Suns owner on Bledsoe: 'We haven't heard from the guy in four months'

Eric Bledsoe reportedly turned down a four-year, $48 million contract offer from the Suns earlier this summer and is said to be seeking a maximum four-year deal worth $80 million, a divide which appears to have soured the relationship between he and the Suns.

It doesn't seem likely that Bledsoe is going to get that kind of money, nor does it seem likely that he's going to get a significant offer-sheet from another team, which the Suns would have the right to match since he's a restricted free agent.

For his part, Suns owner Robert Sarver maintains that the team wants to keep Bledsoe around. "We value Eric as a player," Sarver told the Arizona Republic's Paul Coro. "I hope at some point we'll be able to sit down and meet with those guys and make a deal."

If the Suns don't want to go higher than four years and $48 million, which rival executives believe is a fair offer (read the story stack below) and Bledsoe doesn't want to lock himself into that kind of deal, he does have the option of signing a one-year, roughly $3.7 million qualifying offer by October 1 and then becoming an unrestricted free agent in 2015.

For a young player with an injury history, however, that would be a risky proposition.

"Hopefully, at the end of the day, Eric comes here and does a contract," Sarver said, via azcentral.com. "If that doesn't happen, then he'll be here for a year and we'll have a year to figure it out on both sides."

Sarver also responded to reports that the relationship between Bledsoe and the Suns is deteriorating. "Maybe that's just posturing and negotiating," Sarver told the Arizona Republic.

"We haven't heard from the guy in four months, so I couldn't tell you," Sarver added. "I do know that when he played here, he felt good about the organization, his coaching staff and his teammates at the end of the season. We had the same feelings toward him."

Front offices dealing with agents instead of the players themselves isn't unusual, but a restricted free agent and his current team not speaking for four months - which takes us back to the end of the regular season - seems counterproductive.