This could change EVERYTHING for the Suns...

This could change everything for the Phoenix Suns as they are a second apron team as we all know with a bunch of salary restrictions to make trades. But could they possibly dip under that second apron and get some of those luxuries back? We'll be diving in, looking at the Phoenix Suns pod, talking to Bobby Marks, explaining how the Phoenix Suns would be able to do that and possibly get a better talented roster with the big three. All of that and more on this episode of Suns Digest, I'm Bruce Velez alongside my co-host CJ Pierre before we dive in on all this Phoenix Suns news, though 94% of you guys who watch our videos are not subscribed, we greatly appreciate that number is going down every video but if you guys want to make sure you stay up to date on daily Phoenix Suns content throughout all the news, all the drama, the off season, this is the place for you as we're trying to get to 1,000 subscribers here on Suns Digest without further ado, CJ, let's dive into the topic at hand today, make sure to grab a snack as it's going to be a jam-packed episode and we're going to be diving in and looking at the explanation of the second apron as we mentioned in the introduction, Bobby Marks was on the Phoenix Suns pod alongside a bunch of the Phoenix Suns, you know, authors, writers, analysts, stuff like that and kind of was breaking down how the Phoenix Suns could work this off season if you want to look at this tweet, the Suns are pretty much handcuffed to the second apron as we already know, but Bobby Marks is here to help and say how the Suns can get some out of the loopholes, now CJ when you hear that what are your kind of expectations, what are your kind of thoughts from hearing that as a Suns fan, are you kind of wanting to get out of these loopholes or do you guys want to be you know salary strapped to that 209 million dollars, uh, you're muted CJ, uh so of course you know you don't want the Suns to be you know completely cap strapped, uh, you know it's it's kind of a rough, uh, rough go of it, you know when you're a second neighbor team but you know Bobby Marks you know with ESPN he's one of the the smartest uh cap strategists uh that there is uh in the in the game right now uh and he is also a former uh you know was in a front office previously was in New Jersey with the Nets and uh and and in Brooklyn as well so you you gotta you know take what he says and you know he's looking at these kind of new rules and kind of breaking it down and i think there are some avenues that the Suns absolutely have to take in order to improve this roster there's no way that they can just take what's on the roster right now what's against the cap right now and move forward and try and you know build a team with just what they have i think there are some options definitely that they have that they can do uh there are some ways to to maneuver around there are trades that are available to them that they can make some of them may not necessarily provide immediate impact but they could provide some cap relief so that they can make other trades and other maneuvers um as well down the road that will you know allow it so a lot there's a lot that needs to happen um you know guys that have player options you know potentially you know opting out and seeing what they can do on the open market and and possibly coming back on veteran minimums uh there's you know potentially offloading a contract uh that can bring back a couple of players that is an option even if you're a second apron team uh now what you can't do is you can't combined salary salaries aggregate salaries uh to acquire one player it would have to be player for player and then the money has to match uh that's kind of those are kind of the rules but in terms of finding a team that maybe has some cap space and might be willing to take on a contract like a Jusuf Nurkic and then you can acquire a player maybe a couple of guys maybe some draft capital uh that is an option for the Suns that they have um to not only possibly get underneath the second apron before the beginning of the season uh but still um find ways to uh improve the roster uh quickly i think so too cj i definitely think that they need to improve and you brought up a valuable name in that search for the phoenix suns one that's been kind of thrown around here and trade talks possibly coming back and that is yusuf nurkic you guys have missed we've already broken down some trade videos going over and we've already heard your complaints today you know they can't do these trades they can't do it because the second apron but Bobby Marks kind of went into some detail looking at that so let me mention looking at the salary cap here with the Phoenix Suns we can see Yusuf Nurkic makes around 18 million dollars next season so the Phoenix Suns have to find somebody to take on that 18 million dollars and in this pod Bobby Marks if you guys want to check it on Twitter you can watch the full clip he breaks it down and says that the Phoenix Suns would be able to offload a guy in Yusuf Nurkic to a team that has salary cap possibly a team like the Pistons or the Sixers or even like the Spurs or something like that a team that is willing to take on Yusuf Nurkic's contract, which would then free the Suns of $18 million and drop them around to that second apron threshold, around $2 million less. Therefore, maybe not pick up one of those player options, kind of drop down. Then you have so much free stuff. You have, you know, the mid-level exception that you can use. You can now aggregate salaries and trades, and you can maybe even go after some better veteran minimum guys and possibly have some guys in the buyout market. So CJ, that ultimately brings us to the next question on what the Suns can do and is this the smart decision for the Suns to be making these moves here now I want to delay that question to you kind of defer and hear your thoughts on it with Jusuf Nurkic with this whole situation do you think it would be smart for the Phoenix Suns to possibly look to move off of him in a deal to drop under the second apron or do you think it would be smarter for the Suns to do a one-for-one deal with Jusuf Nurkic and getting another salary in return uh that's a That's a tough question, but, you know, I think it depends on the possibility, right? You know, what the potential is in terms of what you can land and, you know, how valuable other teams think Nurkic is. I think just kind of off, you know, off the cuff, you know, I don't think teams look at him as he's the missing piece. He's going to be the thing that puts us over the top to becoming a championship contender. I don't think there are contending teams that are necessarily thinking along those lines. And so when you think about a team like the Philadelphia 76ers, that's probably out. They already have Joel Embiid. Their final piece is not a backup center that's making $18 million. So that's probably out. You're probably looking at a team that is still in a rebuilding phase and maybe has some salaries that they're trying to offload so that they can maybe years down the line. So that's when a team like the Detroit Pistons comes into mind. and what kind of assets that they may be willing to move off of in terms of what they're doing. And I know that people in Detroit are very disappointed that they did not get the number one overall pick in this upcoming draft. They dropped to the fifth spot in the draft lottery. So there's no real knowing what the Pistons are going to do. They're very far away from being a contending team right now. So that is a place that you could possibly offload Nurkic in a potential one-for-one deal or also in a situation where maybe you trade him and there's a possibility that you could get some picks back or some players back, you know, multiple assets that you could add to this team in this roster and continue to move forward and improve. Now, you do leave a hole right at center if you just move off of Nurkic, but then that's where some of these other possibilities come into play. Do you have access to that mid-level exception? and are you able to make another trade that's going to allow you to actually pick up some talent and aggregate some of those salaries after that so you can fill that void that Nurkic would have. So I think there are options with the Suns and with Nurkic. I don't necessarily know if that's going to be like their top priority is moving off of him specifically, but if you're trying to keep the big three together, which is kind of what everyone expects, Who's the next person down the line? Who's the next name on the list? And Nurkic is that name. So it's completely expected that he's going to be the one that's the most featured on the trading block. Yeah, and you brought up some great points, CJ, with diving into that that I kind of want to get into. One, talking about the salary and kind of looking at Nurkic. Obviously, a team like the Sixers who have that salary, they're not going to look at him. They already have Joel Embiid. But Nurkic making around that $18 million, that still is a quality starting center in the NBA. that's not really like a backup center type quality money so I could totally agree with you're saying that I think that if a team is going to trade for him they're going to want him to be that starting caliber center also when looking at it talking about the Pistons I think that'd be one of the perfect moves for the Suns to maybe get rid of him they have a lot of holes in their center room with you know Jalen Duren he's a nice young guy but he's on a rookie scale contract James Wiseman they used to have Marvin Bagley they have like an abundance of just bigs that they just Isaiah Stewart that they've been testing non-testing all that type of stuff I'd like to see how they would evaluate Jusuf Nurkic and I think they'd be a team that's interested in him we've seen them that they wanted to be a team like the Rockets this season kind of bringing in those veteran type players I think that Jusuf Nurkic could be one of those veteran guys to kind of help jump start this ship kind of similar to a Dillon Brooks signing with the Houston Rockets did in the offseason similar to that um kind of breaking it down though I agree with you I think that he's going to be one of the guys that's most likely to move just because if we look at the salary he's you know one of the guys that has a movable contract that's not you know six million dollars or Royce O'Neal or Grayson Allen who is just extended or will be getting extended but as we look at the you know committed salary if they don't look to move off Nurkic it'd still be a second tier team so they'd have to move some other financials down possibly a guy Eric Gordon Joshua Kogi maybe even Goga Bitadze we'll have to wait and see or maybe do some other trades and we're gonna have some more videos breaking that down you saw an article so CJ and I will have another video coming out with some of the little possible trades some David Roddy trades kind of speculating all of that thank you guys so much CJ you want to say something we're muted right now quick one second yeah before we before we kind of cut away I think it's also important to note this is when we're talking about Nurkic uh he's not an expiring contract he does have two years remaining on his deal so his contract becomes a little he's not one of those uh contracts that teams are going to look at and be like okay this is going to be something that comes off the books uh right away um so that there is some complexity to the Nurkic situation as a whole you would probably want to look to find a team that's going to be okay with having him um for a couple of years uh so you kind of really have to like you know look around and see which teams may be interested in in acquiring him um and for that stretch of time even though he may not be looked at as like the final piece um a team that is probably in a situation like Houston like you were saying when they brought in Dylan Brooks as someone who could be a veteran that could kind help them along uh would they be interested in possibly working with the Washington Wizards again on a possible deal uh are the Charlotte Hornets a team uh that might be interested in you know bringing in Nurkic and possibly um having him you know play some type of role uh then you can look at some other teams that are possibly going to be in the second apron and see if there's some salary matches that you can possibly do uh the Denver Nuggets are kind of in the need for some more big man help you know that that's kind of a situation that you know as as not necessarily talked about but i think if you're James Jones and you're and you're the crew over there in the front office for the Phoenix Suns you have to look at all these possibilities you have to like you know stress all these different things look at all these different options and see what you can do because you have to improve this roster you can't just run it back with the exact same team that you have and i think that you know bringing in DeJuan Gatti from the Nets you know he's he's the three-team trade guy he's the you know cap you know mastermind uh that they brought in uh in this league i think that that's going to be a big help so look for the Suns to explore three-team trades look for the Suns to explore moving off of guys like Nurkic and Naismith Little look for them to possibly reach out to guys like Eric Gordon and uh Josh Okogie and maybe about hey maybe you don't want to pick up your player option maybe you want to look and see you know what else you can get and maybe like bob and mark said they can say hey if you if you're out there you're not finding what you want there is a minimum a veteran minimum waiting for you that could help their this cap situation as well so many different options the Suns yes there are a lot of restrictions being a second apron team but that does not mean that they are helpless okay there are ways to work around it exactly and i think that's one of the things that we kind of need to proclaim and kind of bring up because a lot of people in the comment section were harping on us you know with the three-team the trades all that type of stuff guys we know that you can't do it three for one we know that trust me we're just trying to show you the kind of moves that we have to make to get a deal possibly done to land one of those guys but ultimately i do think and agree with you that this team is going to need some moves around the edges regardless if it's Nurkic and the zero little possibly some of those low ender guys or even bringing in some that mid guys like maybe Robert Covington or a Kyle Lowry type deal could help out the Suns so we'll be breaking down all the news all the drama rolling around this team have another video coming out later today diving in on you know the David Roddy trades possibly the zero little trades but some speculations of possible guys that the Suns could bring in so if you guys want to make sure you stay up to date stay tuned to all the Phoenix Suns content hit the subscribe button as you guys head out of the video we greatly appreciate it from your boys Bruce and CJ signing off on Suns Digest we'll catch you guys in the next video and go Phoenix Suns