Mat Ishbia’s aggressive gamble sacrificed a treasure trove of draft picks and young talent, leaving a gutted roster struggling to reclaim its championship identity in Phoenix.
Life comes at you fast in the NBA world. The Phoenix Suns know this all too well.
The Suns' organization made a major splash on the dawn of Mat Ishbia taking over operations, this was in making a trade for 2014 NBA MVP Kevin Durant.
The odd seven-month saga included a rescinded trade request by Durant ahead of the season (as well as Phoenix ceding with an incredible amount of assets), which adds flames to the fire that this trade is one of the worst decisions in recent years.
Grant Hughes of Bleacher Report believes as much, as the move for Durant is the third-worst of the last five years.
"Usually, when a player narrows his choices to one team, the lack of a bidding war keeps the return lower. Not so here, and the Suns will be feeling the pain of shipping out five first-round assets for the rest of the decade.
The price was too high under any circumstances, but this trade looks doubly bad because Phoenix was a mere six games over .500 across Durant's two full seasons."
The regret is two-fold here. It certainly is puzzling in hindsight that Phoenix had to part with both two-way standout wings in Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson in this process. As aforementioned, history tends to say that a player forcing their way to a singular team gifts a great deal of leverage to the Suns. It can be argued that the Suns wasted multiple months playing a waiting game back then, instead of deciding to make the same trade over the summer - thus gifting Durant more time to integrate into the ecosystem.
The other regret is the moves that management made once the Durant acquisition became final. The upside the franchise put on display at the end of 2022-23 was very real, but the Phoenix front office chose to overhaul the way things were running anyways.
The hiring of Frank Vogel and Mike Budenholzer to lead the franchise across Durant's two seasons feels forced looking back. The Suns were trying far too hard to find coaches with a pedigree of coaching superstar players (as well as withstanding the playoffs). There wasn't really any rhyme or reason to either move, and each fell flat.
The personnel decisions - including trading for Bradley Beal - were largely head-scratching at best as well. This simply feels like a moment in which the Suns were attempting to re-create the mid-2010's Golden State Warriors, but with a wildly miscalculated approach to rounding out the foundation of the team.
The one silver lining that can be taken out of the Durant saga is that he did fit quite well alongside Suns legend Devin Booker. This creates a reasonable path to argue that the experiment had potential to work, but this is where the positives end.
While Phoenix almost assuredly regrets making the trade looking back, there's no faulting the decision makers for ultimately deciding to move forward with bringing Durant to Phoenix.
