James Jones may no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt

I can admit when I was wrong. And I’m feeling kinda wrong on this one…

I’ve long been pounding the table, arguing that James Jones should not be the one carrying the blame for the Phoenix Suns’ unraveling since the Kevin Durant trade. My position is simple: the moves that gutted this team’s present and mortgaged its future weren’t truly his to own. Yes, Jones had the phone numbers of Brooklyn’s GM and Bradley Beal’s agent, who, incidentally, is the father of Suns CEO Josh Bartelstein, but the decisions weren’t his alone. These were owner-driven moves, executed at the behest of Mat Ishbia and his handpicked CEO. Jones may have been in the room, but he wasn’t steering the ship.

I keep going back to the team James Jones built, the one that reached the 2021 NBA Finals and followed it up with a franchise-record 64 wins. That wasn’t luck; it was vision.

Jones targeted an athletic big in the 2018 NBA Draft, brought stability to the point guard position with Ricky Rubio and then Chris Paul, and injected the roster with grit and edge by adding Jae Crowder. He drafted smart, defensive-minded wings like Mikal Bridges and added much-needed spacing with Cameron Johnson’s three-point shot. Sure, there were a few misses along the way — every GM has them — but the blueprint was clear, cohesive, and effective.

In the summer of 2022, James Jones had an opportunity to trade for Kevin Durant. But no deal was made, presumably because Brooklyn’s asking price was too steep: significant draft capital and virtually all of the Suns’ wing depth.

While it’s true that, under his watch, Jae Crowder chose to sit out due to tensions with Monty Williams, the larger point remains. Jones still held a vision that balanced short-term competitiveness with long-term sustainability. He resisted the temptation to overpay, keeping the core intact, a decision that, at the time, aligned with the franchise’s best interests.

Then Mat Ishbia entered the picture.

Just one day into his tenure as owner, the Suns went all-in, selling the farm to land Kevin Durant. Three months later, they doubled down, trading for Bradley Beal in a move that may go down as one of the worst transactions in franchise history. The result? Not a single playoff win since. A team that once had balance, depth, and identity was suddenly hollowed out in pursuit of star power, and the vision that once guided the Suns was lost in the noise of splashy headlines.

But again, I see this not as a general manager gone rogue, but as the byproduct of an owner whose influence overpowered the room. These weren’t the calculated, measured moves of James Jones, they were the bold strokes of an owner eager to make a statement.

Yet in today’s end-of-season press conference, CEO Josh Bartelstein painted a different picture, claiming that Mat Ishbia had no direct involvement in these transactions. Instead, he pointed to himself and Jones as the ones responsible.

Is this a CEO’s version of taking accountability for the owner, doing him a solid? Maybe. But if the basis of Bartelstein’s comments is true, then my perspective on the James Jones situation shifts. It challenges the narrative I’ve believed, that Jones was merely executing someone else’s vision.

If he truly co-signed the Durant and Beal trades without pressure from ownership, then accountability does land more squarely at his feet. It doesn’t erase the smart moves he made early in his tenure, but it does complicate his legacy. Vision only matters if you’re willing to stay true to it when the stakes are highest.

If that’s truly the case — if Mat Ishbia wasn’t the driving force behind these moves — then the level of incompetence of James Jones and Josh Bartelstein is staggering. I can forgive a GM who’s simply carrying out the wishes of an ambitious, overzealous owner. It’s a tough position, and sometimes survival means going along for the ride. But if this wasn’t about following orders, if this was about being given free rein and running wild with it, then real accountability has to follow.

They’ve torched the franchise’s future, and there’s no reason they should be trusted to make the decisions required to fix what they’ve already so thoroughly messed up. It’s one thing if the owner admits to forcing his hand into basketball operations, owning the all-in gamble on star power. But if Ishbia was merely signing the checks while Bartelstein and Jones were steering the ship, then the Suns have completely abandoned their original vision in record time.

In just two seasons, they’ve gone from a young, athletic, upward-trending contender to an old, expensive, joyless team with no clear identity. And now, because of those choices, they’re boxed in, forced to make more risky, short-sighted moves just to get back to even.

If this front office is truly behind those decisions, they’ve already proven they can’t effectively execute a long-term vision. And with a pivotal offseason looming, they shouldn’t be the ones leading the charge.

Shame on me for believing James Jones’s hands were clean in all of this. For thinking he was just a pawn in a larger game of survival. I always knew he played a part, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt because, before Ishbia, the Suns were on the right track. I assumed that after this disaster of a season, Ishbia would recognize the chaos and finally step back, allowing Jones to return to the vision that once worked.

But if Ishbia’s comments today are to be taken at face value, that he now feels the need to be more involved in shaping the team’s vision because his role in talent acquisition has been minimal, then this isn’t just a course correction we need. It’s a full rehaul. “Change,” Ishbia said. And for once, he’s right. Change is exactly what needs to happen.

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