What you’re suggesting, though creative, is far too punitive for most players. And I get it: Harden’s determination to leave quickly became a full-on sideshow. Stein: James Harden’s desire to be traded away from the Houston Rockets, and the Harden-centric chaos initiated by his refusal to report to training camp on time, has clearly made this a touchy topic. If a superstar requests a trade prior to the completion of his contract, there should be a trade kicker that the player is required to pay. Q: In the next collective bargaining agreement, trade kickers should be a two-way street. (Questions may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.) Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at. “But to miss the playoffs by half a game, I was thankful for that, too, because I hope our players understand now that every single game counts.” “I was glad our players got a chance to experience that kind of success,” Williams said. Williams told me it was his “messed-up coaching mind-set” that made him find more good than heartbreak in the Suns’ coming so close to a playoff berth in August before falling short. It’s the sort of response Suns Coach Monty Williams was hoping for even before he knew that Phoenix would be able to trade for Paul. 11 over all in the 2019 draft by Minnesota on the Suns’ behalf earned Phoenix serious scorn. The arrival of the rugged forward Jae Crowder in free agency, on top of Paul’s leadership, has quickly convinced one veteran scout whose view I trust that these Suns are “the real deal defensively.” Phoenix also has benefited from the continued improvement of the defensive specialist Mikal Bridges and the sharpshooting Cam Johnson, whose selection at No. Paul has also had some spotty moments offensively as he and Booker work to establish the backcourt chemistry that Booker had with Paul’s predecessor, Ricky Rubio, but the Suns already have the look of a more well-rounded team. Headed for another one of those routs after a shoddy first half, Phoenix instead rallied to within one point in the fourth quarter before the Clippers pulled out a 112-107 victory. The Suns nonetheless won five of their first six games, earned a top-five defensive rating and responded to their poorest showing with some grit after falling behind the Los Angeles Clippers by 31 points at home Sunday night.īlowouts have become commonplace across the league during the season’s uneven start, an early oddity widely attributed to most teams’ playing without fans in the arenas to motivate them and an abbreviated training camp and preseason. The Suns are off to a notable 5-2 start as they try to live up to the billing of a team widely expected to bust out of a 10-year playoff drought.īooker has had a bumpy start to the season, stumbling to a league-high total of 37 turnovers to sully his robust per-game averages (21.1 points, 4.1 rebounds and 4.4 assists). While precious little has played out as predicted in the embryonic days of the league’s 75th season - just take a quick scan through the Eastern Conference standings - Phoenix is an exception. how to deal with the losing and still remaining a leader,” Booker said before his bubble run. “I always say it’s my toughest adjustment to the N.B.A. In the N.B.A., he has known mostly despair in the desert beyond his individual statistics, a struggle Booker hasn’t denied. as the 13th pick in the 2015 draft after one season at Kentucky, where his 38-1 Wildcats were so deep that Booker didn’t start. The problem: Phoenix’s two-week surge in the bubble was the most sustained team success for Booker since he jumped to the N.B.A. No one expected the Suns to get as close to the playoffs as they did. 8 slot in the West going into the restart. He then averaged 30.5 points, 6.0 assists and 4.9 rebounds to lead the Bubble Suns to an 8-0 record in seeding games, leaving them just a half-game shy of bumping the Memphis Grizzlies out of a play-in series with the Portland Trail Blazers for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. guard Melvin Booker, at a private gym in Phoenix. He had spent the two prior months training with his father, the former N.B.A. “I’m right there.”īooker quickly proved it. “I’m ready right now,” Booker said that day. Unruffled by a four-month interruption of his best season as a pro, Booker brushed off a reminder that the Suns held the second-worst record of the 22 teams invited to Walt Disney World. restart in July, Devin Booker was bubbling with confidence. With about a week to go before the Phoenix Suns’ first game of the N.B.A.
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