Welcome back to The Butterfly Effect! Last week, we discussed the Stephon Marbury and Anfernee Hardaway trade to the New York Knicks in 2004 and how it opened up the cap space for the Phoenix Suns to re-sign Steve Nash. That signing, of course, would lead to the Suns beginning one of their greatest eras in franchise history.
That was the beginning of the Steve Nash era. This week, I want to talk about the end. In 2012, the Phoenix Suns traded Steve Nash to the Los Angeles Lakers as part of a sign-and-trade. Now, I believe that all pictures of Nash in a Lakers jersey should be burned, and we should all pretend it never happened. Today, though, we aren’t discussing #13 moving on to LA; we are discussing what the Lakers sent back to the Suns.
Seriously, though, look at this picture and tell me with a straight face that it doesn’t make you sick.
Before we get started, I have one more thing to add. One of my favorite comments last week was from Bright Side reader Zenzino, who said:
“That’s kind of a stretch to attribute the Nash signing to the Marbury/Hardaway trade. Why stop there? Everything is interconnected to some degree.”
Zenzino’s comment at the end is especially important. Everything is indeed interconnected to some degree. In fact, that is a portion of the thesis of this series. This week, we want to find out what names are linked to Nash that we might not have thought of before.
Furthermore, that interconnectedness will require us to make an amendment to the rules of the game this week:
- Subsequent trades count. If Player A was traded to Phoenix, played there for 2 years, and was traded again, that second trade is included in our analysis.
- We go until there is nothing left. The transaction chain continues until a player is waived or leaves in free agency
- All pieces returned will be analyzed. If the Suns received two players and one pick in the deal, we analyze the entire transaction tree of each asset.
- Partials count. If a player is received in a trade, then is flipped alongside two other players in a second trade, the full amount back in that second trade will be counted with the “(Partial)” title.
- There is no real way to quantify the percentage of value that any one piece has in a trade, so this is how we will compromise. This way a player does not get full credit for value that they did not provide in a trade.
- Amendment: Partials of partials will not be discussed. This week, you will see Ryan Anderson (Partial). The Suns received Ryan Anderson when they traded away Player X (Partial). We will count what Anderson did on the Suns, but not what the Suns received when they eventually traded him away. The asset dilution is such that if you go back far enough, almost the entire Suns Roster is a result of some trade or another. This keeps us focused on what the Suns got specifically for the player we are discussing, without diluting our analysis too much.
- If a trade tree has reached a point of too much dilution, I will stop counting players towards our end total.
- Transaction tree branches will be listed in chronological order so that we can analyze the story that was being told by the transaction timeline.
July 11, 2012
Phoenix Suns Trade:
- Steve Nash
Los Angeles Lakers Trade:
- 2013 1st round pick (Nemanja Nedovic)
- 2018 1st round pick (Mikal Bridges)
- 2013 2nd round pick (Alex Oriakhi)
- 2014 2nd round pick (Johnny O’Bryant)
That’s right, folks. The Phoenix Suns traded Steve Nash for Mikal Bridges. This would have ended up being a great trade for Phoenix off of the back of that pick alone, had they kept it. But, they did not. In fact, Phoenix did not end up drafting and keeping any of these picks. All three of the picks that did not go on to be Mikal Bridges were selected by the Suns, but traded before they could ever suit up in purple and orange. The Bridges pick was traded years before Mikal would even be eligible for the draft.
Let’s see where each of these four branches leads us.
July 27, 2012
As part of a three-team trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves and the New Orleans Hornets:
Phoenix Suns trade:
- Johnny O’Bryant
- Robin Lopez
- Hakim Warrik
Phoenix Suns receive:
- Wesley Johnson
- Jerome Dyson
- Brad Miller
- 2016 2nd round pick (Rade Zagorac)
- 2017 2nd round pick (Semi Ojeleye)
The Johnny O’Bryant trade tree is the one we start with. It is also the one with the least interesting branches. In reality, O’Bryant did not bring in much, if any, value to this trade. This was mostly a trade for restricted free agent Robin Lopez, who was at that point a mediocre backup big who could eat up 10-12 minutes per game for a team.
Jerome Dyson and Brad Miller were waived after the trade went through and the two seconds were shipped out later for 40 games of Brandan Wright, who then left in free agency. Because of O’Bryant’s low value in this partial trade, we aren’t going to count Brandan Wright’s games in our final total.
The one player the Suns did get in this trade that contributed at least a little on the court is Wesley Johnson. Johnson played 50 games for Phoenix and poured in a few points and a few rebounds.
This trade isn’t all that notable. Let’s move on to our next branch.
June 27, 2013
Phoenix Suns trade:
- Nemanja Nedovic
Golden State Warriors trade:
- Archie Goodwin
- Malcolm Lee
I want to start with Malcolm Lee. Lee would go on to be traded by the Suns in October of 2013. He was one part of a package with Marcin Gortat, Shannon Brown, and Kendall Marshall that brought back Emeka Okafor and a 2014 1st round pick that went on to become Tyler Ennis. While Ennis himself only played eight games for the Suns, remember his name. It will come up again before we are done.
That said, Lee was waived after this trade. The Wizards were trading for Gortat, not Lee. We aren’t going to count Okafor or Ennis towards our final totals.
Archie Goodwin, on the other hand, played 150 games for the Suns across three seasons before being cut in October of 2016.
This ends the first two branches of the Steve Nash trade tree. I am glad these two trades were up first. The O’Bryant and Nedovic picks brought back the Suns by far the worst returns out of the four. So far, our totals tracker looks like this:
July 12, 2014
Phoenix Suns trade:
- Alex Oriakhi
Sacramento Kings trade:
- Isaiah Thomas
This is a trade that the world should be shocked by. Isaiah Thomas had already been a 20 ppg scorer for Sacramento when they traded him for a 6’ 9” PF that spent four years in college and never made the leap to the NBA.
In 2014-2015, Isaiah Thomas would achieve a second-place finish for Sixth Man of the Year. In 2016-2017 he finished fifth in MVP voting. A truly remarkable career for one of the biggest underdogs in NBA history.
Of course, none of those accolades were achieved in Phoenix, as IT was traded to Boston just 46 games into his Phoenix Suns career. As it turns out, three-point guard lineups don’t work very well.
In his time in Boston, he also took part in one of my favorite moments as a Suns fan, even though it was one of the smallest plays in NBA history.
For all intents and purposes, the Oriakhi trade tree has become the Isaiah Thomas trade tree. So, let’s see what else we find.
February 19, 2015
As part of a three-team trade between the Phoenix Suns, Boston Celtics, and Detroit Pistons:
Phoenix Suns trade:
- Isaiah Thomas
Phoenix Suns receive:
- Marcus Thornton
- 2016 1st round pick (Skal Labissiere)
Marcus Thornton did very little for the Suns. He played a whopping nine games for Phoenix before moving on in free agency. But, the 2016 1st round pick was very important because on draft night in 2016, the Suns pulled off another trade.
June 23, 2016
Phoenix Suns trade:
- Skal Labissiere
- Bogdan Bogdanovic
- Georgios Papagiannis
- 2020 2nd round pick (Xavier Tillman)
Sacramento Kings trade:
- Marquese Chriss
That’s right! There is a direct chain between Steve Nash and Marquese Chriss.
Draft night 2016, what a disaster for the Phoenix Suns. Phoenix used two top-10 picks on power forwards and neither of them worked out for Phoenix. One year later they would blow it again, drafting Josh Jackson with another top-5 pick. Imagine if the Suns had landed these picks. Some combination of three of Domantas Sabonis, Jamal Murray, De’Aaron Fox, Lauri Markannen or Jakob Poetl could have been theirs next to Devin Booker. Instead, we got Booker next to Bender, Chriss, and Jackson. The quartet (sometimes including Tyler Ulis) was christened “The Timeline.”
But I digress, we aren’t here to discuss what could have been. We are here to discuss what actually was, which was bad. How bad? Let me remind you of this lowlight:
In the moment, I was upset that Chriss clearly just had a temper tantrum after he missed a dunk basically uncontested. Now that Rubio has since played for the Suns and been one of my all-time favorites, I am furious that Chriss had the nerve to push our beautiful bubble point guard.
For now, let’s end the Isaiah Thomas trade tree here. We will come back to it, but there is more information you need first, which comes from our final branch.
With just two trades left to discuss, here is where we stand now:
February 19th, 2015
We go back one year before the Suns drafted Chriss for our penultimate trade.
Phoenix Suns trade:
- 2018 1st round pick (Mikal Bridges)
- Tyler Ennis
- Miles Plumlee
Milwaukee Bucks trade:
- Brandon Knight
- Kendall Marshall
The Mikal Bridges pick combines with Tyler Ennis and Miles Plumlee to bring in one of the bigger disasters of the 2010s for the Phoenix Suns, Brandon Knight.
Kendall Marshall, who the Suns traded away to the Wizards earlier, comes back in this trade but is waived immediately after.
Brandon Knight wasn’t bad for the Suns. He averaged 15 points across 117 games for Phoenix. The problem was that Knight got in the way of Devin Booker. With Eric Bledsoe already on the team, the Suns found themselves, once again, with three starting guards.
Unfortunately, Knight was also on a big contract at the time, making him hard to move. Eventually, the Suns did dump him in our last trade of the day.
August 31, 2018
Phoenix Suns trade:
- Brandon Knight
- Marquese Chriss
Houston Rockets trade:
- Ryan Anderson
- De’Anthony Melton
Who remembers being excited about Ryan Anderson? I remember being excited about Ryan Anderson. Unfortunately, he was a massive disappointment for the Suns.
This trade did, however, give the Suns an opportunity to get rid of their two biggest problems in Brandon Knight and Marquese Chriss.
This is where we are going to stop counting our partials through the trade tree. From here, the values of the players that can be linked back to Steve Nash are too diluted.
It is interesting to note, however, that if you continue following down the path that this trade tree sends you, you will eventually find yourself face-to-face with Royce O’Neale and the current Phoenix Suns roster.
Final Tracker
And so, the final tally for on-court value returned for Steve Nash looks like this.
This might be a hot take, but I think the Suns did all right with this return. Did they get any stars? No, they didn’t. But Nash was 38 years old when he went to the Lakers in this sign-and-trade. That isn’t the sort of deal where the old team gets a lot back.
What they did get back was a collection of role players and some assets that went towards acquiring a top-10 pick. They also got a look at Isaiah Thomas, but then traded him away right before he became an all-star.
What have we learned? The transaction log is wildly interconnected. You never know what some small, seemingly meaningless transaction could turn into. The portion of the transaction that netted the Suns both Isaiah Thomas and some of the pieces to go out and get Marquese Chriss was the second round pick that became Alex Oriakhi.
With the draft rapidly approaching, the Suns may be making seemingly minor moves here or there. Don’t underestimate what those moves could someday become.
