Suns GM Ryan McDonough had some choice words about Goran Dragic's departure

By all accounts, the Phoenix Suns had a rough week. The franchise can walk away from Thursday’s trade deadline giddy at the idea of pairing new addition Brandon Knight with Eric Bledsoe, it can just as giddily rub its figurative hands together at the thought of taking in two first-round draft picks from what might be a terrible Miami Heat team in a few years, but by and large this was an embarrassing and destructive week.

Former guard Goran Dragic asked to be moved, he told reporters that he didn’t trust the team’s front office, and he was eventually sent to the Miami Heat in a move that convinced the well-versed Charles Barkley that the Heat were now one of three teams to beat in the Eastern Conference.

Many media outlets, even the ones aware of the leverage-less trading position Dragic (who is an unrestricted free agent this summer) put the Suns in, still felt lukewarm at best about Phoenix’s two massive trades on Thursday. As such, it was understandable that Suns general manager Ryan McDonough was a little brusque in his assessment of the outsiders’ reaction to his work.

From Paul Coro at AZCentral Sports:

There was more:

Free to now do his work with the 22-30 Heat, alongside a guard in Dwyane Wade who has never been known for dominating the ball or taking a lot of shots, Dragic went breezy on Thursday night:

Nobody looks great, here.

As Tom Ziller at SB Nation wondered on Thursday morning, in the hours between Dragic’s trade request and the move that eventually sent him to Miami, the parallels between Carmelo Anthony’s 2011 silent trade demand and Dragic’s very public assertion of his wishes were striking. Dragic is not the star that Anthony was and is, but he also demanded his way off a pretty good team (the 2010-11 Denver Nuggets won 50 games, Phoenix is on pace to win 45) in order to play for a squad with an inferior record by comparison.

Anthony and Dragic also managed to have their cake and eat it too – Anthony did and Dragic can use Bird Rights to re-sign to a mark far over the salary cap. Instead of the critical backlash that Anthony (who, again, never went public with his trade demands) faced, most in Dragic’s wake merely pointed to Phoenix’s repeated acquisitions of point guards before happily looking forward to Goran suiting up alongside Wade.

No athlete should just shut up and put up with their lot in life just because they get paid heaps of money to work at a game. It was just fine for Anthony to realize that his Nuggets had become too top-heavy, even though the Knick teams he starred on also became far too top-heavy with him on the roster, acquiring several former Nugget teammates along the way, as the Anthony-less Nuggets roared past the Knicks in the overall NBA standings.

Dragic’s Heat will have the same problem. When healthy (thinking about you, Mr. Bosh, please hang in there) Miami’s starting five is as good as anyone’s on paper. Beyond those starters, though, sits a woefully thin bench. And, as we snarked about above, Wade is going to have the ball quite a bit, Goran. That doesn’t make Wade or former Suns teammate Eric Bledsoe or Dragic selfish in the slightest, it’s just how it is. There are only so many possessions to move around.

The Suns swear that they got what they wanted, but that also shouldn’t preclude them from tossing out pointed comments like this in the wake of both the trade and the (slight) criticism. Again, most mindful media outlets were well aware of what the Suns were dealing with prior to the trade deadline, and credited them for bringing back a player in Knight (who is having a better year than Dragic, so far) and two future firsts.

Dragic and the Suns, loud and on record, appear to prefer their current surroundings to the ones that were in place on Thursday morning. We’ll see where this turns out.

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Kelly Dwyer

is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops

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