Ishbia Under Fire! Former Suns Owner Blasts New Regime’s Aggressive Approach
If you don’t want to call the Phoenix Suns‘ 120-109 loss to the San Antonio Spurs hitting rock bottom, then what would you call it? Tapping rock bottom? Not entirely hitting it… flirting with it?
Whatever you want to call it, the Suns are in it.
Kevin Durant’s Moody Center homecoming was supposed to be an emotional celebration. Not Royce O’Neale having a career game in a loss where Phoenix’s best point-of-attack defender — Ryan Dunn — sat on the bench for 47 minutes and 40 seconds as Spurs speedy point guard De’Aaron Fox’s 11 fourth-quarter points put the Suns to rest.
But Thursday’s game was a typical example of what Phoenix’s (26-29) season has come down to time and time again: An important game (Spurs are now one game behind Phoenix for the 11-seed), healthy roster, depleted opponent, and yet, the Suns came up short.
You can blame players. You can blame coach Mike Budenholzer. But the problems this team endures nowadays tend to circle back to February of 2023, when Mat Ishbia bought the franchise and decided to reshape what it meant to own a team… for better or worse.
At the time of the Durant and Bradley Beal trades, Ishbia was widely labeled a visionary and disruptor in the NBA ownership space. Now that Phoenix is underperforming and looking at a bleak future with tied up money and little-to-no assets, the sentiment on the 45-year-old billionaire has changed.
Look no further than a former owner of the franchise, Jerry Colangelo, who, while empathetic to Ishbia, admitted that he may have bitten off more than he could chew trying to make splash after splash as a new owner.
“I think what Mat (Ishbiah)’s going through is a learning process,” the Suns Ring of Honor member said on Arizona Sports Radio’s Brickley & Marotta show. “I think maybe when he first bought the team he wanted to make a little splash, which was kind of customary when people take over an organization. In retrospect, he maybe would have done the same thing, maybe not. Again, he has to learn, sometimes the hard way.
“I believe in him in terms of the long-term future of the franchise because he’s committed. He’s committed to the team, He’s committed to the city. So, he’ll get through the learning process to some degree and things will get better.”
