Embarrassing. Awful. A failure.
That’s the best way Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia could sum up his team’s slog to a 36-46 finish this past season.
As for how he and the team dig themselves out of their current hole? It starts at the top.
“I watch every game like you guys do. No one’s proud of it, no one’s happy with it. … Everyone’s disappointed,” he told reporters on Thursday. “It was a failure we struggled. We didn’t do a good enough job and we gotta do stuff differently and change to be better. There’s no running from that.
“It wasn’t fun to watch our team lose and not compete at the level that we all expected. … Not happy with the season. With that being said, we’re going to make some changes. As the owner, my job is to make those changes and do things differently. Because what we just tried and did over the last 2.5 years has not been as successful as we hoped.”
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Ishbia hasn’t wasted time enacting change this offseason.
Following the Suns’ season finale loss to the Sacramento Kings, Ishbia and the team acted swiftly in firing head coach Mike Budenholzer just one year into his tenure.
He marks the third Suns head coach fired in as many seasons.
The changes aren’t stopping there, either.
On top of a new head coach, Phoenix must also decide on what it wants to do in regard to Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal.
While Durant turned in a strong season, though missed out on potential All-NBA honors due to missed games, all signs point to the two sides working on getting the future Hall of Famer off the roster.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, there was mutual interest between Durant and five teams during last year’s NBA trade deadline. Charania expects them all to be in the mix this offseason.
That includes the Houston Rockets, depending on how their playoff run goes. If Houston gets bounced early, Charania told NBA on ESPN that the Rockets should be a team to monitor when it comes to Durant.
And while president of basketball operations and general manager James Jones told reporters that nothing has changed with his view of the star, the GM understands everything must be looked out given how poorly the season went.
“The fact that we aren’t what we want to be from a winning perspective means we have to look at everything,” Jones said. “A lot of changes that we make will be in the best interest of the team and we evaluate all those things.”
Then there’s the Bradley Beal situation.
Dealing with a benching and injuries last year, Beal has yet to live up to the price tag the Suns paid for the guard via trade in 2023.
But with a no-trade clause, getting him off the roster is going to take some work.
One way would be through waiving and stretching the guard, though as ESPN’s Bobby Marks told Arizona Sports’ Bickley & Marotta earlier this month, Beal would have to agree to a buyout to make it work.
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