The Phoenix Suns and restricted free-agent guard Eric Bledsoe have come to agreement terms on a five-year deal worth $70 million. The deal has been confirmed after a summer of back & forth issues involving Bledsoe, his representatives, and the Phoenix Suns front office. The two parties ultimately resulted in Bledsoe getting the largest deal of any restricted free agent this offseason which will pay him about $14 Million a year. There was a lot speculation over the summer that the Suns were going to attempt to trade Bledsoe after he refused their original offer & demanded a contract comparable to Kyrie Irving’s 5 year $90 Million deal. However, everybody (probably even Bledsoe) knew that he was not going to get that kind of money after only playing one season as a starter; a season that was also plagued by injuries.
At first glance this seems like a massive overpay from the Phoenix Suns, especially from a restricted free agent who posed no threat to sign with another team. For comparison, Kyle Lowry signed his deal earlier in the summer for four years $48 Million, with $12 million a year price tag. Lowry played in almost twice the amount of games that Bledsoe did and is getting paid on average $2 million dollars less. Although Bledsoe is younger than Lowry, he has had injury issues in his still young career. Nevertheless, Eric Bledsoe is still a great young player, and a great fresh face for the Phoenix Suns. This is important because when it comes to building teams to compete at high level, you have to keep your own, especially rising athletes, in this business. Nobody wins championships with a high turnover rate in their roster. The NBA isn’t your local McDonalds franchise establishment. Furthermore, in any type of organization there will always be people who are (Arguably) over-paid & people who are under-paid. Professional sports are really no different, so in the grand scheme of things, this deal really isn’t all that bad. The Suns over-paid for Bledsoe’s services, but it wasn’t egregious. Besides, when Bledsoe did play healthy with Goran Dragic they were pretty damn good, & fun to watch too. That is….if you’re into the whole fast-tempo-shoot-3’s-until-they -start going in type of basketball team. The bottom line is this: the Suns won 48 games last year with their second best player missing half the season, and they are returning all their core players back this upcoming season. This means the Western conference is going to be just as brutal this year as our last.
-JRC
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