Phoenix Suns ownership signals a retooling, not a rebuild, is coming

Suns owner Mat Ishbia opens up about the team’s struggles, this season’s costly failures, and what comes next.

One day, we’ll look back at the 2024–25 Phoenix Suns season and reflect on what it truly felt like to witness this slow-burning dumpster fire. A season that once shimmered with promise has crumbled, piece by piece, on every conceivable level.

Player cohesion? Fractured. Effort? Inconsistent. Compatibility? A theory, never a reality. Coaching? A revolving door of questionable decisions, flawed schematics, and a lack of accountability. And then there’s ownership — the architects of this grand illusion — constructing a roster that is both the most expensive in NBA history and, somehow, teetering just 2.5 games from the 10th seed.

Even Mat Ishbia, the man behind it all, acknowledged the staggering financial weight of this failure in a recent interview with ESPN’s Tim MacMahon.

“I don’t have the answer,” Ishbia told ESPN. “If I had the answer, I’d fix it right now.”

“It’s been a really disappointing year. Very disappointed,” Ishbia said. “There’s not a person in the organization that doesn’t feel that way. We had high expectations. We felt really good about where going into the season and we’ve not met any of those expectations. We’ve been well below what we all expected, and it’s not anything close.”

I appreciate the accountability, the self-awareness. Gone are the hollow declarations that 26 of 29 general managers would envy the Suns’ position. In their place, a sobering truth: this team is underperforming. And maybe the gravity of that reality is finally sinking in.

For over a month, the Suns have wobbled on the edge, teetering between hope and collapse. But time is running out. The games on the schedule dwindle, and with them, the luxury of optimism. You can’t keep assuring people that everything will be fine, that there’s always a next time. Soon, next time won’t exist. And when that moment arrives, there will be no more excuses. Only decisions.

“I still believe in our team. I still believe in Coach Budenholzer,” the Suns’ owner stated. “I believe in the guys we have. And at the same time, at the end of the season, if we don’t get to where we expect to get to, I’ll have enough data and evidence that it didn’t work or it did work. And then we’ll make decisions based on that.”

Well, I’m glad one of us believes in Bud. Because, as Bob Dylan once penned, “It’s ain’t me, babe.”

The looming question now is whether the Suns have the stomach to continue this Big Three experiment. I’m sure Bud does. He’s always talking about his “gut feeling” and whatnot. And if the early signals are any indication, the answer is trending toward “no.” Devin Booker is the constant, the franchise pillar. But the futures of Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal? Uncertain at best.

What’s becoming painfully clear — even to the most casual Suns fan — is that moving Beal won’t be easy. His no-trade clause is an anchor, a rare contractual safeguard that keeps him in control. The Suns can have all the honest, candid, and vulnerable conversations they want, but at the end of the day, Beal holds the keys. He’s the one who decides if the car leaves the garage, if it makes its way to the airport, if Phoenix is just a stop along the way or his final destination. The front office can’t ship him out without his blessing.

But one thing feels certain: Devin Booker isn’t going anywhere.

Per MacMahon:

According to Ishbia, a “pivot and reload” around Booker could be the direction the franchise chooses this summer. The futures of Beal and Durant in Phoenix are uncertain after the Suns engaged in trade discussions involving them before this year’s deadline. The belief within the front office is that the Suns aren’t as far away from contending as the standings indicate.

“So here’s what I’ll tell you,” Ishbia stated. “I have Devin Booker in the prime. In order to win an NBA championship, you got to have a superstar. You got to have a great player.”

Yassss. Those eager to tear this down seem to believe you can simply draft another Devin Booker as if franchise cornerstones grow on trees. Have they already forgotten the TJ Warrens of the world? The Alex Lens? The Chrisses, Jacksons, and Benders? Hitting reset isn’t a quick fix; it’s a slow, grueling process filled with more misses than miracles. Why trade away an All-NBA talent in the hopes of developing one six years down the line?

And Booker? He’s loyal. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to some, but it does to me. I’m an old-school fan, one who values continuity, the rare feeling of rooting for a player who’s as committed to the city as the fans are to him.

“I take pride in the community in Phoenix, the people that have supported me since I was 18 when things were ugly,” Devin Booker commented. “And the people that are with us, we just fell short of accomplishing what we want. So I want to do it, and I want to do it here.

“That’s the responsibility of being a franchise player, and I wear that with honor,” he added. “So it might not look the most pretty right now, but we got to get it done and I’m going to do it.”

So there will be no “blow it up” concept this summer. Sorry, NBA2K GM’s.

I’ve held off on sharing my definitive take on what the Suns should do this offseason, largely because there’s still so much of the season left. While others have already started throwing hypothetical trades into the wind — speculating on what the Suns could get for Devin Booker or Kevin Durant — I’ve been hesitant to engage.

Part of that is practical. This season is going to end early, and we’ll have two long months to dissect every possible path forward. There’s no urgency in fantasizing about moves that are, at minimum, three months away from materializing. But the other reason I’ve hesitated? I’m not entirely sure where I land yet.

That said, since it’s all anyone seems to be talking about, I’ll put this out there: I have two ways of looking at it. What I want to happen and what I think will happen.

What I want is simple. Trade Bradley Beal. Keep Devin Booker and Kevin Durant. Let your two elite shot-makers exist in a system built to maximize their strengths instead of forcing them to share the floor with a $50+ million redundancy. Use that freed-up money wisely. Get under the tax aprons, add a $20+ million player who can actually address the Suns’ glaring weaknesses in defense and rebounding, and create the flexibility to make moves at the trade deadline or in the buyout market, something this team was handcuffed from doing this year.

What do I think will happen? Beal will stay because his no-trade clause makes moving him a near-impossible task. And Durant? He’ll be the one to go.

There’s one thing I can’t get behind in any capacity: blowing this thing up.

I know plenty of people are on Team Blow It Up but I’m adamantly against it. This isn’t the time for a reset. And for those pointing at the Oklahoma City Thunder as the blueprint, let’s be clear: OKC is the exception, not the rule. They nailed their draft picks, got lucky with talent development, and had the patience to endure years of irrelevance. Oh, and they lucked into an MVP candidate. That’s not a formula. It’s a lottery ticket that hit.

And if you’re looking at the Cleveland Cavaliers post-LeBron and Kyrie as proof that a teardown works, I’ve got news for you: that was a seven-year rebuild. Sorry, but I’m not interested in spending the next decade watching a revolving door of mid-tier lottery picks, praying that one of them turns into something special.

Based on Tim MacMahon’s piece on ESPN, it seems Mat Ishbia and the Suns are thinking along the same lines.

“It’s surprising to me that other people, other fans, they actually like the rebuild process,” Ishbia said. “Like, ‘Oh, let’s rebuild it.’ Are you crazy?! You think I’m going to go for seven years and try to get there? You enjoy the 2030 draft picks that we have holding? I want to try to see the game today. I want us to win today, and we’re going to try.”

“Although let’s say this doesn’t work, guess what? Maybe next year we won’t be as good, but we’re going to try again. The next opportunity we have, we’re going to try to win and compete. And it will work. We will win championships here in Phoenix. Might not be this year, but I promise you we are going to do it. And that’s what we’re focused on.”

“I’ll just say that we’re going to evaluate in the offseason,” Ishbia continued. “We’re going to find a way to win, and it’s probably a lot easier winning with Kevin Durant than without him. But at the same time, yes, if we’re not good enough in this iteration of the Phoenix Suns, we’re going to find a way to be better next year.”

I may not agree with every move the Suns have made, but I do appreciate having an owner with this mindset. Someone willing to take swings. Yes, Mat Ishbia came out swinging for the fences and whiffed. So maybe now it’s time to choke up on the bat, focus on contact, and try to slap a few doubles. Move some runners over. Drive some in. But I’d much rather have an owner who’s aggressive, who’s actually trying to win, than one who sits back and hopes luck does the work for him.

I get why people are frustrated. How close this team was to winning a championship in 2021, only to see the future mortgaged for Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal. Trust me, I feel that same frustration. But I can also see the logic behind those moves. They should have worked. If you go back and read what I wrote before the season started, I genuinely believed this was a 50+ win team.

Instead, we’ve been living in some bizarre Twilight Zone scenario where nothing has clicked, nothing has gone right. No singular, all-encompassing explanation, just a cascade of micro-failures, and every time the Suns have rolled the dice, they’ve come up snake eyes.

But at least we’re at the table. At least we have an owner who’s throwing the dice down the felt, trying to win. He’s not camped out at the slot machine, hoping to hit triple sevens in the draft year after year after year after year.

“I could have come in with low expectations, say, ‘Hey, in the next five years, we’re going to try to build this the right way. In eight years, maybe we’ll win a championship.’I came in and said, ‘Let’s try to win now.’ And guess what? I’ll say that again next year and the year after, and one of these years we’re going to win it.”

Roster construction is a gamble. You take calculated risks, but the number of variables at play is overwhelming, and only one team gets to hold the trophy at the end. So, we’ll see what happens this offseason. But that’s 16 games away.

What did I take from all of Ishbia’s comments? The Suns aren’t blowing it up. They’re committed to Devin Booker and he’s committed to them. They’re retooling, not rebuilding. And I’m all for that.

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