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After weeks of questions about how the Suns’ depth would look at point guard and power forward this year, Phoenix made a trade Thursday night to address those concerns.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported on Twitter late Thursday that the Suns had traded presumed starting point guard Brandon Knight and third-year big man Marquese Chriss to the Houston Rockets for scoring big Ryan Anderson and 2018 No. 46 pick De’Anthony Melton.
This trade smooths the Suns’ big-man rotation, with Anderson slotting in as a part-time backup power forward more suitably than Chriss. It also creates a gaping hole at point guard.
After an up-and-down two seasons developing Chriss, it became clear the Suns needed to make a decision between he and Dragan Bender sometime soon. By trading Chriss (and getting back a fantastic prospect in Melton), the Suns have chosen.
Still, the most puzzling part of this entire deal from both sides is the inclusion of Knight. He was expected to start for the Suns, and he now joins a Rockets team that has two Hall-of-Fame point guards already on the roster.
The Houston side of things will be sorted out in time (this was a money-saving move for them as well), but the bigger questions revolve around the Suns.
It appears that now, ahead of schedule, the experiment of playing Devin Booker at point guard full-time is upon us. Unless there’s another trade coming, that is.