The Phoenix Suns are having an awful season and are now focused on building for the future. General Manager Ryan McDonough has some talent on this current roster, but he will be tasked with building around those players to maximize it. McDonough has made big trades at each of the last two deadlines, including dealing Markieff Morris this season. The GM regrets one of the trades he made last year, though, and that was moving on from Isaiah Thomas, according to Kevin Zimmerman of Arizona Sports.
The Suns had just signed Thomas last offseason, and he was playing very well for them, but they did not see a long-term fit with him and Eric Bledsoe in the same backcourt. Add that to the fact that Thomas was asking for a bigger role, which led to McDonough pulling the trigger on a trade with the Celtics.
"I think, in retrospect, trading Isaiah Thomas when we did was a mistake. I think, sometimes, in the recruitment process, things sound better in July than they do in November. He wanted more, he wanted a bigger role and I understand why: He's a talented player. In retrospect, we should have carried him into the summer. If there's one decision that stands out, if I could get a mulligan, that'd be it," said McDonough.
The idea that McDonough regrets trading Thomas isn't a surprise, but the fact that he admitted it on a radio show is. In the trade for Thomas, the Suns got back Marcus Thornton, who was a rental player, and the Cavaliers 2016 first-round pick, so it's not like they got nothing out of it. But Thomas has fully blossomed in Boston and played in his first career All-Star game earlier this season.
It may not be the fact that they traded Thomas that McDonough regrets as much as when they traded him. Cleveland's pick will likely be at the very end of the first-round, so the haul wasn't great, and they certainly could have gotten more out of a trade for Thomas. James Herbert of CBS Sports thinks that the Thomas trade influenced the way McDonough went about trading Morris, as he waited about eighth months for the right deal to materialize.
Trading Thomas was not the Suns undoing this season, it was a combination of injuries and players underachieving, but having him this season would have made for a much better team. It was hard to predict that Thomas was going to become an All-Star caliber player, but he has always been a great scorer and Boston may just be the perfect situation for him.
