Isaiah Thomas claims 3-PG look for Suns would have worked today
Apr 9, 2020, 3:49 PM
Phoenix Suns' Goran Dragic (1), of Slovenia, Isaiah Thomas, center, and Eric Bledsoe pose for a photo during NBA basketball media day, Monday, Sept. 29, 2014, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York)
(AP Photo/Matt York)
The 2014-15 season sure was a weird one in the Phoenix Suns’ history.
Fresh off a 48-win season, general manager Ryan McDonough brought in point guard Isaiah Thomas in free agency, already with Eric Bledsoe and Goran Dragic on the team. Finding a way for all three to get deserving playing time would prove to be an impossible task.
After a rocky opening to the season where they started 12-14, the matter of a fair minutes distribution wasn’t necessarily solved, but the team itself was figuring it out.
Phoenix went 10-5 in January and had a record of 28-21 heading into February.
Unfortunately, you know the rest. Dragic was unhappy in Phoenix and wanted out. McDonough traded him to Miami the day of the trade deadline, made the poor decision of shipping out Thomas as well to Boston and brought in Brandon Knight.
Thomas went on to be an MVP candidate and two-time All-Star with the Celtics while that was the last season the Suns were somewhere within the realm of being remotely decent.
With it being Thursday, Thomas posted his own throwback Thursday content of the infamous and hilarious photo of the three guards sharing the ball, with a noteworthy caption.
A member of that team, P.J. Tucker, noted in the comments that “it was working in that years game,” and he isn’t wrong.
In the 85 minutes Tucker played with the trio, the Suns outscored teams by 4.6 points per 100 possessions.
The three point guards in 187 minutes together canceled out a 110.0 defensive rating with 112.2 offensive rating to make it work. They weren’t pulverizing teams but were successful and winning.
Who knows how the Suns’ next few years would have gone if the guards stuck together, or if McDonough just held onto Thomas at the deadline, but the strong assumption is that it would have been a whole lot better than reality.
