Paola Boivin

azcentral sports

If the chirp of crickets is not the soundtrack you hoped would accompany the Suns’ free-agency period, don’t fret. It is also what patience sounds like.

A successful NBA draft followed by a low-key but smart addition of Jared Dudley is simply the Suns operating like an organization with a vision. A priority in the coming days should be chemistry, and not the kind that knocked O.J. Mayo out of the NBA Friday.

If you look at the roster general manager Ryan McDonough inherited in 2013 and the one he has now, it is clear he has the chops to put together a team built for success.

But there are lessons to be learned, too: Character evaluation should be thorough and communication a priority.

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Most NBA careers have a short shelf life and feature a collection of athletes who have been the best of the best. They want to maximize the opportunity and get their minutes. Sometimes they’ll say what you want to hear.

McDonough had an interesting take about past criticism of trying to build a team with three point guards: Goran Dragic, Isaiah Thomas and Eric Bledsoe.

“When people say it didn’t work, it didn’t for the individuals involved,” he said on a recent podcast with Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

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McDonough pointed to the team starting out 28-20 in 2014-15 after adding Thomas in the offseason. But as moods soured, so did the team’s record, and the Suns went 11-23 the rest of the way.

The 28-20 record was on Jan. 30. Two weeks later, Dragic was lamenting how he wanted out. Later, Gerald Green expressed confusion about his role, and in the offseason Marcus Morris was traded, prompting him and his brother to blast the organization.

“When we came aboard,” McDonough said, “to a man, we met with those guys (who were coming off the Suns’ 25-win season) and everybody we met with, including some of the players who later turned out to be unhappy, said, ‘Look, we want to win, we’ll do whatever it takes to win. We’ll sacrifice.’

“Unfortunately, after the first one-and-a-half, two years, that turned out not to be the case. We did learn from it. We take responsibility for it.”

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Growth is good and positives exist to take from the direction the Suns are headed.

Bledsoe has taken it upon himself to be a stronger leader. Devin Booker is hungry to get better and has handled expectations well.

A healthy T.J. Warren has great upside, and Alex Len continues to improve.

The early contributions of the three draft picks should be limited but promising.

Suns management must maneuver carefully during this free-agency period.

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Chemistry is huge. I don’t care what Markieff Morris says, choking and shoving a teammate during a game is not healthy, and certainly not brotherly behavior.

And player development should take priority over trying to eke out a few more victories.

Would it be nice if Kevin Durant had the Suns on his list? Of course. But the top free agents want to win now and the Suns haven't arrived yet. At least they are building toward it.

It felt in recent years as if the Suns were trying to build a team simply to get back into the playoffs, even if it meant a first-round exit.

Now they are seeing the bigger picture, which is why the signing of Jared Dudley, who is a terrific locker-room presence and will embrace the role of helping young players thrive, was a smart one.

He is, simply, a professional.

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Equally important, he has reinvented himself as a power forward with a 3-point shot after beginning his career as a small forward.

As the Suns' power-forward draft picks, Dragan Bender and Marquese Chriss, work out the kinks, Dudley will prove to be a real asset.

And don’t freak out about the $30 million deal.

This is a great year to be a player like Dudley.

The cash is there.

And while the numbers are astounding, they are also irrelevant.

Television pays the league a crazy amount of money. And fans come to games, buy NBA-licensed merchandise and line the owners’ pockets.

It is what the market bears.

Remember, too, with a collection of young players on the rookie scale, things are setting up nicely for the Suns for free agency in 2017. Maybe by then, there will be healthy respect from available players about what the Suns have to offer.

The 2016 offseason should be about lessons learned. Chemistry. Communication. Keeping an eye on the future.

Reach Boivin at paola.boivin@arizonarepublic.com and on Twitter at Twitter.com/PaolaBoivin. Listen to her streaming live on “The Brad Cesmat Show” on sports360az.com every Monday at 10:30 a.m.