After nearly a month on the open market, Tyus Jones has officially found his next NBA team in the Phoenix Suns, who signed the veteran point guard to a one-year, $3.3 million contract that truly shocked fans across the NBA.
Now, for fans of the Suns, this was the best mid-summer surprise they could imagine, as Phoenix was somehow able to secure a starting-caliber player without so much as a mid-level exception to play with, even if they had to promise the 28-year-old a starting spot to secure his services. But one team's treasure is every other team's mistaken non-signing, with fans of seemingly all 29 other NBA teams coming out of the woodwork to complain that their GM didn't secure Jones' services.
Are some of these fanbases overreacting? Sure, but there are a few who should be genuinely upset about losing out on Jones, as he would have been an ideal fit with their respective team.
3 teams that should have signed Tyus Jones
1. Los Angeles Lakers
When news broke that Tyus Jones had agreed to a one-year, $3.3 million contract with the Suns, the one fanbase that immediately took to social media to air out their disgust with the situation was the Los Angeles Lakers, who haven't done much of anything in free agency thus far.
Now on paper, some may argue that a point guard like Jones might not have been the ideal addition to the Lakers, as he's one of the smaller point guards in the NBA, position un-versatile, and would force the team to shuffle around their starting five should they have retained the rest of their rotation. Then again, Jones is absolutely a playoff-caliber performer who could have helped to make LeBron James and Anthony Davis' lives easier, all the while freeing up the potential to reshape the roster even further with subsequent trades.
Would the Lakers look better today with Jones and, say, Jerami Grant – who, for better or worse, has been linked to the team repeatedly – if they could swap out D'Angelo Russell in a three-team trade that also includes a team like the Brooklyn Nets, who reportedly would like to reunite with D-Lo? Debatable, but unfortunately, that option is no longer on the table.
2. Miami Heat
If Lakers fans were the most disappointed fanbase in the NBA after the Tyus Jones news broke, the second-most discouraged collection of supporters has to belong to the Miami Heat, who, like LA, is darn disappointed with how their offseason is shaking out.
Much like the Lakers, the Heat do technically have a point guard in Terry Rozier, who they traded for last season in a PG swap with the Charlotte Hornets involving Kyle Lowry, but after losing Caleb Martin in a situation best described as a contractual snafu, the team could seriously use another top-8 player to fill out the roster, especially one who can run the offense, moving forward. With little money to spend but a serious need to get better, adding Jones for under $4 million could have presented the Heat with an easy way to do just that and more.
While Jones is a tad undersized for the position at 6-foot, 196 pounds, he is coming off the best season of his professional career, scoring 12 points and 7.3 assists per game while shooting 48.9 percent from the field and 41.4 percent from 3 on solid volume. Play him alongside Tyler Hero, Josh Richardson, or even Rozier in the starting five, rotate him onto the court whenever Jimmy Butler needs a break, no matter how the Heat decided to use him, Jones felt like a perfect fit with the Heat and his presence will be missed as a result.
3. Washington Wizards
Of all the teams in the NBA seemingly in the market for a starting point guard, the team who knew Tyus Jones best of all was the team that could have theoretically brought him back at a much higher value than $3.3 million: the Washington Wizards.
Originally acquiring Jones from the Memphis Grizzlies last season after the former first-round pick out of Duke turned in a fantastic run in place of Ja Morant in the starting lineup, the veteran point guard seemingly found a home in the nation's capital, hitting new career highs virtually across the board while helping to make life easier for young players like Bilal Coulibaly.
With Alexandre Sarr now in place as the Wizards' new face of the franchise, Jones seemingly could have been even more valuable for the Wizards this season and likely would have drawn a contract worth four-to-six times as much as he will earn from the Phoenix Suns; unfortunately, it just wasn't meant to be, even if the pairing was arguably the best in the NBA considering the financial circumstances teams are facing around the association.
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