Draft Lottery 2014

Matt Petersen

The Suns didn't get lucky in the NBA Draft Lottery, but they've made their own luck by amassing a trio of first-round picks in this summer's draft.

Flexibility and options galore accompany those picks. Drafting rookies, trading up or down in the draft order or acquiring players all avenues the Suns can take to build on this season's success.

HoopsHabit.com decided to turn back the clock and pinpoint the best Suns players "by position in the modern era." Sweet D made the cut. Who else joined him?

Suns Retorter Greg Esposito thinks Phoenix's luck isn't hard to spot, even after an anticlimactic draft lottery. With a first-rate general manager, head coach, a one-year turnaround and a handful of assets, optimism about the team is as high as it's been in a while.

Whatever happened to that first-round draft pick Minnesota owes us? Matt Petersen has the details on when and how the Suns will eventually cash it in.

Our weekly Suns Throwback series continues later today with an epic string of stories from former Phoenix forward and current assistant coach Kenny Gattison. The veteran big man talks about playing pick-up hoops with Michael Jordan as a kid, how a football taught him how to rebound and the effect of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

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The Lineup: Draft Dish & Dragic Meets the Prez

Ryan Wolf

2014-nba-draft-lottery

2014 NBA Draft Lottery

sswiat

PHOENIX – The Phoenix Suns will select 14th overall in the 2014 NBA Draft, it was determined tonight in the 2014 NBA Draft Lottery at Times Square Studios in New York.

The Suns also possess the 18th overall pick (from Washington) and the 27th overall pick (from Indiana) in the first round of the 2014 NBA Draft, as well as their own second round pick at 50th overall.

The Suns have three times in club history used the 14th overall selection. Phoenix selected Ring of Honor member Dan Majerle with the 14th pick in the 1988 NBA Draft and have also used the 14th pick to draft John Roche (1971) and Earl Clark (2009).

Forward Markieff Morris represented the Suns on stage at the lottery who himself was selected with the 13th overall pick by Phoenix in the 2011 NBA Draft.

The 2014 NBA Draft will be held on Thursday, June 26, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

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Suns to Select 14th in 2014 NBA Draft

There’s a 98.2-percent chance of Phoenix’s summer hand holding three mid-to-late first-round picks, upwards of $20 million in cap space and a plethora of young talent.

The Suns -- like the rest of the teams involved in the NBA Draft Lottery on Tuesday night -- will wait to move forward with their plans until the outlying possibility is accounted for by ping pong balls.

If Phoenix hits the odds-defying jackpot, it will add an incredible trump card to their already loaded hand, which will remain intact thanks to (hypothetically) Minnesota’s pick dropping from 13 to 14 – out of its top-13 protection and into the Suns’ hands due to the Wesley Johnson trade from two years ago.

Whether or not that happens, Tuesday will mark the end of an offseason holding pattern. Once the draft order is set, Suns General Manager Ryan McDonough can get started on his offseason laundry list.

McDonough and his team will be both active and thoughtful throughout the process, much as they were last summer (though with an extra season’s worth of experience).

Whether by draft, trade or (in July) free agency, they will be mindful of how any additions/subtractions will affect the team’s on-court performance and locker room presence.

All of this requires an enormous amount of communication with draft prospects, other teams and -- most importantly -- internally.

One of the biggest reasons the Suns flipped their fortunes in just a season was the trust within its braintrust.  When the Eric Bledsoe deal surfaced as a legitimate possibility last summer, McDonough asked Hornacek how he envisioned a Dragic/Bledsoe backcourt working out before pulling the trigger on the trade. McDonough, Hornacek and President of Basketball Operations Lon Babby were constantly and consistently on the same page since the trio joined forces last summer.

That’s not including the back-and-forth brainstorming and evaluating that needs to happen between scouts, coaches and upper management as the draft draws closer. Will a trade benefit in the short and long-term? How does a particular prospect’s workout and interview sessions compare/contrast with his work in college?

It’s a smorgasbord of business crammed into roughly a month.

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Lottery Will Finalize Assets, Start Offseason Clock

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