Why Dragic is worth overpaying
— -- The Phoenix Suns and star point guard Goran Dragic are headed for a messy divorce after Dragic's representatives announced that he would not re-sign with Phoenix after the season. He effectively gave the Suns an ultimatum: Trade me or I'm leaving.
As ESPN's Marc Stein reported, it is an unceremonious departure for Dragic, who arguably has been the face of the franchise since Steve Nash was traded to the Lakers in 2012.
How did Dragic and the Suns, who enjoyed a surprising rebirth in 2013-14 with Dragic as their star, come to this? And is he worth the eventual lucrative free-agent payday he's seeking? ESPN Insiders Amin Elhassan and Kevin Pelton break it down.
Elhassan: Creating leverage
Despite the Suns' relative success running three-point-guard lineups this season, it was very apparent that Dragic was unhappy about the arrangement. While he was the primary ball handler for much of last season, this season saw him relegated to sitting in the corner and waiting for the play to develop and for the ball to find its way to him, a proposition that became more and more of a rarity. In fact, Dragic's usage rate plummeted from almost 25 percent when he's the sole point guard on the floor to 17 percent when sharing the floor with Isaiah Thomas and Eric Bledsoe.
Frustration manifested on defense, as well. As the de facto "small forward" in Phoenix's three-point-guard lineup, Dragic was forced to defend bigger and bigger opponents, a task that took its toll on him physically, both in terms of energy expended fighting larger players and the abuse on his body. With both Bledsoe and Thomas signed long term, the odds were significantly worse the team would find a way to clean up the roster imbalance and reward him with the long-term, lucrative deal he'll be seeking this summer when he's expected to opt out of the last year of his current contract (due $7.5 million). This will be the last major contract of Dragic's career, so securing that type of compensation is of high priority for the former second-round draft selection.
Dragic's representatives, agents Bill Duffy and Rade Filipovic, are using the threat-of-flight leverage to make the change they want to see in Phoenix (namely a return to primary ballhandling duties for Dragic). By demanding a trade, and offering a short list of the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks or Miami Heat as desired landing spots, Duffy and Filipovic basically have painted the Suns into a corner.
None of those teams have the type of asset stockpile to acquire Dragic straight up, and likely don't even have enough to participate in a three-way deal. The Heat likely will not be able to send a first-round pick until 2017; the Knicks won't be able to send a pick until 2018; and the Lakers won't be able to send their own pick until 2019 at the earliest (although they do have the Rockets' 2015 first-rounder to dangle). Thus, any trade with those "preferred" teams would net the Suns very little.
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