Are the Phoenix Suns the favorite to win the 2023-24 NBA championship after swinging yet another blockbuster trade, this time for star shooting guard Bradley Beal? Not quite yet. They certainly have a ton of glaring holes on their roster at the moment that they may not have the financial might to fill with the requisite quality to dethrone the Denver Nuggets.

And given the team's struggles to surround the Kevin Durant and Devin Booker-led squad with the necessary depth to compete for a championship last season, it's certainly a marvel that they decided to go for Beal. This trade, despite it being a huge win for the Suns, puts them in a financial bind. They have now committed around $162 million to just four players alone, and four players a team don't make.

Nevertheless, as Brian Windhorst of ESPN explained, there might not have been a better time for the Suns to go all-in and, perhaps, build the NBA's last version of a superteam with the new CBA rules set to take effect soon.

“The more the Suns looked at it, sources said, the more they came to an understanding that if they were going to pierce the second apron, it was better to explode right through it,” Windhorst wrote. “If they just crept over the line, as they were sure to flirt with anyway based on their roster's current salaries, it would have been challenging.”

“But if they just went all-in and went way over, their situation might be workable. Go barely over the line, the Suns believed, and it would be hard to make moves in the future. Go way over the line by adding all the talent they could now, and it opens up some options.”

The Suns did not have much avenues available to them to improve the roster anyway. This was why the Suns had already planned to waive Chris Paul, as improving the roster appears to necessitate a drastic move such as that one.

But instead, the drastic move the Suns went with was to buy low on a three-time All-Star in Bradley Beal on a trade with a team that had no leverage seeing as it gave the 29-year old shooting guard all the leverage in the world.

Only time will tell if the Suns would be better off having dealt Chris Paul for more depth or waived him for financial relief than by locking themselves to an expensive core led by three players who have a bit of overlap in their games.