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Solar Panel, ep. 107: Where Nate Duncan explains his low ranking of Booker and Ayton as prospects

Duncan has Booker outside the top 10 shooting guards and doesn’t see Ayton’s contributions as valuable in today’s NBA.

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Tim and Dave have the distinct pleasure to be joined by Nate Duncan, from the Dunc’d On podcasts, who spends a lot of time every week talking about all things NBA, and a little bit of time talking negatively about the Phoenix Suns organizational choices and young player prospects.

Big props to Nate for coming into the lion’s den and taking all the tough questions from us throughout the interview. Nate made strong arguments and we will leave it to you Suns fans to decide whether he’s more or less right than you thought.

You can find and interact with Nate on twitter at @NateDuncanNBA.

Before the interview with Nate

Tim and I spend some time talking about the recent Suns wins/close losses, the growing brilliance of Deandre Ayton, the rarity of what Devin Booker brings to the table as Point Book, and the ups and down of Kelly Oubre Jr.

Now for the interview

Nate has the following opinions with which we respectfully disagree.

  • Devin Booker is outside his top 10 shooting guards in the NBA, lagging behind such players as Danny Green and C.J. McCollum (Nate strongly believes the top NBA teams would rather have Danny Green over Devin Booker, hands down, if given the either/or option).
  • Booker is only his 4th tier of under-23 NBA prospects, at the same level as Dennis Smith Jr. in Dallas, who is currently losing playing time and on the trade block in only his second year in the league
  • Deandre Ayton somewhere between his 5th and 15th (he mentioned both numbers) ranked prospects in the 2018 Draft
  • Nate also argues that he has NO bias against the Phoenix Suns that clouds his opinion of certain Suns players

In the interview, you also hear about how much he likes Mikal Bridges as a prospect because Bridges is able to defend four different positions while (hopefully soon) able to make 40% of his threes — a big reason Danny Green ranks so high on Nate’s shooting guard rankings. Nate also like the Suns acquisition of Kelly Oubre Jr. and several other moves, but did remind us he called it right on Trevor Ariza being a terrible signing this summer.


Or listen to the whole podcast here.


Visit the Solar Panel crew at www.SunsPodcast.com. Follow them on Twitter @SunsSolarPanel, @Espo, @DaveKingNBA and @RadioTimNBA.

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