There’s a near-zero chance of this happening, but Phoenix should be a viable landing spot if LeBron wants to earn his actual max on an up-and-coming team with a smart new head coach who favors an exciting style of play.
The Suns have so much cap flexibility, they might be able to sign LeBron to the max, re-sign Eric Bledsoe at close to his (lower) max, and still have max-level cap room in the summer of 2015. They’re flush with extra first-round picks, meaning they’d have weapons to land another star player over the next couple of years.
In the short term, LeBron can take some of the ballhandling duties from Bledsoe and Goran Dragic, give the team the killer low-post threat it lacks on nights Markieff Morris’s midranger isn’t falling, and seal up a below-average defense. The Suns’ two most important rotation big men, Morris and Channing Frye, can shoot from the outside, giving LeBron free rein to occupy the post when he wants.
Having full access to one of the league’s best training staffs is a nice bonus for any player approaching 30 with nearly 28,000 minutes under his belt.
This is one of those ideas that won’t happen simply because it’s too far out of the box. Players don’t have a ton of affection for Robert Sarver, the team’s owner, a lockout hard-liner who went through a draft pick–selling spree in the mid-2000s. (In fairness, the Suns also paid a bit of tax during three separate seasons late in the Nash era.) But wouldn’t this be fun?