We’re all trying to find the guy who did this.
The Phoenix Suns have a new head coach and it is former Michigan State video coord– I mean, Cleveland Cavaliers assistant Jordan Ott, Arizona Sports’ John Gambadoro confirmed on Wednesday.
Subtle and not so subtle prods and digs like that one are a barrier Ott will have to break down over time. It is not fair to him. It is fair to owner Mat Ishbia.
Ishbia hired and severely promoted general manager Brian Gregory despite Gregory’s dramatic lack of experience working in not only the NBA but a front office in general. Their personal connection and roots going back to Michigan State played a vital role in Gregory getting the job. He admitted as much himself.
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Cavaliers assistant Jordan Ott to be named next Suns head coach
This already got the ball rolling on, “What’s next, Tom Izzo as head coach? A trade for Draymond Green?”
It is logical for Ishbia or any owner to naturally hire people he knows from his past, people he can trust that hold similar ideologies. It is troublesome for the like-mindedness, or in this case, alignment, to follow what is a clear response to tremendously disappointing seasons by shifting the way they do things.
Arizona Sports can confirm this is the case, as Ishbia sent a letter to members of the basketball operations staff on Wednesday regarding the changes coming, per a source with the team.
“Let me start with the most important point – the Phoenix Suns will do things very differently than most other NBA franchises,” Ishbia writes in the letter after stating he wants to be direct with staff on creating a culture of accountability.
“I will be extremely active in the decisions and management of this organization, on and off the floor,” he goes on to write. “While I won’t be reviewing film, designing offenses, or running the draft room, I will be deeply involved in ensuring that basketball operations, like every other area of our organization, is performing at the highest level.
“I’m aware that this approach is different from most other NBA franchises. I’m not the conventional NBA owner and I don’t want to be. I’ve tried running the typical NBA owner playbook – hiring the experts, signing the checks, and getting out of the way – and none of us were happy with the outcome. Making the playoffs two out of three years, and only winning one playoff series, is not good enough for this franchise and this community.”
Ishbia goes on to tout the success he has correctly already had on the business side of the organization before writing he will bring that same mindset to the basketball operations side.
As we have learned in just over two years of getting to know Ishbia, he is bold. And with all the narratives engulfing the perception of his tenure, those are bold statements and changes to undergo.
The fear with these changes is Ishbia and Gregory are not equipped to make basketball decisions without an obvious lean toward a certain style of thinking. Part of what made the partnership work between James Jones and Monty Williams is that they disagreed frequently. You cannot build a roster in one way with one list of boxes to check. You cannot build a successful franchise that way, either.
The good news for Suns fans is this is, in many ways, not the Gregory hiring all over again.
Gregory was vastly under-qualified for his position, while Ott has a resume at this point worthy of getting considered as a head coach. He was a finalist for the Charlotte Hornets job last summer, as an example of another organization seeing something in him to this degree.
Ott, as it turns out, got his start because of two things: the guy he is replacing (Mike Budenholzer) and the one thing he is known for locally (going to Michigan State). Budenholzer was the head coach of the Atlanta Hawks in 2013 and was sniffing around for a new video coordinator. He asked long-time NBA coach, Michigan local and two-time Michigan State assistant Jim Boylen if he knew of anyone with the Spartans, per Public Opinion’s Shawn Michael. Boylen recommended Ott and he got the job.
Ott grinded his way through film room duties from there, the same way that Budenholzer and former Suns head coach Frank Vogel did as well.
He held that position for three years until getting poached by the Brooklyn Nets to join Kenny Atkinson’s staff in 2016, remaining as an assistant coach when Phoenix Ring of Honor member Steve Nash took over in 2020, spending two more years with Brooklyn. Ott was Nash’s “offensive coordinator” before the Los Angeles Lakers hired him in 2022, offering him a more “prominent position,” per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Two years later, with Atkinson back in the fold as head coach in Cleveland, Ott rejoined him for this last season.
Ott’s background is heavily rooted in player development, an expected lean for Gregory’s first hire given that is where the GM’s focus had been in his limited time with the Suns. Ott was the coach alongside Cavaliers All-NBA honoree and Defensive Player of the Year Evan Mobley, who took another step forward this year under Ott’s tutelage. The 23-year-old is widely thought of as the future of the franchise in Cleveland, so it says something that Atkinson entrusted Ott with his progression.
That’s only one small piece of the puzzle, though. It’s reasonable to look at his time in Brooklyn as one where he was both valued enough to be kept through a head-coaching change and also stagnated enough to jump to the Lakers for a better opportunity. In Cleveland, he was not the right-hand man to Atkinson. That was associate head coach Johnnie Bryant, the other finalist for the job.
Ott will have to be a well-rounded coach upon entering Phoenix, because where two far more experienced and heralded head coaches failed is where Ott has to succeed.
To hopefully for the last time cite the motto of the 2023-25 run of the Suns, “for whatever reason” both Budenholzer and Vogel were unable to employ a recognizable style of play. That is putting the bar on the floor for Ott, so it’s an easy enough starting goal to accomplish.
It has to be one that accentuates the future roster and works in conjunction with what Gregory and Ishbia are seeking out. Most importantly, it has to be a perfect connection for how Booker wants to play and what gets the best out of him. For the last two seasons, Booker has suggested a desire to run with more pace. He should be fully enabled to do so and have his own intentions serve as leading by example, a crucial twofold pillar of the foundation Ott must implement.
It sounds like that is already off to a strong start. Gambadoro reported that Booker was involved in the interview process, asking candidates about certain basketball philosophies, and that Ott was his top choice. Good on the Suns for that after whiffing on Kevin Young two years prior.
This only works if Booker is engaged all season. He and Kevin Durant both mentally disengaged far too often in the first half of both seasons, particularly on defense, which never let Phoenix properly plant its feet to establish itself. 1A and 1B for what Ott needs to accomplish right away is giving the Suns an identity and connecting with Booker to get the best out of him.
Ishbia and his staff missed consecutive years on finding a voice that the locker room would respect. The players can deny that being the case and say they respected both Budenholzer and Vogel but their effort on the floor told the truth. And again, who knows if anyone would have carried that gravity as the top dog or if even Gregg Popovich would have been doomed. Regardless, the front office cannot swing and miss yet again on this.
Ott can be told by the Suns front office everything it wholeheartedly believes about what it will accomplish this offseason in terms of the roster and he should still expect to not have a good idea of what he will be working with. It will be Booker. Beyond the face of the franchise, though, who knows? Durant is gone, and the hesitancy in reporting the concrete nature of his departure is just reporters understandably making sure they’re right on this. The same fate is there for Beal, although the matter of how they get rid of him remains to be seen.
What Ott will have one way or another is a younger and more athletic roster than the previous two Phoenix had and that’s where his player development background must shine.
This was not the most conventional head-coaching search, one that went through four separate rounds of interviews. Phoenix had the only opening the entire offseason, as a few other teams had interims retaining the job, so patience was all well and good. It also feels a bit corporate, a nod to the way Ishbia does things at his day job with United Wholesale Mortgage.
It feels like we’re headed for a lot of “in addition” and “we should mention” tidbits over the next handful of years when it comes to irregular forces at play that could be contributing to the Suns’ ineptitude.
We should mention that both of these finalists came from the franchise owned by Dan Gilbert, a fellow mortgage business owner from Michigan who developed into Ishbia’s rival. The label “mortal enemy” feels quite extreme in any unscripted, real-life scenario but these two dudes genuinely do not like each other.
On top of all the history they had coming into this new NBA chapter, Gilbert was the only owner to abstain from voting in the league’s board of governors approval for Ishbia’s ownership of the Suns, a hilariously petty maneuver. Rocket Mortgage, Gilbert’s company, had a sponsorship deal with the Suns at that time before it was ended ahead of schedule by Phoenix, per ESPN. Just as hilarious and petty.
Gilbert doesn’t even refer to Ishbia by name, instead as the “guy in Phoenix.” That’s the type of honestly childish level this reaches, so you would hope there was not even any slim iota of this being related to Ishbia getting one up on the guy in Cleveland. Of all organizations, the Suns are not in a position to being passengers to that type of nonsense.
In addition, did the Suns really get their guy? Phoenix in the past has been victim of getting declined by premium head-coaching candidates. Budenholzer himself shot down former owner Robert Sarver years ago, as did current assistant David Fizdale before Igor Kokoskov was hired in 2018.
The timing of the New York Knicks firing Tom Thibodeau on Tuesday, the day Phoenix was interviewing Thibodeau’s former associate head coach Johnnie Bryant in New York, is curious. Bryant was flat-out the better candidate, one with a stronger player development track record and more defined rise through the ranks. Did he get a call from the East Coast and switch up? Was Miami Heat assistant Chris Quinn down after getting the majority of the buzz through most of this process?
Again, these tidbits and curiosities will now be a cloud hanging over the Suns’ head, one Ishbia placed when hiring Gregory.
The overarching question here is, if Ishbia and Gregory truly believed that Ott was the best guy for the job, should they have still hired him knowing what the ensuing reaction would be and how it would make the organization look? Fully knowing the mix of doubt and dread with this Michigan tapestry?
That depends on if you think this is putting Ott in a position to fail. It does not matter what the outside voices say on this. The problem is if those voices become internal, or already are. If the belief of the fanbase and media extends to the Suns’ own building. How about even their own locker room?
The non-zero chance of that existing right now gives us our answer.
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