Moore: Phoenix Suns GM Ryan McDonough can get out of this ditch — just not this year

If you drive off the highway and get stuck in a ditch, the last thing you want is a lecture about how you ended up there. At that point, it doesn’t matter. All you want to do is get back on the road.

How about we think of the Suns the same way?

We’re about a fifth of the way through the season, and we’ve seen enough to know how bad things can be.

They lost by 48 on opening night. They kicked Eric Bledsoe off the team and fired coach Earl Watson a few days later. The other night they gave up 90 points in the first half of a nationally televised game. And last week, Devin Booker and Tyson Chandler both had head colds.

The Suns are last in team defense, allowing 116.6 points per game. Only two other teams have a worse 3-point shooting percentage. They’re second-to-last in rebounds allowed per game. And only one other team dishes out fewer assists per night.

So, there’s the ditch.

But there’s reason for optimism that General Manager Ryan McDonough can get the team out of it — just not this year.

With that as the case, I think the best way to be a Suns fan the rest of this season will be to enjoy the occasional ups – like the bounce-back win over LA – endure the many downs, and focus more on the front office and scouting department than the court.

McDonough, for his part, is ready for the scrutiny that brings.

“We welcome that pressure,” he told me by phone Saturday. “I welcome it.”

There’s reason for confidence, McDonough finished second for Executive of the Year his first season in town and put together a team that won 48 games and barely missed the playoffs.

Lately, he’s made a couple of moves that I haven’t liked. If I were in his seat, Earl Watson would still be coaching, and he’d have Bledsoe and De’Aaron Fox on the roster.

But coach Jay Triano and rookie Josh Jackson have performed to expectation, and none of McDonough’s short-term moves have jeopardized his long-term strategy — in fact, the Bledsoe trade enhanced it, in my opinion — and for that he deserves credit.

Under McDonough, the Suns have accumulated “a lot of salary cap space this upcoming year, and then we have even more next summer, in 2019.”

“Initially,” McDonough said, “we were planning to look at 2019, primarily. And then when we made the trade with Bledsoe going to Milwaukee on a two-year contract and Greg Monroe coming back on a one-year contract along with the draft picks, that caused us to re-evaluate a little bit.”

NBA writer and salary cap guru Eric Pincus said, “The move they made getting out of Bledsoe’s contract for Greg Monroe put them in a position where they could be a spender this summer.”

They had been in “no man’s land where they had some space, but not enough to really do anything.”

And in the next couple of drafts, the Suns have a bounty of picks.

“Wait and see,” McDonough said. “We have a lot of options with those picks.”

Diehards who have been with the Suns since Connie Hawkins and Jerry Colangelo don’t want to hear about any #timeline, and I don’t blame them. But McDonough is taking the long view, and at this point, I think it’s the best view.

The Suns are better positioned for the future than most.

With the salary-cap spike in the summer of 2016, “a lot of teams spent themselves out,” McDonough said. “Just gave guys big-money contracts on long-term deals … over the next couple years, there’ll be few teams with cap space, you can probably count them on one hand, and we’ll be one of the few teams with it.”

Pincus, speaking by phone Thursday, said something similar.

“Most teams won’t have cap room,” he said. “The way I have it right now, and this is an estimate, is that 20 teams will probably be over the cap out of 30. And of those 10 teams that will be under, some of those teams might not be under” after re-signing their players.

Observers and fans now are free to debate over which guys McDonough should go after.

I examined player contract status lists and started coming up with some names to start the conversation.

Don’t worry right now about contract specifics of restricted players, team options, player options, Bird rights, the Rose rule, two-way players and so on. There’s plenty of time for all that later.

Just remember the plan is to add guys who are experienced enough to contribute, cheap enough to keep the options open and young enough to grow with Booker, Jackson and the rest of the Suns core.

That means players such as LeBron James, Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, DeMarcus Cousins and Paul George are probably out. Though James and Paul might be enough by themselves to get the Suns’ current group into playoff contention.

There’s another tier of available players who could help form an improved nucleus without using all the available cap space. It includes Aaron Gordon, Avery Bradley, Marcus Smart, DeAndre Jordan and Clint Capela.

Gordon, who played college ball at Arizona, is averaging 17.8 points and 7.7 rebounds per game. He is the caliber of player that everyone hopes Marquese Chriss can become.

Bradley, who has a connection with McDonough going back to Boston, has helped the Pistons surge to an unexpectedly strong start.

Smart, drafted by the Celtics only a year after McDonough left, could provide backcourt grit to go with Devin Booker’s glide.

Jordan and Capela would provide the rebounding and defense that the Suns badly need.

See? There’s hope. The Suns can get out of this ditch ... just as long as they don’t rush.

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Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @WritingMoore.