Brandon Knight is the sixth man for the Phoenix Suns for the 2016-17 campaign. After he and fellow guard Eric Bledsoe battled injuries last season, young guard Devin Booker stepped up and showed his worth. Which ultimately pushed Knight to the reserve role.
As ESPN’s Zach Lowe noted in a column earlier today, the Knight reserve experience isn’t working out. He has the third-worst raw plus-minus in the league, ahead of only Evan Turner and Jeff Green and those two new signees are also having a rough time this season. Since the Suns gave up a first round pick to acquire Brandon Knight, after getting rid of Isaiah Thomas, the move has been a puzzling one. Now with the emergence of Devin Booker as a potentially special future star, Knight’s future in Phoenix is looking dim.
So with Knight’s value diminishing and his role reducing, there has to be some desire from the Suns to unload the once promising guard, right? It appears not. Phoenix wants to hang on to him, for whatever reason.
Following from Kevin Zimmerman of Arizona Sports 98.7.
Few NBA teams seek out trade agreements involving starting-caliber players at this time of the year, and McDonough said he’d like at least two months to get a feel for the roster.
Asked on the Burns and Gambo show if sixth man Brandon Knight was seeking a trade or if the Suns were thinking about it, McDonough offered this:
“We’re certainly not looking to move Brandon, we haven’t been close to trading Brandon,” he said. “I think he’d love to be starting, we understand that. He’s accepted the role very well. I think you guys will see him go on a run here. As you know, watching him play the last couple years, he has the ability to get hot and put up a lot of points in a hurry and take over stretches of games — he hasn’t done that yet for us consistently but I think it’s coming.”
