The Phoenix Suns love their brother tandems, don't they?
After starting the trend with Van Arsdales together back in the 1970s, the Suns have been a brother haven in recent years. First it was cool to grab one of two NBA-playing brothers: Robin Lopez, Luke Zeller, Jarron Collins, Taylor Griffin, Markieff Morris, Miles Plumlee... all in the past five seasons!
Then less than two years ago the Suns went the full monty and paired Marcus Morris with Markieff on the same team. The results have been positive over time, with Markieff blossoming into a sixth man of the year candidate while Marcus was highly productive in his own right, just under 10 points and 4 rebounds in 20 minutes per night.
Now, the Suns are working hard to bring 25-year old Zoran Dragic to the Suns to play with his All-NBA older brother Goran, a tandem not really given much credence until this year's World Cup.
Zoran played very well next to Goran as the second-best player on a team that went further than expected - to the final 8 in the world. Zoki, as he is called, put up 12.9 points (43% on threes), 4 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game in the tournament. The 6'5" shooting guard makes his name on tough, spirited defense more than anything though, helping the Slovenians succeed despite having a very limited front court after the retirement and injury of their best big men.
Zoran (Zoki) hasn't really been considered a pure NBA prospect until this past year. He played for Houston's summer league team in 2012, but did not play much and returned to Europe without an NBA offer.
But now he's gotten interest from at least seven NBA teams. Marc Stein of ESPN says it's really only three in the running - the Kings, Pacers and Suns - and now multiple reports out of Slovenia indicate that Zoki is leaning heavily toward the Suns offer.
And now there's this tweet this morning.
Our own followers broke this story on Bright Side - first Jogi via email to me yesterday, and then supported by Drumbeat and kajketi as they saw more reports coming out in Slovenia that it really is going to happen. I would post the links they shared, including a video of Goran saying there's a good chance Zoran is coming over, but there's often been translation issues and you guys won't click the links anyway.
Jogi emailed me yesterday that a trusted source said this would happen, but we didn't report it because it was only one source.
Then Drumbeat shared a couple more links last night. Goran and the Suns will reportedly share Zoki's buyout ($600,000 by the Suns, $150,000 by Goran) from his Euro team so he can come over to the NBA without coming up with that money himself.
Goran talked earlier this offseason that he misses his brother, that they often only get to Skype occasionally, because they played in different countries.
Now, they will reportedly be able to see each other every single day.
My big question for media day to any non-Morris, non-Dragic: So, who wants to be the 5th man in that lineup? Do you think any of them will even notice you out there?