Empire of the Suns: Phoenix Suns’ head-coaching search is down to a few guys

Empire of the Suns: Phoenix Suns’ head-coaching search is down to a few guys

Suns fans, you know what time it is in the PHX Empire of the Suns. Phoenix Suns, Empire of the Suns, Empire of the Suns. Hello there and welcome to the Empire of the Suns podcast. My name is Kell Olsson, joined as always by Kevin Zimmer. Man, what’s up, man? Howdy, howdy. We’re back. We figured we should touch base now that there’s a little action in the coaching search and people are staring at us through the windows, even though there’s apparently a light to tell people not to stare through the windows. All right, rude. Uh, since we joined you last, there was a Brian Gregory press conference. The word a line is now a meme in Suns lexicon forever. Really, the only takeaway there, uh, Suns have a lot of lawsuits going around right now. That’s not great. No, I think we’ll talk about that more at some point in the summer. Uh, depending, but Backaxter Holmes wrote up a story a couple days ago. There’s a couple of them going around. It’s not great to see, not what you want to see, uh, for everything that we were expecting out of the organization with an ownership change. I think that’s it. Um, we’re not going to talk about Kevin Durant or Paul George, the guy who like couldn’t move last year and is owed like $200 million more dollars or something. Probably not going to do that. I did not expect you to say that, so I hope we don’t. Probably not going to do that. Um, contentwise, the the main thing we’re going to talk about today, we’re going to talk about the playoffs a little bit later. Uh, two people who picked Knicks and Thunder in the finals, by the way, in the pres. I always forget I like pick things and I’m like, I think I did that, but then I could be lying to myself. This is not an I was right tour as always. We were right to her as always because we came on and did like a bracket run through and we both were I think I picked Lakers though when like obviously that was very wrong. Well, no, we were both like I at least was like Knicks have no shot. Like stop. Like you were talk you were talking yourself into the Knicks and I was like stop like they have not beaten anyone. Did you have Pacers? Mm-m. Over the Cavs? No. Yeah. No, for sure. That that was shocking. We’ll get to that a little bit later. I’m looking through our website arizonasapasports.com right now and it it’s just been pretty much been Gregory and like what’s next for him. James Jones moves on to an executive role. I think there will be a Zoom out podcast within like an a month or two or 3 months when we know exactly what everything is if that makes sense. So like there’s a James Jones conversation for us to have. We’ll get there, I think, once we know what this team is and there’s like a sign off for going into this next era of Suns basketball. We we just don’t know what it is. We assume it’s what you get in a Kevin Durant trade. Bradley Beal’s not there, but that’s so vague and just hollow that we don’t really know. Uh I wrote uh a two-part story looking at why I think the Rockets and the Suns are a perfect match for a Kevin Durant trade. That includes getting the number 10 pick back because I don’t think you should be that excited about getting Jabari Smith Jr. and Jaylen Green as like the main uh return for KD. Uh Bickley wrote a story about Mico Bridges and that’s not that’s certainly not going to happen anymore. But we’ve got a head coaching search going on and we’ve got names. So we’re going to roll through a handful of them here. We’re not going to Can I start here? Yeah. I know I’ve been talking a lot. I’m driving the thing and like now I’m doing a thing to Well, no. I’m not supposed to do a thing after driving. Like, that’s not what I’m supposed to be doing, but I’m going to do it anyway. People have been listening. They know. I love sports and how people can just have an opinion on everything because you know how I am with like GM searches and coaching searches. Most of the time like I don’t know, they’re an assistant and like that I don’t know, heat culture. I don’t know. I I feel like I always do this for our side because I’m generally working during the days. is if I have a few hours I’m like I’m going to deep dive on all the best AD candidates for ASU. I feel like I have a better grasp of like doing that even though I don’t follow ASU as closely as that just because you can be like these people are qualified, right? Like yeah, here’s a list of people who are qualified. This one is super hard. The GM one is hard too just cuz you don’t know. It’s like so Sean Sweeney who has been an assistant under Jason Kidd in Milwaukee and now Dallas is someone who is looked at as responsible for some of the defensive success that they’ve had in those teams. But like how much of that is him? How much of it is the roster he had? How much of it is kid himself? These are the types of conversations where like how much of he culture is actually uh Chris Quinn. Yeah. I I don’t think it’s too much, but he deserves credit. But like if he comes over here, I don’t think he’s like, how does that trans uh what do they call it in a new Yeah, the property, if you will. Um the I don’t know what you’re trying to say. It’s okay. I don’t I don’t want transformative. I want like transition. Transitional property. Is that the word? Don’t know. I’m giving up. I’m giving up. I gave it like eight more seconds than I should have and I’m giving up. We’ve got names. I’m not helping. I’m sorry. Sweeney, who I mentioned, Dallas assistant. David Fdale, uh, two-time NBA head coach on the Sun staff as of right now at least. James Berago, a former head coach in two different stints as well, currently with the Pelicans if I remember correctly. Johnny Bryant, who is one of the this is your classic hot young assistant on the rise name, uh where he’s like still in his late 30s or early 40s or whatever and has quickly rose to associate head coach title in New York and now Cleveland. Jordan, the assistant from the Cleveland Cavaliers who I believe works under Bryant with the way those Yeah. just an a regular old assistant. Yeah. Who went to Michigan State. Steve Hel an assistant from the Brooklyn Nets who went to Michigan State. Micah Nori, uh, the assistant, probably the most outside of Chris Quinn with Miami, probably the most notable name here, just because he’s been like viral for NBA Die Hard fans for a couple of years now because he kind of turned his half postalime interviews into a sort of joke of sorts. He went on to like later admit that there was a game where uh someone would be like, “Can you fit Batgammon into your spiel?” And then he would and then he would do it. Uh, he’s a very funny guy. And then Dave Bliss who is I believe the number two to Mark Dagnalt in Oklahoma City. Again, like I don’t know how the pecking order thing works. Like Willie Green was obviously the number two to Monty. This is a thing from afar where we can’t really say. And then Chris Quinn, the assistant out of Miami. Uh again, I welcome all takes. Uh but I was surp I wasn’t surprised, but Burns and Gamble, I was listening to them on the way in and they had 65% in their poll voting for Quinn as the coach they want to see. And I think that’s just because people know Chris Quinn the most. Only player in this group, right? The only former player in this group. But I think where we can start is this is pretty run-of-the-mill what you would normally see with the list. The main thing missing is like the big names like a Taylor Jenkins, Michael Malone, whatever. But this is the kind of list you normally see. Yeah. I mean, I think the top candidates and from what it seems, even if you like have this um and cut out some of the guys, I wouldn’t expect Berago or Fdale to get it just because of circumstances and and what we’ve heard about. They probably want a young coach cuz they’ve had two pretty wellrespected coaches fail lately. Um but yeah, I think the the names look good on paper in general. I will say that the top names. Yeah, they do. Um, I’m leaning, not leaning, I I like Nory the most out of the candidates. I think that from an experience perspective, he’s been around the league over two decades. Um, some of like the minutia stuff that you would assume an assistant is doing and excelling at is what he’s been doing in Minnesota. That’s like the guy that uh Chris Finch is talking to with rotations, with end of game stuff, with lineup distribution, kind of things like that that he’s dealing with. Um, and the story, the feature from Britt Robson a couple years ago outlined essentially that like no assistant in the league working right now has more experience doing this type of thing than he does. Yeah. So, if you want the rotations guy, uh, for those uh, people who clamor over that type of thing and want perfection with the way the rotations are used, who’s used where against what lineup and that kind of thing, that is like kind of his wheelhouse of sorts. I mean, if you look at that team, how they’ve been built, I mean, they make the Rudy trade, they make it work with Rudy next to Cat, they trade Cat, and obviously Julius Randle’s really good, and probably people undersold him coming back, but like you’re still dealing with lots of moving parts and weird things that you don’t see elsewhere in the NBA, and this coaching staff is figuring it out. Again, it’s like who what’s Finch? What’s him? But like look, he when who ran into how did Finch bust his knee against the Suns when he busted his knee against it was against the Suns or was it going into the series a Kogi? Yeah, it was against the Suns. Anyway, it was against the Suns cuz I remember like Nory has done Yeah, he’s done all the head coach stuff from the actually walking up and down the sidelines to pre and postgame interviews to all that. So like also like you go back in his history like working with Michael Malone, he’s seen some stuff and how to he’s been around a while. I think like just the resume looks very complete I guess. And then the part of like where I evaluate him and and like him as a candidate where I just can’t evaluate the rest of the guys because I don’t know enough about him is like he’s a very personable I don’t want to say vibrant guy but he uses humor in a way that is relatable to disarm. I think that was the word to disarm and communicate with honesty. But like and like the halftime interviews like just to amuse himself. But it seems like the thing I was talking about on Wolf and Luke is and this isn’t like as much about him as about these candidates. You just need someone with a lot of a lot of stuff going for them in that type of department. What I mean by that is this is not a like they should hire Monty Williams thing. And to bring up Monty yet again for a lot of people listening who wound up souring on him, Monty was a guy who came in and was very hard-nosed. Like that was something that was known about him from the New Orleans days, but he came here and like the more we got to talk to him, like again, we just see like little little seeps of personality from people in the in the space we do. Don’t get me wrong, but he’s like a weird goofy funny guy. Yeah. And then some of the little behind the scenes videos like the one from the bubble obviously with Booker. He’s a very emotional guy um as well and always spoke on just like the connection he had with his players. So Monty was able to do like and at the same time was able to be the hard-nosed guy when he needed to be. So, it needs to be someone with a lot of those different traits working for this specific type of job because what you were looking for two years ago from a personality or from a personality a year ago is not at all the same thing that you’re doing with this coach. And I hope that the people in charge of making that decision are aware of like the the the difference here. And it does seem like that with what they’re going for. The former player thing I think is fine. Um, I just think that we’re kind of past that now, if that makes sense. Yeah. Like you look at the can get over that easily. I think you look at the amount of guys that have had like success without like that type of resume to their name as players or even having NBA experience at all. We’re we’re way sort of like beyond that. Like Spo is like like you can just go through a lot of different names. It’s like you don’t need to pull up grainy like 70s Pat Riley film, you know, like for guys to have respect for their head coaches anymore. That might be a wrong read by me, but especially in being around Booker for a decade, like I don’t think it’s a make or break thing for him that it has to be like a former play in order for him to have respect. Monty was, of course. Yeah, I want to stick on that Monty point too. Like I think for me it was like if I went to a practice with like one other reporter some of those days when those teams weren’t as well followed that kind of thing like Monty would just talk to you about how he sees building culture and like you have these long conversations to like one question and and I think the last few coaches I look I don’t expect them to talk to the media if they don’t want to but like they had missing something of engaging a human being that’s super important in And I think with Mori, that’s one example where like the humor thing you read about um Sean Sweeney, I think I would imagine he’s up there just because like again, we don’t know what um his hand was in building like for example Dallas’s defense around Luca and making that work so well these past few years. I know Luca is not there anymore. Um, but for sure he has a track record on the record of like Giannis he worked with in Milwaukee and like Giannis worked where they would there’s a story if you just Googled those two names. It’s like Giannis was yelling and cussing at and trying to beat him up, but they’re actually like really good friends and really close. Like he was honest with him. They have a really deep relationship. Um, I forgot who else um, gave him a lot of credit, but just like these coaches with developmental stuff in their background have that extra something where they can get a superstar to do something different or change their game or work on something. And I know like Devin Booker probably doesn’t need that, but everyone else around him probably could use some of that. I should mention the Michigan State thing. Uh, Jordan not started at Michigan State in ’08. Uh, Steve Hzel is a long time. He has over 15 years of NBA experience to be clear. Uh but he started with Michigan State in 03. Gregory left Michigan State in 03ish. Beia left Michigan State I believe like on the team. He was on the team until O2. So they could have crossed paths. Hel started going to school there in 2000. But Gambo has it down to like five names already. Um he was saying just on the drive-in for me. Sweeney, uh Nory, Bliss, and then Quinn, which makes sense. the Quinn thing, just to like speak on him beyond like the quips and and stuff. My two main hesitations are, and this is just like why I’m not saying he’s the guy. He’s like 1 A1 B1C, you got to go get him again. Like I I’m trying not to mock people who are like very serious about like this type of thing where we just know so little. But the two main holdups for me, one, he’s been a hot candidate for 5 years now. No one has hired him. I don’t know why. to um the whole heat culture thing like that is obviously a Riley thing first and foremost. Not even a Spo thing, it’s a Riley thing and then it go trickles down to Spo. Is there another trickle down effect again where it goes to Quinn and when he comes here is it going to be strictly how the Miami Heat do everything. Look, the Miami Heat have been successful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like they have been like one of the three or five best franchises in the NBA in the last like 10 years. Like it’s they’re successful. They have an identity. You need an identity. I understand, but it’s not. So, again, that’s just sort of where my hesitations go in terms of me looking at him as someone who should be far and away the number one guy. I think that he should be a candidate. I think that he should even be a finalist. I think it makes a lot of sense. But to for me to go that far and acting like he’s the one choice, I’m not there. I see it why they would want him based on like if they’re trying to do the Michigan State, we believe in culture, the grit, whatever. Um, and everything you read about Quinn is he’s like a I think I read somewhere I think Kevin Arnavitz wrote that he’s like a mini version of SP Spolstra. Um, so like I get that and I’ll I’ll put Dave Bliss of the Thunder in with this section where both of those guys are in pretty successful organizations. They’ve been there a long time. I think Bliss had a stop in New York for three years in the mid 2010s, like 15 to 18. But like when they like, okay, both of them see an organization that’s wellrun, smooth, the president and the coaches are aligned, by the way. Um, but when they just helicopter in and drop into Phoenix, um, whatever the culture is in the Sun’s front office from Matt Ishbia down, whether it’s good or bad, like are they going to fit with it? And will they be able to bring like here’s how the Thunder operated and how I operated on the Thunder, for example, everything will just translate. I don’t think that’s the case because like for the Thunder for example, you have a philosophy of talent that they draft like it’s the quick version is long tall dudes with a really good skill set. They can pass, they can share the ball and that everything just fits and I he can coach to that probably or he knows how he’s seen it. Um, the heat culture thing can kind of explain itself where you’re tough and you have non-negotiables as far as how you um carry yourself in practice and all that stuff, but again, I I just don’t know how easy it is if they’ve seen it for 20 years, 30 years if they can just drop it into this Phoenix Suns team and pull it off. That’s my biggest hesitation. So, I’m going to be super curious if they go with that. And it seems like uh Brian Gregory, my my take on him from what I seen that one press conference and reading his resume is he’s going to be tough. He has the Michigan State blood in him, but like can you really find someone that fits that well and the line that well in this coaching group? I’m not sure. You know what I mean? Like how do they transfer what their situations are here? I don’t know if it’s easy to translate. Let’s move to playoffs for a few minutes before we go. They’ve ruled. Uh they’ve been pretty great to watch. Both OKC series uh or sorry, both Nugget series, Clippers series was awesome. Uh the Thunder series was awesome for like kind of a couple of different reasons, but like the way the Nuggets were able to like, for lack of a better phrase, hang in there. Yeah. Through everything that they were doing was pretty remarkable. The way that they were able to win games like the Aaron Gordon stuff in the Clipper series and then against the Thunder as well was great. I I wish my only like complaint from a fan perspective is that I wish that like the Cavaliers would have been able to go out and Boston unfortunately with the Tatum injury, but they were able to go out with more like the way that the Cavs like limped out. Again, there was like a couple of like team building lessons I’ll sort of get into before we talk about like what we think is going to happen the rest of the way. Uh, one, I always talk about this, I’m going to bring it up again, like go through these teams, especially in the East, and you’ll see that while it’s extremely difficult to build up your roster quickly, you’ll see how the good teams do it. The Knicks, uh, they drafted Deuce McBride outside of the lottery. They drafted Mitchell Robinson outside of the lottery. Obviously, Jaylen Brunson is the big star there. Josh Hart was on his fourth team when he got traded there. Um, Mikuel, you big- time acquisition with all the picks. Towns big time trade, all that kind of stuff. You can look at that and say like, well, the Suns can’t do that. But they can get those little guys on the margins over there. And Indiana is an even better example. They bail on Malcolm Brogden at the perfect time and get Aaron Nith, who is just an an a invaluable piece of what they do. Andrew Nemhard, same thing. Second round pick. He’s been a playoff. They buy when their stock super low. Yeah. Tyres Hallebertton was not a top 10 pick. Like if I talk about the Rockets trade and like getting a number 10 pick, you’d be like, well, it’s not a top five. It’s like, okay, but there’s guys outside of the lottery and even the late ends of the lottery who become stars like he did. You can go to other teams like Minnesota, like Nikquil Alexander Walker, people forget he bounced around a few teams before he landed in Minnesota. Jade McDaniels end of the first round. Nas Reed undrafted. You can go to OKC and even with all the value they got. Again, Jaylen Williams was not a top 10 pick. Sheay was not a top 10 pick. So, it is it is not impossible to do what they’re what they do and we should not hold them to over the next couple of years this um tremendously high bar of impossibility with what they’re trying to do because good teams, great organizations do this. They hit on the margins and all four of these teams set on the margins. Yeah. And you flip them and and yeah, the Shay trade like his stock was there again. It’s it’s buying before you think it’s going to blow up for these guys. Hallebertton’s same thing. Brunson even. Uh I don’t know if you would categorize Brunson as that, but that was just having money, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. They they weren’t the team that drafted him. I think that’s a good correction to have there. But in terms of where you find the talent and then even again like with with when they signed him, like he was not like seen as like an absolute overpay, right? They overpaid for him. Yeah. It was the It was an extremely more expensive and like starchasing version of what the Ricky Rubio signing was where New York like needed a point guard. They needed someone like him. But he came out of Dallas and it wasn’t like people saw that he was going to be one of the five to 10 best players in the league be someone who at this point two rounds in has been the best player in your you got your closer like you didn’t think you had that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Uh what do you think is going to happen? You and I uh as I said at the top picked ish something like this where we saw the Thunder and the Knicks coming out. That was before New York had the season they did. That was before Oklahoma City had the season that they did. I guess positive and negative there or negative and positive respectfully. I respectively I really don’t know what’s going to happen in either series. It rules. I love it. Um I could e like I could see Paser Timber rules like I I genuinely I would Yeah. I I think it’s going to be Thunder Nicks still. And this is being stubborn, but is it fair for me to say that the Knicks and the Pacers are playing the best basketball of those four teams right now? Probably. Yeah. I think Minnesota um for what they had to get through with LA and Golden State compared to like Indiana, for example, when they played Milwaukee, I know that they were short-handed. Um but what they did against Cleveland, again, lessons here, like there was such a big thing made mid-season about how like you can’t build with stars anymore. You need deep teams like this team and that team and that team and like it worked for OKC to an extent to an extent but remember they were like we don’t need Cam Johnson we have 47 first round picks but we have Isaiah Joe and Kase Wallace and Aaron Wiggins and I don’t mean that as any respect to three players that I really love watching. Wallace has been pretty good for them. There’s been moments of course where he looks like a young player in his first postseason. Joe has barely played and Wiggins has been rough and Cleveland is in a situation where if Garland is hurt, okay, you have Ty Jerome who had a really rough postseason. Okay, that’s where Moy can step up. Well, that didn’t happen. You look at Jared Allen as someone who that didn’t happen. Like, and now it’s just Donovan Mitchell all of a sudden is like the Devin Booker against the Nuggets guy from two years ago where it’s like, does this guy have to do everything when you have all of these players on your team and they’re a much deeper version um of that? So, I think that’s like another lesson to take away is like I I get that there are deep teams in here. Like the Thunder are deep. The Timberwolves are deep, but the Thunder are playing to seven or eight. Like Caruso through the regular season, I think I looked it up, he played 25 plus minutes, I think five times all year because they use so many different guys. And now he cannot leave the floor for them at all. Minnesota is very shallow all of a sudden. I mean, that’s why Boston when they went all the way last year, it’s like they aren’t necessarily deep, but like they’re just top five and they remained healthy for the most part. Um, and Porzingis what came back and was pretty good off the bat. Like you you have to have a lot of luck in this. Like I think Suns fans know like Joe Johnson falling on his face that changes completely everything. Suspensions changes everything. So, I don’t know, man. It’s It’s been really good. And I I thought hockey was catching up to basketball. I always I always hate hear that. Yeah. I always hear that stuff and like, “Oh, the products.” Oh, I wasn’t even trying to be sarcastic. Is that like a thing that people did I miss a day on the timeline or something? The Allstar break. The entire All-Star break. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, I’m still a little petty about that, but that’s fine. The product’s still really good. Petty King, go for it. Yeah. I I’m being empowered because like Steve Nash has his podcast now and he and LeBron are like, “We should do this.” If you’ve seen the MJ stuff when I think I saw one interview about like someone talked to MJ and they’re going to they were like, “Is he just going to like go at LeBron?” It’s like, “No, he wants everyone to like start respecting all the players because he knows that this era of basketball players is really good.” That would be nice if the most prominent NBA voice in the history of the league was just someone who went on TV and was like, “Everyone’s good. I really like this instead of everyone’s I I I don’t know where that was exactly, but it was like people are going to be surprised when MJ just starts propping all these guys up because he likes basketball. Yeah, Chris Chris did the tour last postseason and he was very similarly like positive and it was great to see was sharing all his knowledge and stuff. I’ve got Nicks over at Thunder still. Okay. I it’s was when we did the bracket, you could sense my skepticism of OKC where I was just like I wasn’t ready to go all the way in yet and that has been shown. Yeah. JDub had a horrible series against Denver. He was awful. It’s weird cuz like the West is so competitive with the parody that it’s hard to like judge. It’s like apples and oranges about where these teams are. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like they could hit the NBA finals and whichever West team comes out just blows them out and I would not be surprised. Can I give you the easy case for why Minnesota would be NBA champions? Yeah, they would have the best player in that series against OKC and then they would have easily the third best player as well. Like Julius Randle has outperformed Homegrren and and Jada by a mile. Hasn’t been close. He’s been awesome. Yeah. Um so I think there’s a real Minnesota case there. And again, I think that the OKC depth guys who contribute like there isn’t just like a Jay Lynn Williams um Jay Will thing where he’s dropping 21 or like the Wiggins games where he was scoring 40 and then 36 and 29. They’re not they need more. or they need the Isaiah Joe 5-3 game which I think he did in the first round I want to say against Memphis but wasn’t much for him like they need the Julian Strawler stuff for for Denver or like Chad’s not there yet in his career I think where he just yeah or just averages 25 a game in this series that’s I don’t know if he’s that right now I feel like he’s the guy who could easily be the second best player or third best player in a series but we just a year off I think yeah yeah and I have no idea on Pacers Nick’s done at all I watched the 30 for30 last night in preparation I can’t wait. Oh, that’s a good idea. Can’t wait. Very good idea. It holds up. It’s good stuff. All right, we got to run cuz uh our cohort’s about to be in the clubhouse and someone needs to watch our website. I should probably get home. Yeah, there’s like social things being sent and everything and you have children to take care of. Hope everyone’s well. We’ll be back uh when they hire a coach. Coach, which will be in like a week or two. Yeah, probably a week.

The Phoenix Suns are eyeing Micah Nori, Sean Sweeney, Chris Quinn and a handful of other head-coaching candidates. That and NBA Playoffs talk.

Pacers’ rise in NBA postseason a reminder of Suns’ past failures: https://arizonasports.com/dan-bickley/suns-pacers-haliburton/3584598/

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