1. … The Phoenix Suns.
This is how it’s done. Shut them all down. Trade your best defender to a different country. Lose 12 straight. Rally around clean, round numbers that someone achieves in a loss. Good job. Great job, even. It seemed impossible for a while, but they’re in shouting distance of Brooklyn.
This is how you tank. I’d point to them as an example if I wasn’t using my fingers for jamming myself in the eyes. Can’t quite fit my entire fist into my eye sockets yet, but believe me. I’m trying.
There was a time in my life when I rooted for Brandon Knight. He was on the Pistons, and he looked kinda okay maybe. He then went to the Bucks like all former Pistons do and looked kinda really okay maybe. Then he went to the Suns, and the story did that thing where it starts to suck.
The Suns, for a time, seemed to like collecting oodles of point guards and playing them all at once. It worked with Bledsoe and Dragic. It didn’t work on the 36 other attempts. Brandon Knight is not Goran Dragic.
But Bledsoe went down with a crippling “DNP – Whatever,” and it seemed like this was the perfect time for Knight to reclaim some value on his yearly $12,000,000 contract. You know, soak up the minutes and kill the counting stats to death. Instead he’s not played since February.
Next: NBA Draft Big Board: Post-Tournament fallout
This is the most perplexing thing to me. What is the point of Brandon Knight? Unfortunately, answering that question would require thought, and I’d rather think about anything else.