The present might look different if Mat Ishbia has eased into the role of owner.
Today marks two years since Mat Ishbia took control of the Phoenix Suns. If only the anniversary fell three days later. Because you see, Mat Ishbia’s purchase of the Suns from Robert Sarver was approved by the NBA’s Board of Governors on this date, 2023.
On February 8, 2023, the newly installed owner commandeered trade negotiations between the Suns and Brooklyn Nets.
And on February 9, 2023, his shiny new team acquired a future Hall of Famer at the trade deadline: Kevin Durant. It was a flashy move intended to demonstrate his commitment to building a winner in the desert. Win the hearts and minds of the community. Herald in what he surely envisioned as a defining era of Suns basketball, replete with titles and trophies and mid-June parades thronged by adoring and grateful fans. Ishbia said himself during his introductory press conference he wanted to “think big.”
Hey, can’t blame a man for dreaming.
Adding a player of Durant’s pedigree to a roster two years removed from a Finals berth certainly generated buzz, but it started the Suns down forty miles of bad road at the same time. Setting aside the draft capital, the losses of Mikal Bridges and Cameron Johnson were hammer blows to the team’s cohesiveness.
Not only did the Suns lose two young, long 3-and-D guys — a valuable commodity in today’s NBA — they lost their joy. Bridges and Johnson played with a lightness that kept the sky from falling during rough patches; they were replaced by Durant, a moody player who has never been known to buoy a locker room and whose skin is thinner than Oprah on Ozempic. The impact of the twins went far beyond their statistics; the joy of basketball hopped the plane to Brooklyn with them. In their place was a heap of expectations and the attendant pressures.
The acquisition of Durant also fractured the most important relationship on the roster at that time, the one between Devin Booker and Chris Paul.
Durant and Booker quickly formed something of a big-brother-little-brother bond, and that cliquishness relegated Paul to the fringes. When the Suns needed Paul’s competitive fire rubbing off on Booker, they instead got Durant, whose sense of urgency on the basketball court too often matches that shown by a man spending the next seven minutes of his life staring blankly into the microwave as he nukes his Salisbury steak. Regardless of whether the Suns had kept Paul in the fold that summer, his impact on the team — and by extension, the franchise’s cornerstone — was already compromised.
None of this is intended to single Durant out for blame. He is an all-world talent doing in Phoenix what he’s always done, the way he’s always done it. But it is inescapable that his arrival in the Valley shepherded in the current state of Suns basketball. The knee-jerk decision to turn Paul into Bradley Beal to salvage a floundering experiment. The shuffling of head coaches like a Vegas croupier. The blood-red ink staining the Suns’ ledger. It is all an outflow from the fateful decision by Ishbia to acquire Durant and the expectations that move carried.
New owners don’t know what they don’t know. They come from a world where they made billions of dollars building some empire or another. Naturally, they believe they have the Midas touch and their skills will seamlessly map onto their new venture. Spoiler alert: They rarely do. James Jones, as both general manager and president of basketball operations, should’ve disabused his new boss of the notion the moment Ishbia prodded him to get the Nets back on the line the night before the deadline. He was the guy with the basketball chops; he needed to impress upon his boss that acquiring Durant for Brooklyn’s asking price was too steep. He did not.
As a result, less than 48 hours after helming the team, Ishbia had his Sarver moment.
The same summer Sarver purchased the Suns from Jerry Colangelo, he refused to sign Joe Johnson to a contract extension, quibbling over $5 million total on a six-year deal and spurring Johnson’s departure the following summer — and birthing one of the largest what-ifs in Suns history. Ishbia mortgaged the future on Durant two days after taking over for Sarver, and the returns have depreciated every year since. Sarver’s gaffe was born of a reticence to pay in his new venture; Ishbia’s was born of unfettered largesse. All considered, in sports you prefer an owner err in Ishbia’s direction, but an error is an error is an error.
Ishbia has been a solid steward of the Suns franchise in his two years. He has been unafraid to invest and seems to genuinely care for both his employees and the fans. And he wouldn’t be the first owner to get out over his skis early in his tenure. But in throwing good money after bad, he’s set for himself quite the task of extricating his team from the mire he drove it into.
If only the Board of Governors had met on the 10th….
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