Amazing article that breaks down all of Phoenix’s missteps since they brought Nash over.

This is his breakdown of the mistakes made in 2006:

Mistake No. 1: For financial reasons, they traded the No. 21 pick (Rajon Rondo) to Boston along with Brian Grant’s contract (chopping $1.9 million from their 2007 payroll) for the rights to Cleveland’s 2007 first-round pick. This was a double whammy because they acquired that Rondo pick two years before by giving up the No. 7 pick in the 2004 draft (for luxury tax reasons). So if you’re scoring at home, they downgraded from “Luol Deng or Andre Iguodala in 2004″ to “Rondo in 2006″ to “selling the No. 24 pick in 2007 for cash” (we’ll get to that in a second) … which means that, effectively, they traded a No. 7 pick in a loaded draft for $4.9 million. Phoenix fans, you may now light yourselves on fire.

(What makes that one even more painful: Instead of signing Richardson before the 2004-05 season to a six-year, $42.6 million deal, they could have drafted Deng or Igoudala that summer and paid one of them two-fifths as much as Richardson over that same time frame. One year later, they swapped Richardson and the No. 21 pick in 2005 for Kurt Thomas, who they dumped on Seattle last summer along with two more No. 1′s just to get him off their cap. As astounding as this sounds, Bryan Colangelo’s decision to sign Richardson instead of drafting Deng or Iguodala — which was dumb at the time, by the way — ended up costing them a whopping FOUR FIRST-ROUND PICKS! Would you rather have Richardson, or would you rather have the No. 7 pick in 2004, the No. 21 pick in 2005, and your first-rounders in 2008 and 2010? Hold on, this gets better. Your 2005 NBA Executive of the Year? That’s right, Mr. Bryan Colangelo! I love the NBA.)

Mistake No. 2: They sold the No. 27 pick to Portland (that ended up being Sergio Rodriguez). What’s confusing is that they traded/sold those No. 1s for luxury tax reasons, and yet …

Mistake No. 3: Two weeks later, they signed Marcus Banks to a five-year, $24 million deal to back up Nash. Marcus Banks!?!?!? Can you think of a worse guy for NashBall? He can’t shoot 3s, he’s a career loser, he’s never won in college or the pros, it’s unclear whether he’d ever accept a reduced role behind a two-time MVP … let’s get him! Why not just draft Rondo at 21 (or Marcus Williams, or Kyle Lowry, or Jordan Farmar) and develop him as a backup for one-fourth the price of Banks? Why not draft Rodriguez at No. 27 and hope he pans out for one-fifth the money?

(You’re lucky I’m not a Suns fan — I would have written 15 consecutive columns complaining about this paragraph alone. For the life of me, I will never figure out the appeal of Marcus Banks for $24 million. All they had to do was hit one freaking Celtics message board from the ’05-’06 season and check one of the 35 “MARCUS BANKS SUCKS” threads. My god.)

Mistake No. 4: Giving Diaw a $45 million, five-year extension before waiting to see if he could co-exist with Amare. Just senseless. He would have been a restricted free agent in the summer of ’07 — why not wait a year and make him play for the contract? (In the biggest non-surprise of the ’07 season, Diaw showed up for camp woefully out of shape, proving yet again that you can’t trust the French.) Also, would you rather pay $14 million a year to Diaw and Banks or just give that money right to Joe Johnson, the quintessential swingman for the S.S.O.L. Era? I’m telling you, this was a Greek tragedy.

Also, he links to Stein’s article about the Joe Johnson trade. Johnson was looking for $70 million over 6 years, but Phoenix didn’t want to offer that outright, instead wanting to wait until Johnson signed an offer sheet that they would match:

In his first extended interview about his future since free agency began Friday, Johnson said his desire to leave the Suns involves “a lot of things,” starting with contentious negotiations on a contract extension last October that broke off with sides about $5 million apart. Johnson was rankled further earlier this month when, after a breakout season for himself and the team, Phoenix offered only $60 million over six years.

All these decisions weren’t just franchise-changing. They were league-changing. Had they made the obvious decisions each year, they would be counting their rings instead of figuring out how to get rid of D’Antoni without having to pay the remainder of his contract.

Related posts:
Bill Simmons on Bryan Colangelo
Simmons is a raging tornado of quotability.
The Nash Effect: D’Antoni gets $6 million a year to coach Knicks
Breaking down the rumoured Heat-Bulls trade
Gilbert Arenas