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The Phoenix Suns have made a trade. No, not that trade. Jimmy Butler remains a member of the Miami Heat for the time being, but even as the Suns continue to try to pry him away, they have managed to make a deal of another sort by acquiring Charlotte Hornets center Nick Richards along with a 2025 Denver Nuggets second-round pick for Josh Okogie and three second-round picks: two from the Nuggets (2026 and 2031) along with a Suns original (2031).

Is it the sort of Earth-shattering move that we expected the Suns to make in the buildup to the deadline? No, but it’s an interesting deal to address a major need with weeks of work still ahead of them. So let’s grade this deal for both the Suns and Hornets and try to figure out how Phoenix landed on this smaller trade, possibly ahead of a much bigger one they’d still presumably like to make.

Phoenix Suns: B+

On deadline day a season ago, the Dallas Mavericks held the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference. By June, they were in the NBA Finals. The trigger for their in-season turnaround were two deals that likely proved very informative for the Suns, and potentially the rest of the league. Dallas landed standout wing P.J. Washington from these very Hornets, and then they swiped center Daniel Gafford away from the Washington Wizards. Washington and Gafford were both bit players on tanking teams. But in Dallas? They turned into the players they were always meant to be, proving essential to an eventual Finals run.

In landing Richards, the Suns are likely hoping to emulate the outline of the Gafford trade. Take an extremely athletic center off of a dysfunctional team, put him on a better one, and watch him soar. They can say relatively confidently that the Hornets, like the Wizards a year ago, are such a team because they watched Washington break out the moment he left Charlotte. In an increasingly cost- and asset-obsessed NBA, paying market-price for a viable starting center was not tenable to a team as limited as the Suns are right now. They had to try to create their own. 

Richards has most of the tools they’re looking for. He’s going to catch lobs. He can actually move around a bit defensively, which Jusuf Nurkic can’t. Mike Budenholzer has turned far lesser athletes into elite rim-protectors. And most importantly here, Richards is cheap. That’s true in an asset sense, as Phoenix was able to acquire him without touching its last remaining tradable first-round pick (2031), but it is also true financially. The Suns are saving around $20 million in luxury taxes through this deal, according to Yossi Gozlan. They’ll now have Richards for a non-guaranteed $5 million next season. Not bad for a home run swing, especially when the player in question has already proven to be at least a viable backup.

But the doesn’t mean Richards is going to be for the Suns what Gafford was for the Mavericks. Gafford was two years younger than Richards at the time of their respective trades. There was also a pretty extensive statistical case that he was underrated as a Wizard. Gafford’s per-36 numbers were always enormous, he just struggled to stay on the court because he couldn’t stop fouling. The all-in-one metrics almost universally loved Gafford. He averaged .191 Win Shares per 48 minutes. For reference, Hakeem Olajuwon averaged .177 for his career. Gafford was a high-level player hiding in plain sight. Yes, his defensive effort improved substantially in Dallas and that has made an enormous difference. But there were signs that this could happen, and it’s worth noting that a lob-catcher couldn’t ask to land alongside a better teammate than Luka Doncic.

These “invisible star” factors aren’t really working in Richards’ favor, at least not to the same extent. The metrics are pretty split on him. His per-36 numbers, especially offensively, aren’t as enticing. He’s going to a significantly better offensive team than he had in Charlotte, but the Suns aren’t the Mavericks. Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal and/or eventually Jimmy Butler aren’t going to force-feed him lobs quite like Doncic has for Gafford. Phoenix clearly wants to get him the ball inside. The Suns take three fewer shots per game in the restricted area than any other team in basketball, so if Phoenix can work the ball into him for easy dunks off of the gravity his more famous teammates generate, they’d surely love to do so. They just don’t have a singular passing talent like Doncic to do it with. This trade is, in many ways, the poor man’s version of that Gafford deal. The outline looks the same. The principal is similar. It’s just a bit worse in almost every regard.

Now, that doesn’t mean this trade isn’t a win for the Suns. Frankly, finding those invisible stars isn’t easy, and even if the Suns could have identified a better one at center, they just don’t have the assets to get him. They’re saving that 2031 first-round pick for a possible Butler deal. Nothing else they had, short of Ryan Dunn who might also be needed for Butler, was going to get them a proven starter. And make no mistake, they need a starting level center in Phoenix and they needed one now. Nurkic is out of the rotation. Mason Plumlee likely would be if were on a roster less desperate. Rookie Oso Ighodaro looks good mostly by comparison. 

Taking a chance on Richards is the right idea, and the timing here works out. They’re not precluded from trading for another big man come Feb. 6. Now they have three weeks to see how Richards fits and decide how they’d like to proceed moving into the deadline. In a perfect world for the Suns, they get Butler. Let’s say they don’t. With a center now in place, they can try to attach Nurkic’s contract to that 2031 first-rounder to get a wing. If Richards doesn’t work out, they can take another chance on a center. Or if the season continues to fall off the rails as it has over the last few weeks, they can shrug, say they tried, and sit this deadline out with their 2031 first-round pick intact. For Josh Okogie and a couple of second-round picks, that’s valuable optionality for the Suns. Maybe they just filled their biggest need. Maybe they at least improved their bench. But even if they did neither, the cost was so low that this trade was absolutely worth making, so good job to the Suns for not only taking a nice swing, but doing so early enough in trade season to potentially make another one depending on how this one works out.

Charlotte Hornets: C

The Hornets have been playing three young centers this season: Richards, Mark Williams and Moussa Diabate. Now that Williams is healthy again, it really only made sense for them to divide their available minutes amongst two of them. Williams is the long-term starter, an even more imposing athlete than Richards and a rim-protector that has true All-Defense potential. Unless he’d gotten hurt again, his position in Charlotte was always relatively safe.

What ultimately forced this trade was the emergence of Diabate, a 2022 second-round pick who spent his first two seasons with the Clippers and came to Charlotte on a two-way deal. Though he doesn’t block too many shots, most statistical models peg Diabate as one of the best per-minute defensive reserves in the NBA. Opponents are shooting only 58.8% against him at the rim, per NBA.com tracking data. That number isn’t overwhelming in itself. We live in a world in which Victor Wembanyama can hover around 50%. But remember that we’re talking about the Hornets here. They aren’t exactly elite at the point of the attack. Yet when Diabate is in the game, they allow only 103.1 points per 100 possessions. That’s an elite figure. When he rests? That figure jumps to 116.3 points per 100 possessions. There are other factors involved here, but those numbers basically boil down to the difference between Diabate and Richards on defense. One of them has great tools but hasn’t produced. The other is just great, period. Estimated plus-minus ranks Diabate as a top-25 defender in the entire NBA this season. The Hornets clearly decided that giving him more minutes was a priority.

That put them in a difficult spot where Richards was concerned. They couldn’t pull him from the rotation entirely because doing so would tank his trade value. That meant that they had to make a trade as quickly as possible. Notably, today was the first day that Okogie was even eligible for a trade, so it seems they did just that.

Still, it’s worth wondering what they could have gotten if they’d just held out a little longer. Wouldn’t an offer that essentially amounted to two second-round picks have been out there on deadline day? Or even just in a week? Heck, you could even argue that it would have made sense for Charlotte just to keep Richards even if he wasn’t part of their long-term plans. Williams has really struggled with his health over the past two seasons, and Richards only has a non-guaranteed $5 million salary for next season. Why not keep all three big men and be prepared for injuries? If they’d gotten something substantial back for Richards, sure, make the deal. But they didn’t. Two second-round picks probably aren’t going to be game-changers, but Richards could have been potentially useful to them on the court or in a later trade if they’d held onto him.

So the logic of the deal makes sense. The execution just leaves a bit to be desired. Ultimately this was about gaining clarity at the center position. That’s valuable, but not valuable enough to warrant making a sub-optimal trade.