have ended up with by the time they got that pick from the Lakers.

Suns fans may recall a pick the team was owed from the Atlanta Hawks via the Joe Johnson trade that was top-3 protected in 2007. The Hawks finished with the fourth-worst record in basketball the season before but jumped up to the third spot in the lottery, from where they selected Al Horford.

The Suns received the pick the following season, but it had fallen all the way to 15, where they selected Robin Lopez.

And while the team parted with one potential top pick Thursday, they added three more first-round choices, with varying degrees of protection.

One, that came from Boston in the Isaiah Thomas trade, is Cleveland’s, and likely to be granted to Phoenix this year. The other two come from Miami by way of the Goran Dragic trade — one is top-7 protected in 2017 and the other, which will go to Phoenix in 2021, has no limitations.

“Every day those picks become increasingly more valuable,” Babby said. “One of them for sure is going to be unprotected, and that’s huge to have an unprotected pick. And the other one could become unprotected — you don’t have to get too deep into scenarios for that to happen, so those picks are going to become valuable and that made us feel a little bit better and you bet on the fact that the player you’re getting is going to be of the caliber to make the expenditure worthwhile.”

In other words, there is no guarantee the Lakers pick, while enticing, was ever going to turn into something truly special. It was an asset, plain and simple, and the Suns decided to cash it in Thursday to land Knight.

“The pick really was designed, we would have taken another great young player if we got it this year or next year, but the real purpose of getting that pick is so that one day you can convert it into a terrific player, and the opportunity was there to do that,” Babby said. “Obviously we tried to hold onto it, but Philadelphia was moving the rookie of the year and they needed to be compensated so putting all those pieces together is not easy, and you have to make it a deal that works for all three parties.”

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