FanPost

No Drama, No Problem?

Two summers ago we had the Bledsoe contract drama that kept many Suns fans on edge until shortly before training camp. He was a restricted free agent that got no offers from other teams. That was likely in part due to the fact that the Suns stated that they would match any offer made by other teams and also partly due to the fact that Bledsoe had missed much of the previous season due to a knee injury. The Suns made him a new contract offer which he and his agent (Rich Paul) declined. They asked for a max contract offer and then there were weeks and weeks of nothing but speculation. Was Bledsoe going to just take the qualifying offer and leave Phoenix as an unrestricted free agent at the end of next season if he didn't get a max contract? The Suns even signed Isaiah Thomas which only fueled speculation that they weren't certain that they could retain Bledsoe long term. But shortly before training camp began, the Suns and Bledsoe reached a compromise, 5 years and $70 million. The long summer drama was finally over on September 25, 2014... but there was more drama to come.

The 2014-15 season started out with a sigh of relif but things soon changed. The "Hydra" concept of the three point guard rotation (Bledsoe, Dragic and Thomas) didn't live up to expectations. Once fan favorite PJ Tucker got into trouble with the law (DUI) and missed team busses. The Morris twins were charged with felony assault. Technical fouls were getting out of control and Hornacek seemed to be losing control of his team. Then came Dragic asking to be traded. Dragic? The guy that almost everyone loved back then wanted out? "I don't trust them anymore" was the headline. He was traded to Miami and then Thomas was traded to Boston and Knight was brought to the Suns through a trade that involved the highly coveted Lakers'draft pick that the Suns had acquired way back during the Steve Nash trade. To cut a long story short, the Suns seemed to be even a worse mess after all the mid-season trades than before.

Drama, drama, drama.

To start off the 2015-16 off-season, the Suns signed aging center Tyson Chandler in hopes of enticing his good friend and star free agent PF LaMarcus Aldridge to also sign with the Suns. That failed. The Suns also traded away Marcus Morris for a top 55 protected second round draft pick to clear up cap space to sign Aldridge which eventually only pissed off his brother Markieff and created more summer drama for the team. Markieff made it clear that he wanted to be traded after that. The Suns didn't oblige him which created even more drama going into training camp. And there was also the dramatic sub-plot of Brandon Knight during the off-season. Due to injury, he only played in 11 games after the Suns traded so much for him at mid-season. He was now a restricted free agent that didn't really impress anyone with his play before his injury that the Suns had to sign to a new contract without really knowing whether he would work out as a SG next to Bledsoe. The Suns rather quickly gave him pretty much the same contract that they had given Bledsoe the year before which fans are still debating and arguing about.

Then came the 2015-16 season. The first game against Dallas was bad. But early on the Bledsoe/Knight back court looked as though it might work. But Markieff didn't look like he really gave a damn when he was on the court. Then the injuries started. Chandler's hamstring. Then Bledsoe's knee. Knight's injury. The firing of Hornacek's two lead assistants. The firing of Hornacek. The thankfully eventual trade of Morris.

Drama, drama, drama.

Afterward, finally something good happened.

Devin Booker.

Earl Watson.

And some actual team building after after the team had pretty much collapsed.

I give credit to both Booker and Watson. Booker proved to be a rallying point and Watson proved to be the guy who could get the team to rally around him.

But what's going to happen this summer? The Suns have stayed very low key with their free agent signings. The biggest splashes thet they have made were in the draft. The only drama that seems to be on the horizon is whether Knight should be our sixth man with Booker starting ahead of him. Knight has recenty said things that indicate that he's on board with whatever plays out for upcoming season.

Can we finally count on a summer without a lot of drama this year?

Perhaps not but it would be a relief after the past two years of summer time drama.

But how will we fans deal with it? Will we try to create drama where there really isn't any? Have we become so used to it that we can't live without it?

Time will tell.