Trade Kevin Durant? 5 things the Suns must do to right the ship

Last summer, Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia infamously claimed that 26 other NBA teams would gladly trade places with his team. When the dust cleared this week on a 36-46 nightmare season that ended with the Suns missing the playoffs, it was hard to find one team that would be interested in such a swap.

Since Ishbia took over, his focus constantly has been on whatever next big move he could make to propel the Suns closer to a championship. Those days are over, and Ishbia is singing a different tune. This offseason will instead be about tearing out the foundation of what he built and starting over.

“Everyone’s disappointed, embarrassed, and it was a failure,” Ishbia told reporters at an end-of-season press conference Thursday. “What we just tried and did the past two-and-a-half years has not been as successful as we hoped.”

When a team has the largest payroll in the NBA and finishes below .500, all changes are on the table. The Suns have nearly $340 million in total salary tied up in a “Big Three” that does not fit together. They also have a general manager with an expiring contract and a coaching vacancy for the third straight offseason. It’s going to be a busy summer.

Here are the top five items on the to-do list for Ishbia and Co.

1. What to do with Kevin Durant

Acquiring Durant, one of the best players in NBA history, was Ishbia’s first big splash. Before he’d even been officially approved as the new owner in Phoenix, he pushed a trade over the finish line to get the future Hall of Famer. Durant salvaged a fizzling 2022-23 season and contributed to one of the league’s most fearsome one-two punches alongside franchise cornerstone Devin Booker.

It’s hard to say the move wasn’t a success. Since Durant’s arrival, the Suns have won 61% of their games when he’s healthy. Durant notched one first-team All-NBA honor as a Sun and was on course for another this season before a late ankle sprain.

But with the season going sideways at this year’s trade deadline, reports indicated Ishbia and the Suns’ front office began orchestrating a deal to send Durant back to the Golden State Warriors, where he played from 2016-19. Durant reportedly heard about the talks from old colleagues in that franchise and stonewalled the deal.

While Booker replied with a “hell yeah” when asked by The Ringer late in the season if he wanted to continue playing with Durant and insisted the team had “moved past” the deadline kerfuffle, the Suns may have no other options but to trade one of the best players to ever don their uniform. Moving Durant for a mix of younger players and draft picks may be the only pathway to reset the team around Booker, the franchise's all-time leading scorer, who is 28 and under contract for three more seasons.

Durant and his manager, Rich Kleiman, are now expected to meet with Suns brass to work out a trade. The 36-year-old has just one year left on his contract. According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the leading suitors for Durant heading into the NBA playoffs are the Houston Rockets, Minnesota Timberwolves, San Antonio Spurs, Miami Heat and New York Knicks.

“The fact that we aren't where we want to be from a winning perspective means that we have to look at everything,” Suns general manager James Jones said Thursday.

2. Hiring a new coach

It seemed like a perfect match last summer when the Suns hired Holbrook native Mike Budenholzer as the franchise’s next head coach. Budenholzer was introduced by the late Al McCoy at a press conference, and with his run-and-run offense and disciplined defense, appeared to be the ideal person to get more out of Durant, Booker and Bradley Beal.

The Suns paid him a reported $50 million on a five-year contract to help lead them to a championship. Halfway through Budenholzer’s first season, it seemed like a mistake.

Ishbia said Thursday that by the new year, he knew Budenholzer wasn’t meshing with the team. Budenholzer’s relationship with center Jusuf Nurkic had soured. Beal had been relegated to the bench amid reports of a trade that would send Beal out to acquire then-Miami star Jimmy Butler.

By season’s end, the Suns had fired their third coach in as many years. (Also canned: Frank Vogel last year and Monty Williams two years ago.) The Suns owe around $60 million to coaches they’ve dismissed, and they hope a more deliberate hiring process will work better.

“It wasn’t as thorough or as deep of a search as we would like,” Jones said of the past two hires. “The season ended early” — there’s a silver lining for you — “so it gives us more time to get this right.”

The Suns are expected to focus on younger coaches more suited to the modern NBA as the roster gets younger around Booker. That would seem to rule out fired Denver coach Mike Malone, who has an NBA championship under his belt.

3. Fixing the Bradley Beal Problem

If you were to pinpoint one huge mistake since Ishbia bought the Suns and tried to extend their championship window, it would be the acquisition of Beal in June 2023. The Suns traded beloved point guard Chris Paul and several draft picks to bring in Beal, a scorer with an enormous contract and a clause in his deal that requires him to sign off on any potential trade.

That clause came back to bite the Suns this season when they tried to trade Beal, slogging through a career-worst year, for Butler. The veteran guard took a massive step back defensively and offensively — this season, the Suns were outscored by a team-worst 273 points when Beal was on the court.

Because of the no-trade clause, the Suns may or may not be stuck with him. The best thing for the team would be to secure Beal’s go-ahead to offload the two years and $110 million left on his contract on another franchise.

Ishbia on Thursday declined to comment on Beal’s future specifically. But when asked about Beal by Arizona Sports this week, he said he wants players who are “aligned” with the identity of the city and the team.

“People talk about no-trade clause, that’s way overhyped, all those conversations,” Ishbia said. “The truth is, we have to find people who are bought in and aligned with us. If they’re not bought in and aligned in what we believe in, they will not be on our team.”

If the Suns cannot find a trade for Beal, they could be forced to buy him out of his massive contract.

4. Front office changes

Aside from Booker, the longest-tenured major figure with the Suns is Jones, who was initially hired to a front office role in 2018. He took over as general manager a year later, helping to develop a culture and eventually building the team that went to the NBA finals in 2021.

But since Ishbia took over, questions have loomed about whether Jones has the pull he once did. Ishbia on Thursday attempted to put those to bed.

“I don’t think there’s an owner in the NBA that there’s a trade that goes on that that owner does not say go with it or don’t go with it,” Ishbia said. “I’m the same way. (But) if you think I’m the one that sits there and says, ‘Hey, we’ve got this guy, let me go through all the salary cap sheets,’ that’s the front office.”

The extent of Ishbia’s decision-making involvement may not ultimately matter. The people leading the organization could change soon.

PHNX Sports reported that Jones’ contract expires at the end of June. While 35-year-old CEO Josh Bartelstein has assumed an unusually prominent voice in basketball operations since being hired by Ishbia as a first-time lead executive, it would not be a shock to see Ishbia tap a more experienced basketball figure to run the team.

A common model in the NBA today is to have a president of basketball operations atop the organizational chart, with a general manager the next rung down. Ishbia has not adopted that model despite significant investment in the team, leading many to assume he effectively operates as that figure. After numerous failures over the past three offseasons, Ishbia could finally cede control to someone he respects in the sport who can execute a real vision for the franchise.

5. Adopting an Identity

If there was a major theme in Ishbia’s comments Thursday, it was his fierce desire to sculpt an identity for the team. Rather than playing Whac-A-Mole to address the team’s various roster needs, Ishbia wants to foster a consistent character shared by each Suns player, coach and executive.

“I have to do a better job setting the identity of the Phoenix Suns,” Ishbia said. “I want to put a team out there on the court that everyone’s proud of.” To Ishbia, that means an “identity that’s similar to Phoenix — a little bit of grit, some determination, some work ethic, some grind, some joy. We just haven’t had that.”

Ishbia’s comments echoed a sentiment Booker expressed in the waning days of the season. The night the Suns were officially eliminated from the playoffs, Booker recalled how the team established a winning culture in 2019 and 2020, which led to that Finals run.

“It’s an everyday thing,” Booker said. “You have to harp on it. Everybody has to hold each other accountable. And it makes it better. The culture, the environment’s better, no matter whether you win or lose. You don’t get too high and you don’t get too low. That’s what I figured out during that time, and it eventually all gelled together.”

Saying we need to build a culture is one thing. Building one is another. Not long ago, the Suns had one. They smashed it by taking bigger roster swings that missed.

Now they’re back to square one, with few answers.