The feeling around the league is generally this: Zoran Dragic might be a player, but really the Phoenix Suns wanted to increase their odds of keeping his quality point guard brother Goran Dragic — who is a free agent next summer — and so they went out and signed the brother. Make the guy you want to keep comfortable.
Goran wants you to know he didn’t pressure the Suns to make this move.
He told Joel Brigham of Basketball Insiders that the move to make Zoran a Sun was a surprise to him.
“To be honest I never mentioned my brother (to GM Ryan McDonough),” Goran said. “This summer when we played the World Cup (both played for Slovenia), Ryan was in Barcelona and he called me. He wanted to take me to dinner and asked if I could bring my brother, so I didn’t know anything. I thought he was being polite.
“When we went to the restaurant he started asking questions to Zoran and I was like, what is going on? Then I heard all the rumors coming out on the internet, and I started thinking maybe this could happen.”
Zoran concurred.
Goran Dragic is averaging 14.6 points and 3.1 assist a game to help lead the 9-6 Suns (although he was on the bench in the fourth quarter of the Suns loss to the Raptors Monday when coach Jeff Hornacek rode the bench that got them back in the game). Zoran has played in exactly one game.
Which is to say, maybe the brothers weren’t in on it but it doesn’t mean the Suns didn’t bring in Zoran to help them keep Goran.
