Brandon Knight and the rest of his Milwaukee Bucks teammates noticed that coach Jason Kidd had been on the phone for a good while during the final practice before last February's trade deadline, leading to a playful guessing game that one of them would be on the move. To Knight, the banter was hilarious. In his mind there was no way the Bucks would break up a group that was in the playoff hunt 10 months after a 15-win season and had won eight of nine games entering the All-Star break despite losing Jabari Parker to a knee injury and Larry Saunders to an early retirement.

After practice, the locker room was filled with laughter until it wasn't. Until the jokes about trades became a reality for Knight and silence hijacked the fun. Knight was headed to the shower when a team staffer known for kidding around showed up to tell Knight he was wanted upstairs. The players guffawed once more but Knight became unsettled when O.J. Mayo, his best friend on the team, told him the request was sincere. A short time later, Knight realized the Bucks were telling him he had to start over for the second time in less than two years – in the midst of a borderline All-Star season – when Kidd showed up and shouted, "B-Knight!"

View photos Brandon Knight celebrates hitting a 3-pointer against the Bulls. (Getty) More

Knight looked around at his equally stunned and suddenly somber teammates, struggling to digest that their time together had come to an end.

“I wouldn’t say it hurt,” Knight told Yahoo Sports. “It was more about the brotherhood we had built. Being on the worst team in the league and being able to turn that around. And for them to try to step on that, based on whatever the case may be – money or whatever it is – what’s the point in that?”

As Knight made his lonely stroll up to general manager John Hammond's office to find out that he would be heading to the Phoenix Suns, a calm came over him. Knight learned about the harsh side of basketball when the Detroit Pistons traded him in the summer of 2013 as part of a deal for Brandon Jennings. A conscientious perfectionist, Knight was so disturbed by the move that he actually cold-called then-Pistons general manager Joe Dumars a week later to understand why he was traded.

This time around with Milwaukee, Knight understood: Basketball is a business and the faster he moved on, the better.

“Brandon didn’t sit around and pout about it. He knows he had a job to do,” Knight’s father, Efrem, said in a phone interview. “You can’t pout and stay down about something because you won’t ever get up.”

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Knight might've finally found the NBA home he has long sought in Phoenix. Paired in a point guard tandem with fellow Kentucky alum Eric Bledsoe, Knight is off to the best start of his career. Knight matched his career high with 37 points last week in a win over the Los Angeles Clippers, recorded his first career triple double with 30 points, 15 assists and 10 rebounds Monday in a win over the Los Angeles Lakers, and is one of four players in the NBA averaging at least 20 points, 4.5 assists and 4.0 rebounds while shooting at least 38 percent from 3-point range.

The confidence Knight gained while maturing into a leader in Milwaukee is now starting to manifest in the fifth-year guard’s ability to finally get the upper hand in some embarrassing plays. Knight tossed Clippers forward Paul Pierce into a crossover-dribble blender, sending the future Hall of Famer sliding to the ground before knocking down a floater in the lane. He then had Lakers reserve Marcelo Huertas spinning in confusion before stepping back to bury a 3-pointer.

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