NBA trades we want to see
Picking potential landing spots for a few NBA stars who could be on the move.
Did the Phoenix Suns want to trade Devin Booker for Jimmy Butler nearly a decade ago?
That’s what former Suns’ coach Earl Watson claimed during his appearance on the Bucks Plus Audio podcast episode released on Dec. 16. Booker was in the proposed trade for Butler from his former team Chicago Bulls in February 2017.
Watson said he threatened former Suns’ owner Robert Sarver and former general manager Ryan McDonough when the idea was pitched.
“If you trade Devin Booker, I am resigning tonight,” Watson claims to have said during the conversation after a road trip.
Watson said Sarver summoned him to his home at 2 a.m. to discuss Booker on the trading block.
Watson, now on the San Diego men’s basketball team’s coaching staff, was the second among the eight Suns coaches whom Booker played since he entered the NBA in 2015.
Watson saw something special as “the biggest Devin Booker advocate” early in Booker’s 11-year career.
“It could’ve changed my entire coaching trajectory,” Watson said. “I really seen a kid who could one of the greatest players to ever play. And I sit there, and I watch the kid work. I’m in the gym with the kid. In that moment, it was the beginning of the end for me in Phoenix. … I don’t want to be the coach that traded potentially one of the best two-guards.”
Watson was fired by the Suns during the 2017-18 season, when the team was one of the Western Conference’s worst.
Booker’s accomplishments include being the Suns’ all-time leading scorer, four All-Star and two All-NBA selections, two gold-medal stints on Team USA, and leading the Suns from obscurity to the 2021 NBA Finals and the franchise record 64 wins the following year.
During the Suns’ finals run, Booker credited Watson for boosting his confidence as a one-and-done out of Kentucky, such as when Booker scored his career-high 70 points in Boston in March 2017.
Butler, 36, is now on the Golden State Warriors after he was dealt from the Miami Heat in February last season.