SH Blog: Eric Bledsoe signs $70 million deal with Suns, Bill Simmons suspended by ESPN

All summer long, Eric Bledsoe and the Phoenix Suns refused to cooperate with each other. He wanted a max deal and the team had no interest in viewing him as someone worth that kind of money. Based on what was being said and done from each side, it appeared as though the two were headed for an ugly ending.

Then came Wednesday, when the Suns could no longer deal with the risk they were putting themselves under by doing nothing with Bledsoe heading into training camp: with Goran Dragic set to become an unrestricted free agent next summer, the Suns put themselves in risk of losing both of their starting guards if Bledsoe chose to sign a $3.7 million qualifying offer this year.

So ended their stance on wanting to pay Bledsoe no more than $48 million when they caved in and offered him a five-year deal, from Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports: 

Restricted free-agent guard Eric Bledsoe has reached agreement on a five-year, $70 million contract extension with the Phoenix Suns, league sources told Yahoo Sports.

The deal will include no player options, and the $70 million will be fully guaranteed, a source said.

Bledsoe and his agent Rich Paul arrived in Phoenix on Wednesday to meet with Suns management and try to clear the final hurdles toward a new contract, league sources told Yahoo Sports.

Communication between Bledsoe and the Suns has been non-existent through a summer stalemate in extension talks and Wednesday’s visit with Suns executives was a significant development in the final thawing needed to close on a new deal.

Bledsoe hadn’t been back in Phoenix since the Suns’ season ended in April.

Bledsoe worked perfectly in sync with Dragic last season despite being an undersized duo. When the two played together, they were about as lethal and formidable as any team in the league with their ability to breakdown just about any defense. With Isaiah Thomas also on board as a sixth man, the Suns may have the most lethal group of guards in the league.

Despite the unexpected success the Suns had last season, they weren’t really all that great when Bledsoe wasn’t playing. When he played, the Suns had a 28-15 record. That means they were 17-22 without him. That is an incredible disparity and a pretty clear evidence on how important he was to their success last season on both ends of the floor.

It’s true that he has been injury prone (missed 39 games last season), but if the Suns lost him (and possibly Dragic) next summer to free agency for nothing, it would have set them back for years. When you’re set back for years in the West, that’s pretty hard to come back from. Just ask the Kings and the Timberwolves.

Here are some thoughts about Bledsoe’s deal from others around the league:

David Aldridge of NBA.com: “Given Bledsoe’s injury history — he missed two months last season following knee surgery, and was injured for large chunks of his time with the Clippers — the new deal may seem a risk. But it’s a reasonable gamble for the Suns, given that the new television deal the NBA is likely to strike in the coming months with its national television partners (including Turner Sports, which operates NBA.com) is likely to inject billions more dollars in revenues to the teams. That, in turn, will lead to significant raises for players who can command max salaries, which can run up to 30 percent of a team’s salary cap in a given year. In that climate, $14 million per year for a player who’s likely entering the prime of his career is a fair compromise, both for the Suns and Bledsoe.

Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic: “This was the type of control that made Bledsoe an attractive target for much of the league last summer, when the Suns traded Jared Dudley and a second-round pick in a three-way deal to get Bledsoe. He was a young player who needed more opportunity to tap into more of his potential and he was on his rookie contract, giving his team the chance to extend him (which the Suns did not a year ago), match other teams’ offer sheets as a restricted free agent (he did not sign any) and give him a longer contract.”

Sean Sullivan of Bright Side of the Sun: “Regardless of whether or not you agree with the years or the amount, this truly is the best outcome for both sides.  The Suns now have a three-headed monster of a back-court, consisting of Goran Dragic, Eric Bledsoe, and Isaiah Thomas.  As Hornacek pointed out after signing Thomas in early July, the original plan all along was to employ a three-guard rotation in which two of them would be on the court at all times.  Bledsoe will bring not only scoring and passing on offense, but the defense that the Suns so desperately need. As for Bledsoe, signing this deal with the Suns avoids signing the qualifying offer of only $3.7 million for a one-year deal with Phoenix, before becoming an unrestricted free agent next summer.  For someone with a history of injuries, and who has started in only 78 games throughout his career, that’s a huge gamble.

And here is Bledsoe’s official statement, from Coro of The Arizona Republic:

“Lon, Ryan and the Suns have shown confidence in me, and I am looking to take that responsibility and help our team get better from last year and position ourselves to win an NBA championship. It’s why I came back to Phoenix. All summer, I knew that I really would be most comfortable coming back to Phoenix because of the great fans, my Suns teammates and our coaches. I am very happy it was able to work out this way.”

OTHER NEWS FROM AROUND THE LEAGUE: 

• Hasheem Thabeet will look to make the Detroit Pistons roster this season, according to Marc Stein of ESPN: “ESPN sources say Pistons are signing Hasheem Thabeet to non-guaranteed deal to give him a shot to make their team in training camp.”

• Paul George recently did an interview with Reggie Miller about his freak injury, the aftermath, what he thinks of Roy Hibbert’s game, and the tweets about Ray Rice that got him in trouble. Watch the interview here.

• Jason Kidd wants to transition Giannis Antetokounmpo to the point guard position, and the forward is not surprised by the notion. Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders has details: “I’m not going to say I was shocked by it,” Antetokounmpo told Basketball Insiders when asked about the move to point guard. “It’s something that I feel comfortable with and I’ll play wherever Coach wants me to play, especially when it’s Coach Kidd who thinks that I can play point guard. That makes me feel like, ‘I can play it. I can play point guard.’ I’m going to try my best and just listen to Coach. I’ll do whatever Coach says to do and I’ll get more comfortable.”… “I was comfortable playing point guard during Summer League, but the pressure and the [competition] level of Summer League is different,” Antetokounmpo said. “Okay, there are some NBA players, but it’s not the same. For sure, it’s not the same [as the regular season]. So, let’s see. Let’s see how training camp goes. The guys are ready. Brandon Knight, who is one of our point guards, will sometimes give me the ball so that I can be the point guard and he can be more of a scorer. I’ll just see how it goes in training camp, playing point guard, and then during the season see how I do.”

• Bill Simmons was highly critical of Roger Goodell and dared ESPN to do something about the criticism, via Sports Business Daily: “I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I’m in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell. Because if one person says that to me, I’m going public. You leave me alone. The commissioner’s a liar and I get to talk about that on my podcast. … Please, call me and say I’m in trouble. I dare you.” At the outset, Simmons “ripped into Goodell, saying: ‘I just think not enough is being made out of the fact that they knew about the tape and they knew what was on it. Goodell, if he didn’t know what was on that tape, he’s a liar. … For all these people to pretend they didn’t know is such f-ing bullshit. It really is — it’s such f-ing bullshit. And for him to go in that press conference and pretend otherwise, I was so insulted. … When you’re the leader, you’re in charge, that’s it.”

• Simmons was subsequently suspended for three weeks by ESPN. Here is the official statement: “Every employee must be accountable to ESPN and those engaged in our editorial operations must also operate within ESPN’s journalistic standards. We have worked hard to ensure that our recent NFL coverage has met that criteria. Bill Simmons did not meet those obligations in a recent podcast, and as a result we have suspended him for three weeks.”

• Phil Jackson says Carmelo Anthony cannot be a ball-stopper for the Knicks moving forward, from Steve Serby of New York Post: “Hawks GM Danny Ferry recently made comments about Carmelo in which he reportedly said: “He can shoot the [bleep] out of it, but he screws you up in other ways. So is he really worth $20 million? I would argue if he plays the right way, absolutely.” A: I think there’s probably 15 players in the NBA that are very similar position. I don’t know if all of ’em are paid $20 million, but the coaches and GMs are talking about it in those type of terms — how much does this guy hurt your team, or hurt the game flow because he’s trying to score. The attempt to score, the need to score, the pressure that he feels he has to score. … Does he take away from the team game? That’s what Danny’s talking about there. And that’s where Carmelo’s gonna move forward this year in that situation — the ball can’t stop. The ball has to continually move. It moves, or goes to the hoop on a shot or a drive or something like that. In our offense, that’s part of the process of getting players to play in that rhythm.”

• Jackson also chimed in on J.R. Smith and isn’t sure whether he can change the guard’s personality: Q: How do you plan to try to get through to J.R. Smith to put an end to all his immature on- and off-the-court antics? A: I don’t know if that’s possible or not. He might be one of those guys that’s a little bit like Dennis Rodman that has an outlier kind of side to him. But I’m gonna get to know him as we go along, and we’ll find a way to either make him a very useful player on our organization, or whatever.”

• John Wall has some hefty goals for the upcoming season, from Karan Madhok of SLAM Online: “SLAM: Looking forward to next season…Like we climbed the Wall today, what sort of physical or mental walls do you hope to climb to get better? JW: Just improve every aspect of my game. I’m trying to be the best point guard of the League next year and lead my team to the Finals. So I need to be taking care of my body, not being injured and definitely being in better shape so I can play both ends of the court like I did in the Playoffs, in the way I was committed on the defensive end, just trying to lead my team and not worry about points or things like that. It lets me know that I can do a lot of other things to help my team win other than just scoring.”

• Jeff Van Gundy does not believe his brother can carry the Detroit Pistons to the playoffs, via Kurt Helin of ProBasketballTalk: “Listen, they have a long rebuild. I think for the last five years Detroit has had the worst record in the Eastern Conference. And you think about that, that’s hard to do because a lot of the teams in the Eastern Conference over the last five years were trying to lose games. So, I mean, it’s a major rebuild. It’s a huge undertaking. I think they’ll be better. I don’t know what that translates to win-wise. I think they’ll be better but a lot depends on some of their perimeter play, how their frontcourt is going to mesh. I doubt you’re going to see the Josh Smith at small forward experiment very often. That was their starting lineup last year with Smith and [Greg] Monroe and [Andre] Drummond. I doubt you’re going to see that because you just don’t have any spacing or shooting on the floor. I’m interested to see how they play. I think there are a lot of things that they’ve got to correct and I think they are working hard at it but I just don’t see how they could make the playoffs.”

• The Los Angeles Lakers have agreed to a non-guaranteed deal with Ronnie Price, from Sam Amick of USA Today: “The Los Angeles Lakers have agreed to a one-year minimum contract deal for veteran point guard Ronnie Price, two people with knowledge of the situation told USA TODAY Sports. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal had not yet been announced. The 31-year-old Price will be playing for the sixth team in his nine-year career. He last played for the Orlando Magic last season, logging just 31 games.”

James Park is a blogger and editor of Sheridan Hoops. Follow him on twitter @SheridanBlog.