Bickley Blast: The Suns are running out of time to trade Kevin Durant before things get weird

Bickley Blast: The Suns are running out of time to trade Kevin Durant before things get weird

and Marada Mornings arizona sports the local sports leader Bigley Blast the NBA season closes shop on Sunday the draft is next Wednesday which means the Suns are running out of tarmac to trade Kevin Durant before things get really weird and maybe very uncomfortable in a perfect world KD would be the first to budge because at age 37 I believe he has the most to lose but it appears the Timberwolves do not want to extend him at the maximum rate and that’s a problem in a perfect world the Heat or the Rockets would give the Suns something close to fair but here’s the real horror of the situation the image of the Phoenix Suns has never been lower under Robert Sarver’s reign of error there was an understanding that his issues were mostly miserly based on penny pitch pinching but under Matt Ishbia there is a growing feeling among national observers that he is cluelessly delusional and overly mealsome for instance John Hollinger just called the saga a classic Phoenix bleep show and thinks the Suns believe they would get way more for KD and now they don’t know what to do and if he feels that way you know other NBA teams are trying to smoke out the Suns and take advantage of their inexperience many believe the Miami Heat will eventually strike the winning deal but they’re still one to two pieces away and this game of chicken rolls into the weekend and if the Suns hold firm and stand pat if he is not traded before Wednesday’s draft then the KD saga will enter a new and dangerous phase otherwise known as the Twilight Zone all right today’s Bickley Blast brought to you by my great friends at Chapman BMW make luxury attainable find them online at chapmanbmw.com the longer this drags out the more we’re going to be talking about it kevin Durant’s one of the best players in the league still today he’s going to go down as what top 15 top 20 player of all time top 10 player of all time so and his stats I mean this is what he’s doing even at this age is remarkable the Suns know if they’re going to trade Kevin Durant they clearly have a price threshold they want met and I had one team tell me today it’s kind of a game of chicken at this point a game of chicken are we talking about chicken like centerline chicken are we talking about you’re playing chicken in the pool oh I don’t know what that is that’s when somebody gets on somebody else’s shoulder and you have like a chicken fight oh yeah yeah yeah that’s those are always fun i guess that’s more chicken fight than playing chicken is like it’s that whole it’s a thing of it’s like the movie scenes of one dude in a car driving straight at the other dude and the other dude’s driving without a cause yeah and somebody has to swerve away at the last minute and end up in the ditch right and then out of shame they leave town yeah listen I I Matt Ishpia I I’m astunned at how his image nationally and even locally has shifted so dramatically in in a very very very very short time and now the mockery and the ridicule continues and if this thing goes past the NBA draft th those kind of voices are only going to get louder and louder and louder i watched that whole John Hollinger Nate Duncan uh podcast and just the way the facial expressions they make when talking about the Suns the the disdain the contempt the feeling that that this team is just beyond delusional thinking that they can actually win next year that they can actually refit around Devin Booker by trading Kevin Durant for spare parts uh Nate Duncan pointed out that he doesn’t believe aside from Devin Booker once they trade Kevin Durant that they’ll have a top 30 player at any position and and they’re saying this to illustrate this team is miles away from an NBA championship and the only people who don’t seem to know it are the people running the Suns that’s their viewpoint of it and that’s where this Kevin Durant trade at the very middle of it all is is so important i think the Suns know perceptually if they make a a real kind of underwhelming deal then a lot of people are going to be like “What the heck are you doing?” And if you overplay your hand and you’re stuck with Kevin Durant and then maybe that gets really really weird maybe KD uh takes a page out of Jimmy Butler’s playbook maybe he doesn’t but this is a perilous time and it’s I I gotta be real honest with you as a Phoenix Suns fan this is really hard to watch it’s not It’s certainly not the funnest time in team history but let’s go back to the trade deadline last February that just passed the Suns squandered so much of their leverage for right now at that time mhm yes by diving up that draft pick well by that by trying to trade Kevin Durant at the deadline well that too i mean that too reality now and and the benefit of hindsight will tell you that that season was not salvageable even if Jimmy Butler came in here with a cape on it wasn’t it wasn’t going to work i’m confident in saying that but they played their card there and then it became known around the league well they’re they’re obviously trading Kevin Durant then they came out and said you know when the season ended they’re going to work with Kevin Durant and his business people to try to accommodate his wishes in a trade i mean how many more ways can you squander your leverage so you know I don’t I’ve heard conflicting things on what the Suns expect back obviously they want to get the most for a top 15 all-time player any team in that situation would want that mhm but I’ve also heard that they’re kind of tempering their own expectations now shooting for the moon uh and landing on a planet close to the moon you know what I’m saying yeah um so we’ll see we’re going to get the the Houston perspective from it adam Wexler who’s their game analyst on their television broadcast also a talk show host in Houston he’s going to join us at 8:30 nice um to me the lynch pin in all of this is still the Minnesota Timberwolves if they decide you know what let’s just do it let’s extend him either that spurs a trade happening right away or that al that also could if there’s a pause could beef up the the the offers from the other teams that are hesitant to throw in a Jabari Smith Jr or a Khalil Wear talking about Houston and Miami yeah right yeah that would be that would be ideal if if all of this comes down to Houston and Miami kind of okay we have to throw in that extra piece for them or he’s going to go to the other place that that’s that is what they’re going to have to convince convincingly accomplish somehow some way it’s look it it’s it’s so painful i was listening to Eddie Johnson yesterday on Sirius radio and he was talking about how what the Lakers are doing and how great Jeanie Bus did by acquiring a $10 billion price tag and and she’s got a deal that’s going to keep her around for a little bit and and not not terribly long and Eddie had made the point that that Jerry Kangelo did the same with Robert Sarver and Eddie’s lament was he wishes Jerry that Robert would have let Jerry stick around longer because if he would have Joe Johnson wouldn’t have been traded and Eddie’s point yesterday day that he made was if Joe Johnson hadn’t been traded we would have already had our first championship i bring that up to say that from that moment till now the hits have not stopped for us as as basketball fans the disappointment the close calls the traumatic traumatic episodes it’s it’s a lot it’s it’s really really a lot and when you look at it from that point when you look okay from 2005 to 2025 that’s 20 years of uh quite a roller coaster ride and you wonder why Suns fans are so so out of their minds PTSD on social media this has been this has been a rough go of it and this Kevin Durant trade symbolizes another end of another failed era yeah when you hit when you illustrate it that way the 20 years it seems like 90 yeah it does and then you think about the close calls that great team that nearly upset the Lakers you lose that on a Kobe airball what could there any could be really and then you think about the two lead against the Bucks and those are the high points those aren’t even the low points yeah it’s But they feel like the low points well it it’s it it’s just what’s lower than the other yeah yeah well as you pointed out yesterday it’s very very hard to win championships it’s what the higher you climb the steeper it gets and the more you are likely to fall backwards and slide down the mountain and it’s it’s a rough rough business it’s part of what makes it so gratifying thanks for watching Bickley and Marada click to see the latest Bley Blast and hit the button in the middle to subscribe to Arizona Sports

Dan Bickley explains why the Suns need to trade Kevin Durant soon on his Bickley Blast.

Should we worry about the Suns’ Kevin Durant trade pursuit a week out from the draft?: https://arizonasports.com/nba/phoenix-suns/kevin-durant-market-2/3587428/

Subscribe to the Arizona Sports daily newsletter: https://bit.ly/3QWcj1x
Read articles from Arizona Sports: https://arizonasports.com/
Download the Arizona Sports app: https://arizonasports.com/the-arizona-sports-98-7-fm-app/
Sign up for texts from Arizona Sports: https://arizonasports.com/text-alerts/
Listen live to Arizona Sports: https://arizonasports.com/listen-live/
Watch live: arizonasports.com/watch-live
Follow the team: https://bit.ly/3R0PIAJ

ARIZONA SPORTS SOCIAL MEDIA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArizonaSports/
X: https://x.com/azsports
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@arizonasports987
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arizsports/

ARIZONA SPORTS PODCASTS: https://arizonasports.com/category/podcasts/

Video: Felisa Cárdenas and Jeremy Schnell/Arizona Sports
Photos: Felisa Cárdenas/Arizona Sports; Getty Images