Did Phoenix pull off the heist of the summer in Scola trade?
It's been a season of surprises so far with the Phoenix Suns, to say the least. I don't even know how you'd go about ranking the most unlikely things about the first seven games of the '13-'14 campaign for Phoenix, but these are probably the top five, in some order:
1. They're 5-2, with their only losses being to the Thunder and Spurs, both on the road, by a combined ten points.
2. They've done that largely without their two best players from last year--Marcin Gortat, who got traded a couple days before the season started, and Goran Dragic, who's missed three games with ankle issues and saw his minutes limited in two others.
3. Tweener forward Markieff Morris, a career 7.8 PPG scorer on 40.4% shooting before this season, has scored over 20 points off the bench in three straight games, is shooting a league-high 62.7% from the field, and was even named Western Conference Player of the Week for last week.
4. Eric Bledsoe has totally eschewed any expected growing pains in his first extended role as a starter and franchise player, averaging 21 points and seven assists on 52% shooting, generally playing like a borderline-MVP candidate.
5. Miles Plumlee and Gerald Green are making that deal that sent Luis Scola to Indiana look absolutely silly.
All of these points are fascinating and well worth breaking down at length, but the one I'm most interested in for the purposes of this article is the final one. When Luis Scola, the veteran power forward who the Suns claimed off amnesty waivers two summers ago and who spent one quasi-productive season in Phoenix, was dealt to the Pacers, most assumed that the deal was basically a cash dump, getting Scola off the books, with the only real return of note being the lottery-protected first-round pick in the next year's draft they received in the deal. The trade received little attention and was mostly noted for how it improved Indiana's bench, giving the Pacers the reliable reserve scorer they were badly missing in last year's playoffs.
Barely anyone cared about the other pieces that came to Phoenix in the deal. In his analysis of the trade, Kevin Pelton of ESPN mostly saw Gerald Green as contract deadweight (though he allowed the chance that Green "could turn into something"), and expressed skepticism about Miles Plumlee's upside, noting that at least the Suns "can decline Plumlee's 2013-14 option if he doesn't play well during training camp." The players exchanged were seen as filler, necessary ballast to allow the Suns to get their first-rounder and the Pacers to get Scola.
And it's not hard to see why: Both of these players did absolutely nothing last season. Green at least has a track record of success, albeit a short one, as a 31-game run with the Nets at the end of their lousy '11-'12 season saw him average 13 points a game on 48% shooting and 39% from deep--which resurrected his previously disappointing career and ultimately earned him a three-year, $10.5 million deal with Indiana. But he turned back into a slam-dunking pumpkin last season, shooting just 37% with Indiana (31% from deep), and washing out of the rotation completely by the end of the Pacers' playoff run to the conference finals.
Plumlee, on the other hand, had no track record whatsoever at the pro level--and not all that much production to speak of at the college level, either, as he never averaged more than seven points a game in four years at Duke. He wasseen as a reach for Indiana in the late first round in 2012, and he never escaped garbage time in his debut season with the Pacers, playing just 55 minutes total across 13 games, and shooting 5-21 from the field for the season. He didn't play a second for the Pacers in the postseason, and it seemed likely that this guy was just never gonna have a relevant NBA moment.
Well whoa there, Ryan McDonough. Seven games is always too early to early to judge completely, but from the early returns, it looks like the Suns' new GM might have absolutely fleeced the opposition in his second big deal as an NBA exec. (The first, in which he parlayed a second-round pick an above-average veteran wing in Jared Dudley into a possible franchise player in Eric Bledsoe, might have been just as impressive.) Not only are both players starting for the unexpectedly boss new-look Suns, but they're on pace for easily their most productive seasons, seasons that may force league-wide re-evaluation of the two cast-offs.
Green's resurgence has been keyed around him getting back to what he does best: Shooting the three-pointer. Green has been lights out from range this season, shooting 44% from beyond the arc, and showing particularly deadly accuracy from the corners, where he's a combined 11-17 for the year. But he's also been getting to the basket, particularly in transition, where he's provided the go go Suns--23.7 fast-break points per game, by far the most in the league--with one of their best open-court weapons. And when he gets out there, things like this happen:
The combination of made threes and easy open-court looks has helped Green reach career highs in points per game (13.3) and Player Efficiency Rating (16.1), as the former Slam Dunk Champion once again looks like a real rotation player in this league--maybe not a starter on a good time, but at least an energy guy off the bench, who can hit shots and run the floor and not totally kill you on defense. He's now an asset for the rebuilding Suns, potential trade bait at the deadline, or an inexpensive cog for the next good Suns team--which could be coming sooner than we think.
The real revelation, though, is Plumlee. The older of the Plumlee brothers (Mason plays in Brooklyn, and yes, it's OK to still be getting them confused), Miles followed up a strong Summer League with a strong pre-season, and now looks like a true find as the Suns' starting center, further making the Gortat trade (which cleared space for Plumlee that nobody could have imagined he would demand) seem like a real coup for Phoenix. He put up 18 and 15 in his Suns debut against the Blazers--more than doubling his career scoring in the process--and has nearly put up a double-double per game since, averaging 11.7 points and 9.6 rebounds a game for the season.
What's more, the guy has moves. Plumlee may look like kind of a stiff at first glance, but he's actually pretty mobile, allowing him to pull off such scoring maneuvers as this:
He also has a fadeaway:
A banker:
And a hook shot:
And he can even get up a little bit:
It's amazing that a player with this kind of offensive arsenal--and who can also play some defense, averaging over two blocks a game--could be so poorly valued in this league, though having watched roughly zero minutes of Miles Plumlee's basketball career before this season, I couldn't say how much of his game is recently developed. Regardless, he certainly seems like a legitimate center now, and the Suns have him on a rookie-scale deal for the next two seasons, potentially making him a dirt-cheap building block for the Suns as they reassemble their roster for future respectability.
Meanwhile, in Indiana, Luis Scola has played his role well--he's provided offense off the bench, scoring eight points a game while shooting nearly 56% from the field. But that's pretty much all the aging Scola does now--he's down to six rebounds per 36 minutes, where at his peak he was boarding nine or ten per 36, and he's only handed out four assists total in eight games this season, where he used to average over two a game. What's more, his shooting is unhealthily perimeter-based now--about half his shots have been long twos this season, and he's shooting under 50% at the basket. He's mostly making those long twos so far, but if he ever goes into a slump from outside, it's gonna be hard for him to find other ways to help the team, scoring or otherwise.
The 8-0 Pacers probably don't exactly regret the trade yet, but I think it's safe to say that the Suns would much rather have Green and Plumlee--especially since so many of the minutes that would have otherwise been Scola's have now gone to Markieff Morris, who is in the midst of the season's most unlike Sixth Man of the Year (bordering on All-Star) push, simply playing out of his mind the past week and ensuring his name be one of those mentioned when talking of the future of Phoenix's NBA franchise. Between Morris, Plumlee, Green, Bledsoe and Dragic, the Suns might not exactly have a playoff-contending core or the makings of anything obviously great...but man, they have something, don't they? More than most of us would have expected before the season, certainly.
And ironically, the draft pick might end up being the least of the assets the Suns received in this deal, since regardless of whether or not the Pacers were had in this deal, they've been playing the best basketball of anyone in the NBA through the first two weeks, and don't seem likely to be getting the Suns into the top 25 next June. Classic Ryan McDonough diversion tactics, perhaps, because even if the pick doesn't get Phoenix anything but the next Christian Eyenga, they've already gotten enough from the deal for it to be the stealth swipe of the off-season.