What is that you say? Ja Morant is available on the trade market? You mean the guy the Phoenix Suns could have drafted back in 2019 if the lottery balls had bounced a little differently? The season where Phoenix finished with the worst record in the league, landed the sixth pick anyway, and watched the league tweak the odds the very next year? One season too early? Missed Zion. Missed Ja. File that under lifelong sports trauma.
So here we are. After Trae Young was shipped off to Washington on Wednesday, Ja Morant is now the next highly priced point guard officially floating around the trade market.
And I already know where your instincts go, because mine went there too. Should the Suns even entertain this? The answer is simple. No. And it really does not take long to explain why.
There are three point guards in the league who, to me, represent net negatives at their price point, given where the NBA is headed. Trae Young. LaMelo Ball. Ja Morant. All three are expensive. All three are flashy. And all three bring a version of basketball that the league has slowly moved away from.
Trae Young brings volume scoring and logo range bravado. He loves the 32-footers. The problem is they are not falling like they used to. He is sitting at 30.5% from three this season. LaMelo Ball lives in a similar neighborhood. The shooting percentages are rough, but the game looks fun. He sprays passes, plays fast, and turns chaos into highlights. That has value. It also comes with baggage.
Then there is Ja Morant. He can facilitate. He always has. His real weapon has been downhill violence, attacking the rim with speed and force that bends a defense. It is electric. It is also dependent on athletic margin and constant usage.
After multiple injuries, that superpower has dulled. It is still there, but it is no longer the cheat code it once was. He is not the same explosive force he used to be, and even at 26, that matters. Athletic advantage fades fast in this league, and once it starts slipping, the asset starts trending the wrong way.
All three players check similar boxes. Scoring. Flash. Ball dominance. And none of those boxes line up cleanly with what winning teams are prioritizing right now. What all of these guys share is something bigger. A lack of commitment on the defensive end. And as more players enter the league with elite scoring ability, that flaw carries more weight than it used to.
Buckets are everywhere now. The value is shifting. The pendulum is swinging toward players who defend, who think the game, who compete when the ball is not in their hands. That is where the league is headed, and that is why paying a premium for one-dimensional flash feels like a mistake waiting to happen.
And that is where the conversation has to start when it comes to the idea of the Suns pursuing Ja Morant.
The identity and culture that Brian Gregory and Mat Ishbia have built in Phoenix over the past seven months run in the opposite direction of what Morant brings.
Yes, he can facilitate. Phoenix has already shown you do not need a single primary organizer. They have leaned into a roster full of connectors, guys who keep the ball moving and the offense breathing. Morant attacks the rim, and that is an area where the Suns can improve. They currently rank 12th in paint touches and 27th in field goal attempts at the rim. But they also have Jalen Green waiting in the wings, who should help shift those numbers when healthy.
On the perimeter, the math does not work. Morant has never been a reliable three-point shooter. He is a career 31% shooter from deep and is sitting at 20.8% this season. That is not a small dip. That is a real concern. So the question becomes simple. What is the value added?
At $39.4 million this year, with two more seasons left on the deal, the answer needs to be overwhelming. For Phoenix, it is not.
That is the starting point, and it is also the ending point. The Suns do not have the assets the Grizzlies would theoretically want in a Ja Morant deal. At least that is what we have always been told. I am not sure how solid those theories are anymore.
We just watched the Atlanta Hawks move on from Trae Young and get zero draft capital back. None. That tells you something. They were not chasing picks. They were chasing flexibility. They wanted off a contract that no longer matched the value on the floor. They took back assets that clear the books over the next couple of years and reset around a younger core.
It is not hard to imagine the Memphis Grizzlies staring at a similar crossroads with Ja Morant. An extension that did not age the way they hoped. A price tag that no longer lines up with the return. At some point, teams stop worrying about winning the trade on paper and start worrying about direction. Get lighter. Get younger. Get flexible.
Granted, they are still trying to build around Jaren Jackson Jr., who flashes greatness and then disappears long enough to make you wonder what the plan actually is. That is for the Memphis Grizzlies to sort out. That is their mess.
For the Phoenix Suns, there is no version of reality where Ja Morant makes sense in Phoenix. None. And as we inch closer to the trade deadline, I have a feeling that is going to be the theme of my writing this year. Not the moves the Suns should be making. The moves they should stay far away from.
At this point, I do not think they need to do anything at all. Sometimes the smartest move is keeping your hands out of the fire. I will save the rest of that sermon for another day.
See More:
* [Suns Rumors](/suns-rumors)
* [Suns Trade Rumors](/suns-trade-rumors)