How the Suns can save the Kevin Durant trade after a disastrous early playoff exit

The Phoenix Suns’ trade for Kevin Durant looks like a bust right now. There’s no other takeaway after the Suns were eliminated from the 2023 NBA Playoffs in the second round by losing to the Denver Nuggets in six games. Phoenix went out sad, falling 125-100 in Game 6 in what was a rout from the opening tip. The Suns started Jock Landale, Cam Payne, and Landry Shamet in a do-or-die playoff game, so the outcome shouldn’t be too surprising.

The Suns traded Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, four unprotected first-round picks, and a 2028 pick swap to Brooklyn for Durant at the trade deadline. Durant will turn 35 years old in the offseason. Chris Paul turned 38 years old during the series against the Nuggets, and missed the last four games of the series with a groin strain. The Suns are facing huge pressure to turn this into a championship team immediately. The roster needs a lot of upgrades, and the team doesn’t have any draft picks to trade to get them.

There are no easy answers for how to save the Suns this summer, but in the aftermath of a disappointing playoff exit, there are a few big picture pivots they should keep in mind.

The Suns need their KCP trade and Bruce Brown signing

The NBA never got to see how good the Nuggets were before this season because Jamal Murray missed the last two playoff runs while he recovered from a torn ACL. But even with their second best player set to return ahead of this season, Denver still made some bold moves to upgrade the roster. The first was to trade long-time role players Will Barton and Monte Morris to Washington for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. The next was signing guard Bruce Brown away from the Nets on a two-year, $13 million deal.

Adding KCP and Brown gave the Nuggets two more tough perimeter defenders who could add value on offense as floor spacers and cutters. Phoenix needs players with similar skill sets around Durant and Devin Booker.

The Suns ended the playoffs with a 118.3 defensive rating that would have ranked No. 28 in the league during the regular season. The offense scored at near top-five efficiency in the playoffs despite only attempting 25.8 threes per gamedead-last by a wide margin of any playoff team.

This is easier said than done, of course. Free agents like Yuta Watanabe and Georges Niang could provide the shooting, but not the defense. Dillon Brooks could provide the defense, but not the shooting. Either way, the Suns clearly need to upgrade the role players around their superstar pairing after they just witnessed Denver essentially ignore everyone else on the floor not named Durant and Booker.

It’s time to trade Chris Paul

The Suns missed the playoffs for 10 straight seasons before they acquired Chris Paul in a trade with the Thunder. Since then, Phoenix went to the NBA Finalsand made two second round appearances. It won’t be an easy decision to trade Paul, but it feels like the best option to help the team reload around Durant and Booker. Paul just can’t be counted on to finish a playoff run at this point in his career — his injury in this postseason isn’t an outlier, it’s a trend.

Paul has two years and $60.8 million left on his contract, but next season is only partially guaranteed at $15.8 million, and the following season is fully unguaranteed. His big salary number would give Phoenix a way of matching contracts to acquire multiple players, and the team on the other end could just cut him after next year to open up cap space.

Does any team want 38-year-old Chris Paul? There isn’t an obvious suitor for CP3 at the moment, but the flexibility his contract offers could be appealing to a team in the right package.

Kevin Durant needs to regain top form

This one is easy. The Suns did not get the best version of Kevin Durant in the playoffs this year, not even close. Here are Durant’s final numbers for the series against Denver: 29.5 points, 9.7 rebounds, and five assists per game on 45.4 percent shooting from the field and 22.2 percent shooting from three-point range. The per-game numbers were great, but the efficiency wasn’t.

Durant looked like the best player in the world two years ago in the playoffs against the Bucks. Since then, he’s been slowed down significantly in playoff exits against the Celtics (who swept his Nets in 2022) and now the Nuggets.

A shift in Durant’s shot profile might be the easiest change. Durant took 68 percent of his shots from mid-range during the playoffs, according to Cleaning the Glass. Durant made an impressive 47 percent of those mid-range attempts, but the Suns need him to take more threes, more rim attempts, and more free throws to really maximize his scoring punch.

On the season, between stops in Brooklyn and Phoenix, Durant averaged 4.9 three-point attempts per game, while hitting 40.4 percent of those shots. He took 4.6 threes per game in the playoffs. Durant could legitimately stand to double his three-point attempts. Durant ranked No. 86 in three-point attempts per game this season. Four players took double-figure attempts per game. Yes, KD is a great mid-range shooter, but he’s also one of the best three-point shooters in league history. He needs to shoot more threes.

The Suns need to get faster

Phoenix ranked dead last in fast break points during the regular seasonscoring only 10.5 per game. The Suns were much more potent scoring in transition during the playoffsand often times Phoenix looked at its best when they were running.

Yes, it’s hard to run with a 38-year-old point guard. Phoenix clearly needs to get some more zip in its offense whether CP3 is on the team or not next year.

It’s easy to identify the Suns’ problems. It’s harder to find the solutions

The Suns were always in championship-or-bust mode after trading Bridges and so many draft picks for Durant. The pressure is really going to be on this offseason. The Durant-Booker duo is wonderful, but Phoenix needs to reload the roster around them.

There will be easy traps to fall into. You can bet a rumored Deandre Ayton for Kyrie Irving deal will be talked about this summer. How much would that actually help Phoenix? Moving Ayton should certainly be on the table for Phoenix after a disappointing offensive series, but his defense against Nikola Jokic was promising for most of the series. Irving would of course come with his own pitfalls.

Should Phoenix fire Monty Williams? There’s a case to be made that a different coach could get a better version of Ayton to come alive — the coach and center have had an icy relationship dating back to last season — but Durant and Booker appear to like Williams, and there’s certainly no guarantee they will find a better coach if they fire him.

I was a proponent of the Suns trading for Durant in the offseason. I still liked the move when they did it at the deadline. Well, there’s a reason I’m making blogger money and not NBA GM money, because right now it feels like the KD deal could go down as a disaster for Phoenix. It’s on Phoenix’s new ownership (which pushed hard for the deal to go through) and front office to figure out a way to salvage it.

Landing stars is the hard part of NBA team building, and the Suns emptied everything they have to get one in Durant. In this era of the NBA, though, it sure feels like depth is almost as important as the primary options. Phoenix had way, way too many holes in its eight-man rotation that it couldn’t fill in-season after the KD trade. They better do it offseason, or their title window could close quicker than anyone thought possible.