In Defense Of The Phoenix Suns’ Unadulterated, Unabashed Tank Job

The Phoenix Suns are clearly tanking their 2016-17 season away, but as bad as it’s gotten, they actually shouldn’t be ashamed of what they’re doing.

The Phoenix Suns are the worst team in the NBA right now.

Worse than the Brooklyn Nets, whose 16-58 record is five games behind the next closest team in the standings.

Worse than the Los Angeles Lakers, who have lost 16 of their last 18 games and are now playing Tyler Ennis and some dude named David Nwaba significant minutes to cling to their top-three protected first-round pick.

And yes, worse than the DeMarcus Cousins-less Sacramento Kings, the Serge Ibaka-less Orlando Magic and the Joel Embiid-less Philadelphia 76ers — franchises that have been inept for the last half-decade or more.

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Being the current worst team in the association is not the end of the world, even for the NBA’s fourth-winningest franchise. It often takes less than five years for dynasties to rise and fall in this league, and as the Lakers’ fall from grace proves, every team is bound to find itself in the NBA cellar eventually.

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No, the problem is how the Suns have become the worst team in the league, especially of late. Nobody is backing up that tank harder than Phoenix — not even a Los Angeles team that traded its best player, Lou Williams, at the deadline to secure its 2017 first-rounder.

Phoenix’s best player, Eric Bledsoe, was shut down for the season eight games ago, with another seven still to play. Tyson Chandler has been shut down since the All-Star break. Brandon Knight also hasn’t played since the break and is done for the year. P.J. Tucker, the team’s best defender, was dealt at the trade deadline. Between all of this, plus Devin Booker and T.J. Warren missing a few games here and there due to “injury,” it’s no secret what the front office is doing.

They want a top draft pick, and after not trading Bledsoe at the deadline — only to rest him for the season’s final 15 games — the Suns are trying to keep him and those injury-prone knees of his healthy. Whether it’s to preserve a long-term union with Devin Booker in the backcourt or to trade Bledsoe and pave the way for a new franchise point guard in a guard-heavy draft, it’s a smart play either way.

The Phoenix Suns are undeniably, unabashedly tanking, and it’s in their best interest to do so. The question is, is there any sense of shame in doing so?

When Sam Hinkie’s “Trust The Process” plan for rebuilding turned into a much longer ordeal than people expected, his tactics were almost universally condemned. At the time, selecting injured prospects with high upside and trotting out embarrassing D-League lineups were viewed as an affront to the competitive nature of the game itself.

The practice of tanking extends much further back than the Sixers’ recent misery, but with the Suns on a season-long nine-game losing streak while resting so many key players, it’s hard to not look at a team like the Miami Heat, who started the season 11-30 before surging to claim a playoff spot in the East.

The sentiment is nice, but the Suns are not the Heat. They don’t have a legitimate Coach of the Year candidate with title experience. They don’t have a group of veterans who bought into Erik Spoelstra’s system. And they don’t have a Hassan Whiteside or a Goran Dragic, who earned Third Team All-NBA the last time he was fully entrusted with the ball in his hands like the season.

What they do have is a collection of extremely young players who are giving it their all every night with the veterans being put on the shelf. Players don’t tank. Front offices do.

Sitting veterans like Bledsoe, Knight and Chandler, not to mention trading Tucker, are all clear tanking moves. But those decisions are not just about securing a top-three pick in a loaded draft; they’re also meant to give the youngsters ample minutes to develop and prove themselves as intrinsic pieces of this team’s future.

Are the Suns going overboard with the youth movement? One could argue that point, especially after they started the youngest lineup in NBA history against Brooklyn — a lineup that just so happened to be younger than seven of the Elite Eight teams in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

The box scores haven’t been kind, as one would expect. During their current nine-game losing streak, the Suns have lost to:

• A Kings team that no longer has Boogie, giving up a career-high 32 points to rookie Skal Labissiere
• A miserable Magic team that no longer has Ibaka
• A Pistons team that has lost eight of its last nine games
• A Nets team with the worst record in the league (by 28 points)
• A Hawks team that was 0-8 without Paul Millsap until that game

If you weren’t paying close attention to what the Suns are doing, it’d be easy to condemn their actions as unadulterated tanking just for the sake of tanking — especially when their response to such a young starting lineup getting blown out by Brooklyn is a simple, “WELP.”

Tanking aside though, the results have provided a lot more fun — and promise — for fans than the pre-All-Star break rendition that featured Tucker and Chandler playing 30+ minutes a night.

Rookie Marquese Chriss has been starting for months now, but he’s really come into his own over the last few weeks, averaging 12.6 points and 5.6 rebounds per game while shooting 38.5 percent from three-point range since All-Star weekend.

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Tyler Ulis may be undersized for a starting point guard, but he’s put up four double-doubles in his eight career starts and is averaging 10.6 points, 7.0 assists and 1.3 steals per game since the break.

Alex Len hasn’t really impressed since taking over the starting center job, but at least the move is giving the front office a look at what they’ve got in their 23-year-old enigma before he hits restricted free agency this summer.

Alan Williams has been a delight off the bench as a walking double-double, averaging 11.9 points and 9.8 rebounds per game since the break. The Phoenix native is also a restricted free agent this summer and at this point, has been more productive in limited minutes compared to Len.

Dragan Bender will hopefully return soon, providing the Suns with another young rookie to feed minutes to. Derrick Jones Jr. is establishing himself as a future designated defender and endless loop of highlight reel dunks at age 20.

And then there’s Devin Booker, who dropped 70 freaking points in an NBA game, becoming just the sixth player in league history to do so.

Playing so many players under the age of 23 is not conducive to success. Even Booker’s legendary performance was mired by the fact that Phoenix lost, somehow twisting that spectacle into a controversial topic of debate because the Suns were intentionally fouling and calling timeouts to boost his point total down the stretch in a defeat.

People complaining about things like that probably never got to watch Disney movies growing up. How else could you find something wrong with such a fun performance, even in a loss? Ten years from now, will people remember how the Suns lost the game? Or will they remember how a 20-year-old broke Michael Jordan‘s scoring record in Boston and had the TD Garden cheering him on?

For Suns fans who have had to suffer through such a miserable season in the franchise’s seventh straight year without the playoffs, the answer there is a no-brainer.

Remember, this team had the second-worst record in the league heading into the All-Star break. They now have the third-worst record. If anything, their little 4-2 stretch at the beginning of March made them regress in the 2017 Tank Race.

Yes, Phoenix is undoubtedly tanking. Yes, securing a high draft pick is a top priority. But for the NBA’s fourth winningest franchise of all time, which is also the longest-tenured organization in professional basketball to never win a title OR secure a No. 1 overall draft pick, forgive the Suns for finally doing what they tried to do in 2013-14 and rebuild from the ground up. It’s time for a new approach after years and years of contending or building from the middle up to no avail.

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With experience being given to Booker, Warren, Len, the four rookies and Williams as well, the stage is set for the next generation of Suns basketball. At this point, the only downside to Phoenix’s full-on tank approach is the outside criticism from people who aren’t paying close enough attention anyway.