The Phoenix Suns on Monday fired Mike Budenholzer, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania.
He marks the third Suns head coach fired in the two-plus seasons since owner Mat Ishbia took over.
It comes as the Suns took a step back for the third consecutive season, with a 36-46 record and missing the play-in and playoff rounds.
And it signals that more changes could be coming after a report of Budenholzer not seeing eye-to-eye with star Devin Booker followed by Phoenix nearly pulling off a trade that would have sent Kevin Durant to the Golden State Warriors at the Feb. 6 deadline.
Last season under then-coach Frank Vogel, the team finished with the No. 6 seed and 49 wins but suffered a first-round playoff series loss in a sweep to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
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In 2022-23, Monty Williams had the Suns finishing as the No. 4 seed before a midseason trade of Kevin Durant shook things up. The year ended with a six-game series loss in the second round of the playoffs to the eventual-champion Denver Nuggets.
Phoenix hired Budenholzer, a Holbrook, Arizona, native, with his resume boasting a 2021 NBA Finals win over the Suns when he was coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.
But like it was under Vogel, a team made up of perimeter aces Booker, Durant and Bradley Beal went south. After a promising 9-2 start, injuries and poor attention to details hampered the Suns.
So did fragmenting relationships. In early January, the Suns sent Beal and center Jusuf Nurkic to the bench. While Beal used the moment to remind everyone that his no-trade clause in his contract gave him any final say as reports surfaced Phoenix wanted to deal him as it eyed a trade for disgruntled Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler, Nurkic more blatantly hinted at a rift with Budenholzer.
Nurkic ultimately was shifted out of the rotation entirely before being traded for center Nick Richards at the deadline.
From February on, Phoenix had the worst defensive rating in the NBA, ranking bottom-five for the entire season. A clear lack of effort and engagement was ever-present from that point on, something that even showed up in spurts prior to that massive drop-off point. Rebounding, transition defense and turnovers crippled Phoenix in nearly every loss.
While Budenholzer undoubtedly tried his best to motivate the team behind the scenes, he rarely spoke publicly on the massive negatives surrounding his team’s play, instead spinning nearly every answer to an optimistic tone.
What was Mike Budenholzer’s resume before joining the Suns?
Budenholzer, 55, did not coach last season. It was his first time away from a bench since 1996, when he first joined the San Antonio Spurs’ coaching staff under Gregg Popovich.
He served the two seasons before that as a video coordinator. Budenholzer held an assistant position in San Antonio for 17 years before the Atlanta Hawks hired him as coach in 2013.
Atlanta won 60 games in Budenholzer’s second season, and he earned his first of two NBA Coach of the Year honors.
The Hawks made it to the Eastern Conference Finals that 2014-15 season, where it was swept by LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers. That would happen again the following year after 48 wins, this time in the second round.
A 43-39 campaign in the 2016-17 season came with another first-round exit, and by then, most of the roster’s core was moving on. Atlanta’s rebuild got underway the next year, with a 24-58 record in 2017-18.
Two weeks later, the Bucks hired Budenholzer. He took the high-profile job to untap Giannis Antetokounmpo’s full potential and win a championship with one of the NBA’s next superstars in the way his predecessor Jason Kidd could not.
Budenholzer pulled that off. The Bucks won 60 games during the 2018-19 season, returning to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 2001.
Budenholzer won his second Coach of the Year award, and Antetokounmpo got his first Most Valuable Player award. The bubble did not treat the Bucks too kindly. Despite going 56-17, they were beaten in six games by the Miami Heat in the second round.
Year 3 is when it all came together. Milwaukee acquired Jrue Holiday, making the Bucks the preseason favorites to win the Eastern Conference.
They did, getting by their top competition in the Brooklyn Nets across a seven-game thriller of the second round that ended with Durant’s infamous “toe on the line” shot that could have changed a whole lot for not only the Bucks and the Nets but the Suns as well.
Milwaukee went on to face the Suns in the NBA Finals, a tremendous six-game series that saw the Bucks come out on top.
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