With the 2013-14 NBA Season just around the corner, here is Ball So Hard’s definitive ranking of every NBA team, counting down each conference from 15-1. Think I’m wrong? Let me know in the comment section below.

Western Conference no. 15 – Phoenix Suns

Players Added

Rookies: Archie Goodwin, Alex Len

Free Agents: Dionte Christmas

Trades: Eric Bledsoe, Gerald Green, Viacheslav Kravstov, Malcom Lee, Miles Plumlee, Ish Smith

Players Lost

Free Agents: Wesley Johnson, Jermaine O’Neal

Trades: Jared Dudley, Luis Scola

Waived: Michael Beasley, Hamed Haddadi

The Story So Far

The Suns have been on the decline for a few years now, but this season marks the first year that the team has actively acknowledged their fall down the standings in the West.

After watching Amar’e Stoudemire walk away from the franchise in 2010, the Suns’ notoriously stingy owner, Robert Sarver, attempted to keep his team relevant at a discount price by surrounding Steve Nash with a host of role players.

However, the moves that Sarver made (spending over $80 million on Josh Childress, Hakim Warrick and Hedo Turkoglu), along with a history of poor draft picks – Alando Tucker, Robin Lopez, Earl Clark, Markieff Morris and Kendall Marshall – only stemmed the bleeding.

Now, finally free of those horrible contracts, Phoenix has finally resigned to blowing up their roster and entering a full-scale rebuild and joined the ‘Riggin for Wiggins’ tanking stakes.

Through their offseason dealings, the Suns managed to acquire several great young building blocks, trading for Eric Bledsoe, and drafting Alex Len and Archie Goodwin, while also ensuring they will in the thick of it come the draft lottery at the end of the year by jettisoning Jared Dudley, Luis Scola and Caron Butler for prospects, picks and non-guaranteed deals.

Phoenix also ridded themselves of the troublesome Michael Beasley, which can only be a positive move considering the young and impressionable roster they will be running out this season.

Last season, Phoenix finished with a 25-57 record, and things will probably get worse before they get better, but the Suns have a handful of young prospects with lots of upside and three first round picks in the stacked 2014 NBA Draft, so it isn’t all doom and gloom in Arizona.

Although they wont win many games, it will be interesting to see how Bledsoe performs now that he has been handed a full-time starting role, and the combination of Bledsoe, Shannon Brown and Gerald Green should produce several highlight plays for the Suns over the course of the season.

The Big Question

The Suns wont be a big player in the playoff race themselves, but they hold several trade chips that could be valuable contributors on a contending team.

With Bledsoe and Len joining the Suns in the offseason, Marcin Gortat and/or Goran Dragic could find themselves wearing different uniforms before the trade deadline.

Gortat in particular was the subject of several trade rumours last season and is also on the last year of his contract.

Oklahoma City is desperate to free themselves of Kendrick Perkins, and if the Thunder are willing to part with a young prospect like Jeremy Lamb and picks, Gortat could find himself in OKC before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Dragic is a proven starter and would an excellent backup for a team looking to make a deep run into the playoffs but is lacking depth at point guard.

The Suns are looking to reshape the face of their franchise and are anxious to secure a future star in next years draft, and if their younger players prove to be capable of running the team on their own, expect Phoenix to be an active participant before the deadline in February.