The NBA world continues to wait for a Jimmy Butler trade to come to fruition. But it feels like they won’t have to wait for much longer. Phoenix was able to better position themselves to make trade of this level on Tuesday when they swapped a future unprotected 1st round pick to Utah in exchange for 3 lesser value 1st round picks.
Those picks give the Suns the most important piece needed in trade talks: leverage.
Up until this point, the only pieces with leverage were the Heat, who own the rights to Jimmy Butlers contract. And Butler himself, who could influence who he gets traded to by deciding if he would be willing to sign a contract extension. For instance, by saying that he wouldn’t be willing to sign an extension with the Mavericks, Dallas would be far less likely to include valuable assets in a trade with Miami to acquire him, thus making the deal very unlikely to happen.
The Suns needed draft picks to sweeten the deal. They needed leverage.
Now they have some.
Several reports are saying that in order for a deal to happen, Phoenix and Miami would likely have to bring in one, two or even three other teams. A deal of that magnitude gets complicated with lots of moving pieces and lots of teams interest needing to be met. Now the Suns are able to appease multiple teams by sending first round picks to multiple teams to make them happy.
The Suns have no positioned themselves to be able to make a seismic trade. Now they just have to go do it.
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Spenser Tilus is a sports reporter for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on his X account @Spenser_Tilus
