Suns Owner Makes Bold Proclamation in Letter Sent to Staff

PHOENIX — Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia wanted to do more than just name a new head coach for the franchise Wednesday after the Suns reportedly hired Cleveland Cavaliers assistant Jordan Ott to be their new lead man. 

According to Arizona Sports, Ishbia sent an email internally to basketball operations members about how he is going to change his way of doing things within the organization. 

“Let me start with the most important point – the Phoenix Suns will do things very differently than most other NBA franchises,” a part of Ishbia’s letter read (via Arizona Sports). “I will be extremely active in the decisions and management of this organization, on and off the floor.

“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.”

Additionally, Arizona Sports' Kevin Zimmerman wrote: “In the letter, he praised (new general manager Brian) Gregory’s early days as general manager and Ott’s abilities as coach. Ishbia also expressed an awareness that his decisions would be met with ‘hot takes’ and criticism, but that is not a concern of his.”

What Does This Letter Show?

This is certainly an interesting letter to write after Ishbia has already been met with criticism from being too involved in decisions, most notably the Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal trades, which have not led to any team success.

However, it does come after he said multiple times in his end-of-season press conference on April 17 that he wanted to establish a new identity for the team after the Suns finished the 2024-25 season 36-46 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2020.

In this same press conference, Ishbia was asked to clarify his role in basketball decisions, to which he offered this lengthy response:

"I don't watch film. I don't scout players. We got great scouts, great front office. My role is to enable. First off, my role is to put those people in those positions right. Putting the right people in the positions to make the right decisions, and then empowering them.

"... You can blame me. I'm fine taking the blame, but my job is to set the tone at the top, and I've done it. You can blame me for that, because I've done a bad job. I think I did a great job with the culture, the fan experience, the community, and setting the tone.

"But I also listen to a lot of the media people and say, 'Oh, new owner. He's not supposed to get involved.' So I almost let the NBA be the NBA, and I'm going to change that, where I'm going to set the tone on the vision of what Phoenix Suns basketball is about."

Since saying this, Ishbia and the Suns have made two major moves, promoting Gregory to general manager on May 1 and hiring Ott Wednesday.

Gregory's promotion was a bit of a surprise given that he was only in a full-time front office role for one season with Phoenix after 19 season as a Division I Men's basketball coach.

With that said, Gregory admitted in his introductory press conference that his prior connection to Ishbia played a big part in him landing the GM job, as Gregory was an assistant at Michigan State from 1999-2003 and Ishbia was a walk-on for the Spartans from 1999-2002.

Ott becomes the Suns' fourth head coach in as many seasons and will look to reverse the trend of the coaches prior to him. Ott also has a Michigan State background, getting his master's degree from there and starting his coaching career as a video coordinator under Tom Izzo from 2008-13, but has since proven himself as an assistant, climbing up the ranks in the NBA with 11 seasons under his belt of professional experience on high-level teams.

Time will only tell how these recent moves and statement from Ishbia will affect the team moving forward, but it is clear Ishbia's voice will be louder than ever in this time of change.