Mat Ishbia does everything fast. That includes falling from grace.
Has the perception and popularity of a sports owner ever plummeted so quickly?
It isn’t just the shocking transformation of our beloved NBA franchise into the Phoenix SpartSuns, where he made a general manager out of a Michigan State pal with zero experience in a front office role; and then hired a rookie head coach spawned in the Michigan State video room.
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It’s the internal memo he sent to basketball operations on Wednesday that was so absurd it was promptly leaked to the local media.
Ishbia tells his staff that the Suns “will do things very differently than most other NBA franchises.” He says he will be “extremely active in the decisions and management of this organization, on and off the floor.” He says he’s “not the conventional NBA owner and I don’t want to be.” And for the kicker, he said he “tried running the typical NBA owner playbook – hiring experts, signing the checks and getting out of the way – and none of us were happy with the results.”
In professional sports, it’s a really bad idea to act like you know more than everyone else. Especially if you’re new to the industry. The highest performers and the best teams take great pride in their craft and their attention to details and the steep rungs they have climbed. They will take great offense at such reckless bravado.
In a realm where athletes and coaches are always looking for fuel and edge and whiteboard material, this attempt to stamp a college ethos on an NBA team has just put a giant target on the Suns’ collective back. Just like Ray Anderson and Herm Edwards did with the installation of a professional model at Arizona State.
There is also a civic trust that has been violated. When Ishbia purchased the Suns from Robert Sarver, there was a giant sigh of relief on Planet Orange. I said it was possibly the greatest reprieve a sports town has ever received. And when Ishbia started throwing money around, acquiring Kevin Durant in a blockbuster trade, lowering concession prices and putting the Suns on free TV, his honeymoon reached an apex that most owners dream about. He was the anti-Sarver, and Arizona’s savior.
Now, many Suns fans are livid. They believe Ott was the handpicked choice all along, that the extensive head coaching search was performative nonsense. They don’t believe Ishbia when he claims he wasn’t overly involved in the past, that he signed checks and got out of the way. We all know James Jones didn’t want to trade the farm for Durant. We all know he’d never willingly trade for Bradley Beal and his poison pill no-trade clause. This attempt to distance himself from the failure of the previous two seasons by inserting himself deeper into the story is troubling. So is the gaslighting.
Questions remain. Was Ott really their first choice? Or did the current state of the Suns scare off the best candidates? And if Johnnie Bryant becomes the next head coach of the Knicks – a candidate with a far superior resume – a deeper conversation will be necessary.
It’s all grossly unfair to Ott, who has far more credentials as a head coach than Brian Gregory does as a general manager. He is not a shot in the dark or a wild swing for the fences. He has worked his way up from the ground floor, just like Frank Vogel did. The Suns are not the first team to interview Ott for a head coaching vacancy, and he seems well respected in league circles. But he is a Spartan.
To Ishbia, that is a badge of honor, the key to unlocking the code. To the rest of us, it has become a stigma and a source of mockery. Pray he’s right and we’re wrong.
Reach Bickley at dbickley@arizonasports.com. Listen to Bickley & Marotta weekdays from 6 a.m. – 10 a.m. on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station.
Follow @danbickley
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