Phoenix Suns Withdraw Qualifying Offer From PG Aaron Brooks; Cycle Is Complete

As we all expected - or at least most of us did - the Suns executed the inevitable today by withdrawing their qualifying offer from Aaron Brooks.

PHOENIX - The Phoenix Suns have withdrawn their qualifying offer to guard Aaron Brooks the club has announced. Brooks is now an unrestricted free agent.

The 2009-10 NBA Most Improved Player, Brooks was acquired by the Suns from the Houston Rockets at the 2011 trade deadline and appeared in 25 games with Phoenix, averaging 9.6 points and 4.2 assists in 18.9 minutes.

He likely won't be out of work next year, but with this move the Suns ensured he couldn't simply choose to return on a large one-year contract ($5.04 million) that the qualifying offer would have provided him.

It appears that the Rockets (of all teams) and Mavericks are interested in Aaron, per Alex Kennedy of hoopsworld.com via twitter. Good for Aaron. He deserves another chance.

Now with the Suns re-signing Goran Dragic and Brooks likely returning to Houston, we can pretend that the Suns gave the Rockets a first-round pick to give Dragic a chance to earn starters minutes he would never have earned here, and to mature into a full-blown NBA starter by the time Steve Nash left for other pastures. Right? Yeah, that's the ticket.