5 Reasons Why Kevin Love’s Best Option Is The Phoenix Suns
1. The Suns would be a contender with Love
With guys like P.J. Tucker, Channing Frye and Miles Plumlee getting major minutes, the Phoenix Suns were nearly a playoff team this year. In one of the toughest Western Conferences in NBA history, this Suns team won 48 games with Eric Bledsoe missing 39 games. Even without Kevin Love, this is a team with an extremely bright future. And that’s exactly the kind of team Kevin Love is looking for.
A Bulls team with a healthy Derrick Rose, Kevin Love and maybe even Nikola Mirotic is fun to dream about, but that’s a long way away from becoming reality. Steph Curry and Love would be devastating in pick and rolls, but Bogut can never stay healthy and joining a team with an unproven head coach in your prime is a big risk. In Phoenix, Love would be playing with quite possibly the best backcourt in the league under the coach who finished second in the voting for the Coach of the Year Award.
That’s not to say there aren’t potential roadblocks. The Suns would be giving up a lot in a trade to only get one guaranteed year from Love, who could walk after the 2014-15 season and test free agency. I’m confident one season with this upstart Suns team would be enough to convince Love he has a future in the Valley of the Sun, but there’s always that possibility he leaves and then Phoenix would have traded away multiple picks and young assets for virtually nothing. The Timberwolves could also find a number of suitors that don’t even make sense for Love from a basketball standpoint but make perfect sense for Minnesota’s front office, such as the Boston Celtics, who have nine first round draft picks in the next five years. There’s a strong chance the Timberwolves deal him to the highest bidder, even if it’s a team Love has no interest in re-signing with since he can just test free agency in a year’s time.
But whatever the case may be, the Phoenix Suns should be much higher up on Kevin Love’s radar and he’s certainly worth the risk. From a front office standpoint, a trade with the Suns would put the Timberwolves back on the long track to rebuilding the right way, rather than trying to take shortcuts via a trade with the Golden State Warriors, Chicago Bulls or Houston Rockets. From a basketball perspective, Chicago has too many red flags right now, Golden State might have to give up too much to get their hands on Love and neither Boston nor New York nor Los Angeles is the answer for a guy who wants to make the playoffs now. Not only that, but Love is the perfect fit for Phoenix’s offense and could elevate the Suns to a top-tier threat in the West. If Kevin Love and the Minnesota Timberwolves want to win in this complicated situation, then the Phoenix Suns represent their best trade option.