Stephon Marbury Trade Cleared $30 Million for Suns in 2004

Stephon Marbury and Anfernee Hardaway were both set to make $14.625 million in 2005, and the Phoenix Suns moved both contracts in 2004 to clear cap space. The deal stripped nearly $30 million from the books and pushed Phoenix just below the luxury tax threshold.

Marbury, Hardaway and the Suns

Marbury had made the All-NBA 3rd team as recently as 2003, so this was not a rebuild around spare parts. Hardaway was 32 and averaging 8.7 points in 26 minutes per game, yet the Suns still treated the pair as salary rather than core pieces when they made the trade.

Phoenix was 12-23 on January 5, 2004, and the roster churn that followed made the financial plan easy to see. Howard Eisley played 34 games before being waived in October 2004, Maciej Lampe played 37 games before being traded, and Antonio McDyess played 24 games before leaving in free agency.

Cap space over production

The Suns did not stay quiet after the trade. A month later, they moved Tom Gugliotta’s expiring $11.67 million contract, and the package going out included two first-round picks.

That sequence brought back Keon Clark and Ben Handlogten. Clark never played for Phoenix and was on a $5 million deal, while Handlogten, who made $366,000 in 2003-2004, was waived shortly after the trade.

One of the picks in the Gugliotta deal later became Gordon Hayward, showing how the Suns’ 2004 moves kept echoing beyond the season. In the short term, though, the target was clear: get below the tax line and save about $5 million.

Gugliotta and the tax line

Charlie Ward was waived once the Marbury trade was completed, and Milos Vujanic never came to the NBA. Those details round out the cost of the reset, which leaned on contracts and draft assets more than on players who stayed in Phoenix.