5 takeaways from Suns end-of-season interviews with Mat Ishbia and James Jones

Most NBA owners don’t address the media at the end of the season, but as Phoenix Suns fans have quickly learned, Mat Ishbia is not most owners. He and general manager James Jones spoke to the media for over 40 minutes Wednesday, addressing the Suns’ disappointing season, their thoughts on the team’s core, Frank Vogel’s future, and a variety of other topics.

This end-of-season media session had a bizarrely upbeat tone for a hopeful title contender that got swept in the first round. Part of that stemmed from Ishbia’s unflappable nature, as the fast-talking Suns owner delivered meandering, rapid-fire sermons that had optimistic supporters ready to run through a wall and the more skeptical fans ready to build a few up in order to guard themselves from further pain.

Rest assured, there’s nothing Ishbia or Jones could have possibly said that would’ve appeased the fanbase after such an unceremonious playoff exit, which came on the heels of an unenjoyable, roller coaster season. But no matter which side of the aisle you fall on, these five takeaways from their end-of-season availability are indisputable.

1. Frank Vogel’s future is still unclear

When a team with championship expectations gets the broom treatment in the first round, completely running it back isn’t an option. Usually in these situations, the first name on the chopping block belongs to the head coach.

There have been differing opinions on Frank Vogel’s future in Phoenix. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and The Athletic’s Shams Charania both reported the Suns would consider making a coaching change, but when asked about his confidence that he’d be back for Year 2, Vogel responded, “Very. I got the full support of Mat Ishbia.”

Vogel was at the Suns’ practice facility for the team’s exit interviews on Monday, and nothing seemed amiss. He was smiling, conversing with Suns personnel as usual, and left the building like a guy who wasn’t waiting for an axe to drop on his head. When the team pushed Jones’ availability back from Monday to Wednesday, while adding Ishbia’s name to the docket, many assumed it was to prepare for that axe to fall.

But it never did, and Ishbia explained that he flew back from Michigan to spend Wednesday, Thursday and Friday having conversations with Vogel, Jones and the players in order to evaluate the season.

“I know there’s media reports and stuff,” Ishbia said. “It’s just not true. Not one discussion about my GM, my coach, we’re trading players now, supposedly, in the media. Not one discussion has even been had, let alone a decision being made.”

A little more clarity Vogel’s future would’ve been nice, and it’s hard to believe there have been zero conversations on the subject, but it does feel like the Suns haven’t yet arrived at a decision. Ishbia mentioned Vogel did “a lot of great things” before noting that accountability involves examining how the organization can be better from top to bottom, from himself and Jones all the way down to the medical staff and player development.

For his part, James Jones believes Vogel did a great job given the circumstances.

“Whenever you’re trying to get guys to adjust and adapt their games, there’s a transition time,” Jones explained. “It’s sometimes a struggle, but I thought he did a great job this year  If you look at our record, I think Mat talked about it, 49 wins, compared to mid-40s last year. It was a tough grind with the lack of continuity and health, but we won 49 games, and we were in the playoffs against a really good Minnesota team that just was a better team than us. So I thought he did a tremendous job.”

Only time will tell if that “tremendous” or “great” job was enough to convince the front office that Vogel should remain the leader of a disconnected team.

2. Suns have multiple answers – but no good ones – for underwhelming year

It probably didn’t feel like it at times during Ishbia’s 26 minutes of availability, but no one in the organization is satisfied with this season. But Ishbia actually sees it as a positive that fans are so upset with him, Jones and the rest of the Suns.

“I love that people are frustrated that we didn’t win the NBA championship, because guess what? So are we,” Ishbia said. “We’re disappointed. We want to win an NBA championship. It’s one thing to win 49 games and get knocked out in the first round of the playoffs and everyone’s high-fivin’ ya. That’s not what we’re gonna have in Phoenix, and it makes me happy.”

Ishbia believes those reactions to failure are an indicator that the Suns are heading toward their ultimate goal of being the gold standard in all of sports, not just the NBA. He openly embraces negative chatter, because it stems from people having heightened expectations.

“We want you talking about us, ’cause you expect us to win,” Ishbia explained. “And if we don’t win, it’s like, ‘Man, what happened there? Something’s wrong, Mat’s wrong, this is wrong, James did this, Frank did this, Josh did this, Devin did that.’ Whatever you wanna talk about, that’s great; you’re talking about the best.”

The Suns obviously have a ways to go in order to actually be the best and fulfill Ishbia’s fourth pillar as owner (winning). But as much as Ishbia wants to win, he openly acknowledged the truth: 29 other NBA franchises want to win too, and for an organization that’s won zero titles in 56 years of existence, Phoenix isn’t suddenly going to start winning titles more often than they fall short.

Ishbia plans on owning the Suns for the next 50 years, and while the goal is to compete for a championship every single year, he understands that in 45, 46 or 47 of those years, they’re likely to fail. But it won’t be for lack of trying.

“I hate losing,” he said. “You show me somebody that likes losing, I’ll show you a loser. I ain’t a loser. I don’t like losing in anything I do. We try to win in everything we do. I want to win your guys’ hearts over, I want you guys to be positive about the Phoenix Suns and Mercury, I want you guys to talk about all the great things that we’re doing — not only me but our whole organization. And we want to win an NBA championship, WNBA championship. But we are going to lose more years than we win.”

Ishbia joked that he’s had to comfort his three young kids at home when the Suns lose, reminding them it’s probably going to happen around 30 times a year. But in that joke, and in his frequent references to negative media coverage, the Suns owner also expressed his need to correct what he perceives as false narratives surrounding his team.

“As the owner, there’s accountability,” Ishbia said. “When we don’t win it, you guys can say, ‘Hey, Mat, you didn’t do this right,’ or ‘Hey, James didn’t do this right,’ or Frank, or the players. We get it. That’s your job, and we understand that part of the game. But it’s our job to make sure we set the record straight and make sure you guys all know where we stand and how we think about it. And we are very disappointed that we didn’t win the championship.”

Part of accountability is diagnosing what went wrong and finding solutions to fix those problems. As is often the case in life, there was no one specific reason behind the Suns’ dysfunctional season, inconsistent play and general lack of fight in the playoffs.

“I think there’s always a lot of things we’ve gotta look at,” Ishbia said. “You can look at the execution on the floor, you can look at roster construction, you can look at coaching, you can look at leadership, you can look at the other team. There’s so many pieces, so it’s hard to pinpoint one thing.”

Health and a continuity disadvantage were the two most commonly mentioned reasons. Couple those issues with a first-round matchup against a Minnesota Timberwolves squad that most everyone in Phoenix believes is legitimately good, and you have the recipe for their bleak finish.

“I do have to give credit to Minnesota — a really good team that played really good basketball at the right time,” Jones said. “They were better than us, they were more connected than us. And we had some injury challenges, but I can’t point to one thing particularly. I will say that over the course of the year, we started to form an identity. It just wasn’t solidified enough for us to withstand the pressure and the situation that we faced in the first round against Minnesota.”

So why weren’t the Suns more connected? Ishbia and Jones pointed to a lack of time on the court together, which is somewhat valid: Their preferred starting five barely cracked 500 minutes together over 35 games, and their Big 3 of Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal only managed 41 games together.

“One of the things we talked about at the beginning of the year is, can we get our guys to play 60-65 games together, the starting five?” Ishbia said. “I think we played less than 40. That continuity does affect it. Now, it doesn’t mean that’s why we lost, it just means it’s something we have to be aware of.”

That type of thing can affect chemistry, but in terms of the Suns’ general lack of fight, the reports of a disjointed locker room and all the negative vibes surrounding the team, that’s harder to explain away. Jones cited how deeper levels of trust, honesty and candidness come with better familiarity, and said he doesn’t believe Vogel lost the locker room.

“I believe when things get tough and you’re uncertain, you start to guess,” Jones said. “I thought that as we got near the end of the season, I thought you saw some indecision. Our guys thinking too much and not playing. And so as we continue to spend time together, we continue to build together, I think you’ll see it’s not about buy-in, it’s about belief — belief in one another, belief that the things that we’re working on will translate in those moments.”

3. Suns believe they’re close to winning a title

Speaking of belief, Mat Ishbia and James Jones do not share most fans’ pessimism about the state of the Suns.

“I think some of the narratives around our team and our organization maybe are incorrect,” Ishbia said. “And my perspective is this: We’re in great position. Not a good position, a great position.”

Ishbia went as far as saying if people don’t like their owner, GM, CEO, coach and players trying to win a title every year, they won’t like the Phoenix Suns. He claimed 26 of the other 29 GMs around the league would trade their whole roster situations for what Phoenix has. And he promised he won’t proclaim the Suns as contenders if he doesn’t truly believe it, admitting he’ll be upfront when his team is simply not good enough to get there.

But in the here and now, Ishbia believes having a foundation of Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal is a more enviable position than people think.

“I feel like the narrative around ‘the house is burning,’ it’s incorrect,” Ishbia said. “The Phoenix Suns are doing great. Excellent. Not as good as we want to be, and not as good as we’re gonna do next year, and that’s what we’re gonna figure out: What do we gotta tweak, modify, adjust to win a championship next year?”

Jones backed up those assertions, saying the Suns were “built for it” and had the right foundation — and additional assets to continue building.

“It’s important to remember that we’re starting with six, seven, eight really good core players,” Jones said. “When you’re talking about building on the margins, I think we have more than enough to do that effectively.”

Whether fans share in that optimism is debatable, and probably will be until the Suns have the results to back up their faith in the process. But for all the bemoaning over former fan favorites and lost draft picks, Ishbia said he and Jones would make the Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal trades again “100 out of 100 times.”

In other words, this year’s failure hasn’t daunted their belief in the vision for this team.

“We weren’t good enough this year,” Ishbia said. “I don’t think we’re as far away as some of the people like to think. I think we’re actually a lot closer. But, doesn’t mean we’re not gonna make some changes and improvements, because that’d be silly to try the exact same thing without some tweaks.”

4. Mat Ishbia and James Jones believe continuity will address most of Suns’ issues

Although they downplayed it on Wednesday, even the higher-ups couldn’t ignore how discombobulated and discouraged Phoenix looked when adversity hit.

“I just thought under stress, a lot of times you saw the lack of chemistry, the lack of cohesion, and the uncertainty,” Jones said. “And that’s just something that you have to accelerate for us as a team, for our players. They just need to be better at that. But it comes with time and it comes with a conscious effort to rectify that.”

If the explanations for the Suns’ embarrassing postseason fail to assuage fans who are rightfully upset over the team’s current predicament, this takeaway will be worrisome. But as we mentioned, Ishbia and Jones believe this group is much closer to contention than people think.

“It’s not hard to fix,” Isbhia said. “It’s not like we’re like, ‘Hey, we don’t have enough talent to win the championship.’ We have enough talent to win a championship. Do we have enough continuity? Do we have time together? There’s a lot of things we can look at. Do we have the right leadership in place? Do we have to add some little pieces around it?”

Those are questions the Suns will spend the next days, weeks and months trying to answer better than they did in Year 1. But for now, Ishbia and Jones feel good about having their starting five all under contract and are clinging to faith that this year’s experiences — even disheartening playoff failure — can be instructive for next year.

“I actually think chemistry is built through fire,” Jones said. “So if you ask our guys today what their chemistry is like after going through the pain that we went through this past week, I guarantee you when they come into training camp next year, they’re a tighter, more cohesive group. They’ve been through the fire, and when you’re through the fire, you trust. And when you trust, you’re unbeatable.”

Perhaps most notably, the Suns brass agrees this team’s window extends beyond one season, and that continuity may be their best path forward. The lowlights of this first year together haven’t changed that perception.

“It was never, ‘We’re gonna win a championship this year or we gotta blow it up,’ like this crazy stuff, just ridiculous stuff,” Ishbia said. “Would I have liked to have won it this year? Absolutely. But I do think continuity, consistency, process works.”

5. Don’t get attached to those first-round picks

For any Suns fans hoping the team starts prioritizing drafting and youth development…don’t hold your breath on that one. While title contenders over the last decade like the Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs supplemented their established core with young talent drafted late in the first round, the Suns have largely shirked that aspect of team-building.

Their view is: If the whole point of draft picks is to land good players, why wait for a teenager to develop when they can trade him for an established vet that helps them win now?

“If fans like to look in the future and say, ‘Hey, I really like that 2031 draft pick, because maybe that seventh-grader is gonna be really good and we’re gonna draft them and one day he’s gonna be a player,’ you ain’t going to like the Phoenix Suns,” Ishbia said. “Because we’re gonna say, ‘Draft picks are to get great players.'”

Jones’ recent misfires in the draft — as well as how frequently the Suns’ trades involve draft capital — proved he shared that philosophy long before openly stating it on Wednesday.

“I’m not thinking about the seventh-grader in 2031,” Jones said. “We’re talking about elite players who want to win, saying, ‘How can we win today? How can we win tomorrow? How can we win the next 12 months?’ Devin’s not thinking about 2031. Kevin’s not thinking about 2031. Brad, Grayson [Allen], Royce [O’Neale], Eric Gordon, none of our guys are thinking about 2031. They’re thinking about, ‘We fell short of our goal this season. How do we run it back? How do we get better?’”

Starting on draft night, the Suns can trade their No. 22 overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, as well as their 2031 first-rounder. More than likely, those two assets will be dangled in trade talks attempting to bolster Phoenix’s depth at positions of need.

“I know that’s not a cool thing to say out there, because people like to say, ‘They have no draft picks,’ but we have five over the next eight years, and we can trade two of ’em next month if we want,” Ishbia said. “So it’s not like people say, [that] we have inflexibility.”