Bill Simmons just wrote an interesting piece that torches the suns management and ownership for destroying the future of the franchise to make an extra buck. Their awful moves include dumping Joe Johnson to avoid paying his salary, selling multiple 1st round draft picks (including the #7 pick a couple years ago, a draft pick that led to Rudy Fernandez, and a few others). Simmons trashes Brian Colangelo for his bad moves, without giving him any credit for the good moves (drafting Shawn Marion and Amare Stoudemire with mid first round draft picks when they weren’t obvious choices, signing Steve Nash when everyone else thought he was overpaid) that led the Suns to being the best regular season team over the past 4 years. In my opinion, the true crime is Robert Sarver selling off draft picks and absolutely refusing to pay the luxury tax.
Hey, the guy only has two houses worth over 3 million in PV: (mansion, weird plot of land). (Those are the only places listed by the Maricopa County Assessor in his name, I’m sure he has some more spots that are properly concealed from the public). I don’t begrudge him his riches, and I don’t even really care if he wants to run the team in a frugal manner. But selling off draft picks for cash? That’s about the scummiest thing I’ve ever heard of an NBA owner doing to his fan base. He appears to be a trust fund baby (his father was a big builder in Tucson), but he managed to found The National Bank of Arizona at the age of 24, and no matter how much money you have handed to you, starting a bank at age 24 is impressive.
