The All-Star guard details his desire to pair with Devin Booker before a draft-day snub sent Phoenix down a path of missed opportunities and haunting hypotheticals.
The 2020's decade has been an up-and-down endeavor for the Phoenix Suns. This has been the case since the turn of 2020, including years of contention, hitting the reset button, and missing on crucial draft selections.
Perhaps the most famous of the proverbial "fumbles" came in 2020, when the organization went into November's draft with the 10th overall pick. Several high-profile guards (Tyrese Haliburton, Tyrese Maxey, Cole Anthony) were on the board when Phoenix picked, but GM James Jones opted to go in a different direction.
This decision is still haunting Phoenix to this day, and Haliburton actually gave insight on the process that led him away from the Suns on draft night on the "Numbers on the Board" podcast recently.
“We were calling Phoenix, like y’all need a PG. I was tryna play with Book... and they were like, ‘We’re drafting a PF’.”
The Suns went into the offseason being linked heavily to Haliburton, the other guards mentioned above, and French star Killian Hayes. Unfortunately for Halibutron, the Phoenix front office committed to selecting Maryland forward Jalen Smith with the pick, which was seen as a reach at the time.
Smith, now 26, sat behind Deandre Ayton, Jae Crowder, Cameron Johnson, and Dario Saric amongst others during the Suns' run to the NBA Finals in 2021. Smith was traded to the Indiana Pacers by the middle of the 2021-22 season, signifying the Phoenix organization made an error.
Ironically, Haliburton was traded to Indiana in the same time frame, making the result of 2020 draft night all the more cruel for the Suns.
The most obvious fallout from passing on Haliburton is that a potential all-time great backcourt never got formed. Haliburton would have learned from the elite Chris Paul in his early days while still contributing, while also building towards the future with the dynamic scoring Devin Booker.
The other question rests in the Kevin Durant theory. The Suns would have either been in a position to trade Haliburton for Durant instead of Johnson or NBA champion Mikal Bridges, or they could have formulated the best trio of stars in the league (if the situation arose).
This is one of the many major "what-ifs" that continues to define an organization that is still in search of a first NBA title. Only hypotheticals are within view now when theorizing what Haliburton could have done for the franchise.
