It’s nice to see the Suns welcome one of their former players back for a free agent visit, even if the same people who sent him away via trade are the ones pursuing him once again.
Phoenix rolled out the orange carpet for Goran Dragic this week, with team employees lining his entrance route back into the US Airways Center. Near the very end of the video, that’s Suns President of Basketball Operations Lon Babby who’s all smiles hugging Goran at the end of the line.
The trade that sent Dragic to Houston didn’t seem like a bad one for Phoenix at the time. The Suns sent the Rockets a first round pick in addition to Dragic for Aaron Brooks, who was clashing with the Rockets coaching staff after winning the league’s Most Improved Player award the season before.
Dragic was struggling with injuries at the time, and came to the team when the previous basketball operations staff was running the show. The new regime didn’t have the same investment in Dragic, and felt that Brooks would do well in Phoenix after getting what GM Lance Blanks called at the time a “fresh start.”
Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. Dragic emerged as maybe the best backup point guard in the league, while Brooks ended up in China as a casualty of last summer’s lockout. The Suns retained the rights to Brooks as a restricted free agent by extending him a qualifying offer last week.
The latest reports have Dragic and the Rockets very far apart from a numbers standpoint, so he’s not expected back in Houston next season. The Suns have the cap space to make Dragic a lucrative offer and rectify their mistake, but the team also has many other decisions to make in terms of how it wants to rebuild the roster after Steve Nash’s departure.
[via ClutchFans]