Jalen Green was supposed to be the centerpiece. Fifteen months after the Kevin Durant trade, he is the name that keeps turning up in Phoenix trade speculation, and it is not hard to see why.
Green has two years and $72.3 million left on his contract. He turns 25 in February. And last season he gave the Suns 32 games, because hamstring trouble ate most of the year.
The numbers are the argument
When he played, Green averaged 17.8 points, 3.6 rebounds and 2.8 assists while shooting 42.2 percent from the field and 31.3 percent from three, with an assist-to-turnover ratio barely above 1-to-1. Phoenix went 17-15 with him available. The Suns finished 45-37, grabbed the No. 8 seed and got bounced in the first round by Oklahoma City.
The lineup data is less kind than the box score. Phoenix posted a plus-8.7 net rating with Collin Gillespie next to Devin Booker, and just plus-2.8 with Booker and Green together. That gap is the entire conversation. Two high-usage guards who both want to create, neither of whom reliably punishes a defense from the corner, is a hard way to build an offense.
He arrived in June 2025 as the headline piece of the Durant deal, alongside Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 pick and five future second-rounders. In his final Houston season he averaged 21.0 points. The talent is not in question. The shot profile and the availability are.
Phoenix has a touch problem
Second-year coach Jordan Ott has to divide shots between Booker, who took 18.7 per game last season, Brooks at 17.1 and new addition Miles Bridges at 13.5. Add Green, who has never been a low-usage player in his life, and someone is eating.
Booker is not the one getting squeezed. He signed a two-year, $145 million extension that briefly made him the highest annually paid player in the league. Phoenix built the roster around him and paid for the privilege.
So yes, move Green. Not out of panic, and not for scraps, but because the fit has been tested for a full season and it did not work. The Nets, Clippers and Mavericks have all been floated as landing spots, and each has a reason to take a swing on a 24-year-old with two years left and real scoring pop.
What Phoenix can actually get
Here is where the Suns need to be realistic. Nobody is trading an All-Star for a guard coming off a 32-game season with a sub-52 true shooting percentage. The mock trades floating around involving $200 million players are fantasy.
The realistic return is a starting-caliber big or a two-way wing on a comparable salary, plus one lightly protected first-round pick. That is it. If Phoenix wants more, it has to wait, let Green play 40 healthy games and re-enter the market at the deadline with a better sample.
That is the smart play: hold through the fall, let him rebuild value, and deal him in February rather than taking a discount now. The worst version of this is Phoenix hanging on through the summer of 2027, watching the contract shrink to an expiring, and getting nothing for a player it once considered the future.
Green is good enough to help a team. He is just not good enough to justify bending the rest of this roster around him, and Phoenix has already spent a season proving that.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.