• After letting the Sixers and Heat (among other teams) take a spin in the spotlight earlier this year, the Suns decided to step up to the plate this past week. Phoenix has had a couple rough games of late and while the team’s record when Kevin Durant is healthy is still solid enough, that isn’t meeting the grade given where the Suns want to go.

    So, we have the natural odd man out, Bradley Beal, getting benched. Beal owns a full no-trade clause in his contract and can reject any deal the Suns may find to get him out of the program, and it’s being speculated that the Suns benching Beal is a way to disgruntle him enough that he just wants to leave on his own accord. Good luck with that one. This is the NBA, where no contract is truly untradeable, but Beal has all the leverage in this situation and no real incentive to skip town. Naturally, Beal has scored 25 points in two of his three games off the bench, and maybe the Suns will stumble upon something interesting here either way. For fantasy, Beal is most definitely not someone you drop, while managers in deeper formats can absolutely take a chance with new starter Ryan Dunn.

    Jusuf Nurkic was also moved to the bench, but unlike Beal, it’s probably the end of the line. Nurkic played 14 and 19 in his first two games as a reserve and was a full DNP-CD in Phoenix’s most recent contest. While this is tanking Nurkic’s trade value, it’s far more likely that he ends up getting moved to a team that will play him. In standard leagues, you can’t put up with intermittent DNP-CDs from a player who is getting under 20 minutes a night anyway, but he’s not someone we’d write off entirely just yet. Mason Plumlee isn’t exactly setting the world on fire as the new starter and Nurkic isn’t washed up just yet. There’s a hint of overreaction to all this given that the Suns don’t look terrible when they’re fully healthy, but the pressure is very much on and these may only be the first two dominoes to fall.


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