Since Kurt Thomas was traded to Seattle and the “8 million trade exception” won’t be used anyway the Suns have been looking to sign the missing big man.

I believe, no better, “I personally believe” that the Suns, or at least Steve Kerr, had a plan A in mind and that was signing P.J. Brown thinking that he could have been the player making the - or at least some - difference in the playoffs. P.J. will not come because he’s probably still unwilling to commit and would be too expensive anyway.

The Suns front office has some sort of luxury tax obsession (I know it’s our team, but it’s their money). So, Suns’ GM has probably moved to plan B, which is signing the best available big man thinking that he might contribute some minutes but will hardly make any difference in the clutch games of May, when someone will have to guard Tim Duncan.

In order to do so Big Man Auditions have been going on over the last few days.
Nice reports on those can be found on the Valley’s newspapers (check The Republic or the East Valley Tribune) as the Suns have hosted workouts of Michael Ruffin, Vitaly Potapenko, Elton Brown, Brian Skinner and Esteban Batista. The best of the lot, at least the most promising signing was Brown who had a very good D-League season last year (13 ppg, 10 rpg) and was quickly signed by the Lakers. Right now it seems like Potapenko - as slow as they come, at least to Suns’ standards, but a polished player on both side of the ball - and Skinner - can play defense but can’t add much on offense - are the favourites to get an offer. Skinner should be in camp as the Suns opens the new pre-season anyway.

The Suns currently have 12 players on their roster, they will sign a 13th player and possibly invite 2-3 more to training camp.

Sometimes one gets mixed feelings. On the one hand it seems like the Suns ownership are actually more interested in the business side of the game, like the “no more luxury tax” credo; on the other hand it’s better not to forget this Suns team can win it all as it is right now and last year was proof of that.

We’ll see…training camp is approaching fast in Planet Orange. “Ground Control to Major Steve, Can you hear me Major Steve?”

Yours truly, Steve Fan

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