Why Suns fans feel better about the new direction of the team after early rounds of 2025 NBA Draft

Why Suns fans feel better about the new direction of the team after early rounds of 2025 NBA Draft

i mean I’m excited to to put on the Phoenix jersey that has my name that has Maloatch at the back and uh I’m just excited to play for the Suns and step on the on the floor let’s come on Match last night speaking with the assembled media at the NBA draft the number 10 overall pick in the draft the newest member of the Phoenix Suns mince Varel this is Connor Collins back here with you on this Arizona Sports at Night Power Hour edition and there was a word in there that he mentioned and I mean look let’s be real every draft prospect would say something similar to that about how excited they are to join their new team and how excited they are to be able to play in the NBA but let’s flip it a bit let’s ask the excitement question to the two of us let’s just ask each other here because quite frankly I don’t think that this off season was going to take a turn for the better until last night and now it feels like the off seasonason has taken a turn for the better or am I getting a little ahead of my skis here and assuming that brighter days are ahead to use a uh Suns pun there Connor yeah I mean this is uh it’s interesting right because not often do you trade away somebody who is a 27 plus point scorer per game and Kevin Durant a guy who’s going to be in the Hall of Fame and then you say yeah we found a way to get better as the week went on but to be fair I think that’s exactly what the Suns did they decided at the end of the day at the end of the day Kevin Durant being gone was inev inevitable man I can’t talk right now inevitability but it’s okay um but we knew Kevin Durant was not going to be a member of this roster so I think with that in mind Brian Gregory said “I’m going to go out and get the best package I can.” And when you bring in somebody like Jaylen Green who I believe it’s does have all-star potential in him you bring in somebody like Dylan Brooks who has proven that he can be an all league defender and a good leadership guy in your locker room and then you go and have the draft that you do right where you go and get a top 10 prospect mhm some would even say a top five prospect and you get him at the value without having to trade up you bring in a veteran center in Mark Williams and then everything that happened today starting off with number 52 and 59 and somehow climbing that ladder all the way up to 31 and walking away with RJ Fleming i just think to me as a Suns fan it’s hard not to take that all in totality look at it and not be optimistic that to me sounds like a general manager who’s going to come in with a chip on his shoulder who might have heard all the noise about people saying “Who is this guy does he have any experience what’s he doing here at this?” I mean it almost sounds like kind of the these young guys who have played NBA 2K are mad in all their lives and they finally get the chance to run their own team and he’s just going to take a shot in the dark and that’s what it seems like he did he took a lot of shots you got to hope that they pay off there are going to be some guys like we talked about earlier with the injuries with Mark Williams but if you can find that silver lining and these guys end up paying off for you I don’t think it’s going to be too hard to forget about the Kevin Durant era for a first time GM he seems to have been making a lot of very seemingly responsible moves with with some slight I’m like look I don’t not I’m not going to say everything’s perfect or everything’s been perfect in terms of this off seasonason and Brian Gregory at the helm and whoever the hell else is in charge up there but I will say I’m vastly impressed with what he’s been able to do in this short time window let’s basically just take Kevin Durant trade to now yeah think about everything that he’s done in that time frame and you’ve laid out a lot of it already but I’m thinking about it from the complexity standpoint of somebody who’s only been in the front office for two years got promoted to this role to be in charge of the basketball operations i’m shocked that he was able to pull off some of the moves that he did am I pleased with every single return or every single package sent out no but that doesn’t matter what I’m trying to get at here is I was worried that this was going to be run to the ground in their attempt of trying to restructure this roster and quite frankly he’s done a very respectable job trying to build this thing back into a much more balanced unit and I I give Brian Gregory hella props for that it would be easy for this year to have gone into it said this is going to be a rebuild we’re going to figure out what we’re going to do with our future and yeah Devin Booker’s along for the ride it is what it is but instead it ended up being more of a retool and he found ways that he really did he found ways to still be a competitive team when I look at this Suns lineup and again nothing is set in stone yet we still have to see how guys pan out in summer league and what other other moves still could happen but I look at this Suns lineup and I think yeah I why wouldn’t a playin option be be in play here right why wouldn’t this team be a a seven to a to a five seed something like that it takes a lot of optimism and it takes a lot of guys to play really good basketball but I think you’re not asking for too much when you have Devin Booker leading the way there and I do think that you know when you bring this in he Brian Gregory did not have a lot of fans that were going really raw at the the helm for him but right now this is something I wanted to do a little bit earlier i just like to go on to Twitter X whatever you call it these days and see what people are saying what some fans are out there saying it is overwhelming positivity towards Brian Gregory i mean here’s one here from Ridiculous Cage and it’s got the uh the Pope with the little meme of him holding up and it’s a picture of Brian Gregory in the interview and you got uh here it’s Brian Gregory right now this is from Suns Uni Tracker and it’s the little Ratatouille with Remy going around cooking it up i mean that’s good because a couple weeks ago if you looked up Brian Gregory and you were looking at these chats and you were looking it wasn’t very nice and it was a lot of Suns fans who felt like the process to get there to get to Brian Gregory felt a little lazy but I must say he he is taking this opportunity how much of it is Matt Ishbia kind of looming over his shoulder i wonder that as well but it’s a good start and I think there’s still a lot left to be done like this is the easy way to put this is and I don’t want to make any declarative statements as to whether or not I’m bought in i still think that they’re not going to be a great team in the West are they going to be a much more balanced team yeah are they going to be more competitive yeah I think those are true are they going to be a better team than they were last year i do not know i think they might be as good as they were last year record-wise but they’ll at least feel like a more coherent unit there’s still a lot left to be done this off season there’s a decision to be made on Bradley Beal and Bradley Beiel plays as much into that as any character in this story but there’s something that is going to be done when it comes to Bradley Beal that’s probably the largest hanging item on the to-do list right now there’s questions as to whether or not Grayson Allen or Royce O’Neal are going to make it through training camp as a part of this roster as we’ve mentioned in the last segment there is an extreme glut at the center position to the point that you know Mason Plumbley is probably not going to be brought back they’re probably not going to bring back Bowl but you still have Nick Richards and Oso Gdaro on the roster what are you going to do with them you just added three guys via the draft that maybe are all going to see rotational minutes how are you going to feed everybody there’s a lot of bodies to feed now and I just wonder how they’re going to handle the rest of this off season knowing what is still left to be done this is a good start but there’s still a lot to do if I could if I could just go out there and have my wish list into like I said to be fair in my personal opinion it’s been a good start we asked for for a center he went and got us two of them we asked to get a power forward that can play some defense he went and got RJ Fleming who’s got a 7 and 1/2t wingspan i mean yeah this is a guy who can do what we’re asking so now if I continue to add to my wish list and and I can continue to see what Brian Gregory or Matt Ishbia can bring us I would love if we can bring in a veteran point guard somebody who can run the one truly and I know there’s been talks of Chris Paul uh Chris Paul maybe thinking about moving back to the West or thinking about getting into coaching as like a players coach whatever that may be for him but somebody of that S somebody who can run the point because I think Jaylen Green is somebody who who very much resembles Devin Booker it’s gonna be hard to have those two guys in your starting lineup and not have a very bold dominant backcourt so if you can get somebody who can distribute someone who can get these younger guys involved like we talked about with a little bit now more rim presence throwing the alley oop things of that sort I believe that’s probably the next step for me if Brian Gregory can get me a facilitator a true number one I think that would be great to see on that roster and Gambo was saying on the air before they called it a day on Burns and Gambo that there was mention of he and he wasn’t reporting this necessarily but you know Taius Jones was on the team last year do the Suns consider bringing him back because the price is going to be relatively inexpensive because he didn’t have a great year last year do they consider calling Gillespie do they give him a full guaranteed contract instead of a a two-way deal and they just elevate him as one of the part point guards and there there’s still so much left to be done i’m fascinated to see where they go with it it feels like this is a good first step i’m I’m not bought in or to make that clear but I’m at least taking this team a lot more seriously than I was several weeks ago when it was “Oh my gosh they’re just going to do everything Michigan State and we’re all going to hate it.” Well guess what now they’ve taken a bunch of Duke Blue Devils yeah better than you felt 5 days ago man what could you imagine if it was Jace Richardson who was the pick there he’s going to be great for the Orlando Magic he’s going to be great for them but could you just imagine how the fans would have reacted oh my gosh

First the Phoenix Suns drafted Duke big man Khaman Maluach with the No. 10 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. before making trades to move up in the second round of the draft. Mitch Vareldzis and guest host Connor Collins aim to gage how fans are feeling about the direction of the team after these first two rounds.

Rasheer Fleming picked by Timberwolves for Suns with No. 31 pick in NBA Draft: https://arizonasports.com/nba/phoenix-suns/rasheer-fleming-draft/3588390/

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