Dear Eric Bledsoe: Come Home

“I Dont wanna be here”

“Come back home bro”

Two tweets, totaling nine words that, when put in context, demonstrate one thing: it’s time for Eric Bledsoe to come home, back to his original NBA team, the L.A. Clippers.

Things aren’t going great in Phoenix for the Suns. They’ve only won a combined 47 games over the last two seasons, and their 2017-18 campaign started out with a 48-point loss to the Portland Trail Blazers in their home opener. After a lowly loss to the Los Angeles Lakers last week, they fell again by more than 40 points to the Clippers on Saturday. This resulted in Earl Watson being fired as head coach yesterday—one of the earliest firings of a head coach in NBA history.

The Suns currently sit at 0-3, with the worst point differential through three games of NBA history. And, upon hearing that Watson had been fired, Eric Bledsoe—the Suns’ highest-paid star, and likely their best two-way player—tweeted the above quote: “I Dont wanna be here.”

Eric Bledsoe is a good player, and the Suns are a bad team. He’s not enjoying himself there, and the Suns don’t especially have any reason to hang on to a soon-to-be 28-year-old since their timeline is built around 19-and-20-year-olds.

They should trade him—and it looks like they will. According to ESPN’s Chris Hayes, the Suns sent Bledsoe home ahead of their game tonight against the Sacramento Kings. This seems to suggest that a trade is both imminent and inevitable.

Following Bledsoe’s original tweet yesterday, DeAndre Jordan sent out a not-so-subtle tweet directing him back to the Clippers:

Bledsoe played the first three seasons of his career as a teammate of Jordan on the Clippers, averaging 7 points, 3 assists, and 3 rebounds in 20 minutes per game as a backup. His energy and athleticism quickly made him a fan favorite, but he was a casualty of the Chris Paul trade—the Clippers didn’t want to commit big money to two point guards, so they traded Bledsoe for J.J. Redick before they would have had to face a big-money extension.

In the four years since, Bledsoe has averaged 19 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists for the Phoenix Suns. With Chris Paul no longer on the Clippers, and the team employing an ensemble cast of guards all sharing facilitation duties, Bledsoe would be a really intriguing, exciting fit. He’d also inject a spark of energy to the starting lineup of a team that just lost new starter Milos Teodosic to a long-term left foot injury.

The Clippers, unfortunately, don’t seem to have much of a chance at Bledsoe. They don’t have a ton to offer the Suns in terms of high-potential prospects or valuable draft picks, and the base of any package would likely be Austin Rivers—a solid player, but an inferior guard to Bledsoe. While Eric’s value is artificially lowered by his current troubled standing with the Suns, it still seems likely that plenty of teams with a greater need for a guard than the Clippers would also be able to offer a better package.

Still, if it can be swung, it would be really nice to see Eric Bledsoe come home. If there’s anything you can do to make it happen, Eric, come back to us.