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On Friday, the Phoenix Suns officially introduced Mike Budenholzer as the 22nd head coach in franchise history.
Budenholzer quickly became the Suns’ choice after the dismissal of coach Frank Vogel, giving everyone about a week to familiarize themselves with coach Bud and what he’ll bring to the table.
The 54-year-old coach was the best candidate on the market, bringing championship experience and a history of regular-season success in both Atlanta and Milwaukee. But as always, there are questions with any new hire, and Budenholzer took to the podium with general manager James Jones to give a clearer picture of what to expect both on and off the court.
Here are the five biggest takeaways from Mike Budenholzer’s introductory press conference.
1. This job means more to Mike Budenholzer than anyone
There will be time in the coming months to dive deeper into Mike Budenholzer’s Arizona roots, but suffice it to say that becoming head coach of the Phoenix Suns means more to him than any other coaching vacancy in the league — and it probably meant more to him than it would have to any other candidate too.
“I think the biggest message I want you to hear, I would coach this team if it was on the moon,” Budenholzer said. “I would coach this team if it was in Alaska. If these players were in Denmark, these owners and front office, I would go anywhere to coach this team. That’s the most important thing for me. I’m excited about the roster, I’m excited about everything.”
As a native of Holbrook, Arizona, Budenholzer grew up watching and idolizing the Suns teams of the ’70s and ’80s. He often listened to Al McCoy call Suns games on the radio as well, so it was extra meaningful when McCoy made a surprise appearance to introduce Bud as the team’s new head coach:
“I don’t know what the word is, ‘surreal’ or ‘wild,’ to have Al kind of introduce me and to think about Alvan Adams at the elbows, Double-A and Sweet D [Walter Davis] and Paul Westphal, and my dad taking me in the backyard and teaching me Paul Westphal reverse-pivot into a pump fake to a step-through,” Budenholzer said.
Budenholzer’s roots in the state of Arizona run deep, starting with his 94-year-old father, Vince Budenholzer, who was in attendance for Friday’s presser. The “original coach Bud” coached the Holbook High School men’s basketball team to a state championship in 1971 and is a member of the Arizona High School Athletics Coaches Hall of Fame.
While his four children couldn’t be there due to graduations in the family this week, Budenholzer shouted out their support, as well as that from his brother, Jim, his partner, Lisa, and numerous other friends and family members from Holbrook. At a few points, coach Bud got choked up when talking about his family and his upbringing there.
“It’s just all that cliche, small town stuff, I don’t know, it happened in my small town,” Budenholzer said. “I absolutely loved growing up in Holbrook. It made me who I am today.”
There’s an obvious storybook ending in play, where the Arizona native — who denied the Suns their best opportunity at a championship as head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks during the 2021 NBA Finals — comes back home and helps Phoenix win its first ever NBA championship. Budenholzer is well aware of it, but doesn’t want that to be the focus.
“It would be special,” Budenholzer admitted. “But again, it’s gonna be special for every single person in this room, for every single person on the roster, whether you’ve won one championship or two championships or four or five, it doesn’t matter. When you win a championship, it’s special. And so certainly there’s a story, and I understand it and I appreciate it, but we’re gonna work every day to try and bring a championship to Phoenix, and I think everybody’s gonna be just as excited as I am if that happens.”
2. The will to compete won Mike Budenholzer the job as Frank Vogel’s replacement
At their end-of-season media availability, both James Jones and owner Mat Ishbia said they believed Frank Vogel did a “great job” considering the circumstances. They also pledged to evaluate everything, and about a week later, Vogel was let go. Just a few days after that, Bud’s name surfaced as his replacement.
When asked about what led to that sequence of decisions during their evaluation process, Jones pointed to a recurring buzz word: “compete.”
“I thought that that was an area of our team where we could be better,” Jones said. “‘Cause there were bouts where we didn’t reach our potential. A lot of that was just the inconsistency and our competitive nature. And so that’s something we wanted to rectify, and I believe we’re getting it right.”
Despite taking a week to have those conversations with Suns players and personnel about Vogel, firing one coach and hiring another occurred in rapid succession. Jones explained the thinking behind that, noting how Budenholzer’s interview nailed a few important traits they prioritized.
“By and large, we just felt the timing to shift was right,” Jones said. “We moved quickly to Bud, just because when we look at our roster and what our roster needs, he fits it. I’m a competitive guy, and we talk about this too: Throughout that process, Bud must have said ‘compete’ 95 times in two minutes. Compete at everything, compete in practice, compete with each other, against each other. Compete against your opponent, but more importantly, compete with yourself.”
That buzz word was on full display during Budenholzer’s presser too, especially when asked about the type of team the Suns want to be.
“At the end of the day, we want to be competitors,” he said. “We want to compete, compete, compete. That is our calling card. We want to be a team that plays unselfish. We want to be a team that stays together. And lastly, we want to be a team and players individually that are getting better every day. If we focus on what we’re doing each day, that’s what’s gonna give us our best chance to realize our potential to be a championship-level team.”
For Budenholzer, it all starts with the roster, which he believes gives them the ability to compete for championships right away. The new coach specifically mentioned Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal, Jusuf Nurkic and Grayson Allen, which makes sense, since Phoenix’s starting five from last season are all under contract and (theoretically, at least) set to return next year.
At last year’s introductory press conference, there was a lot of similar talk about building championship habits on a daily basis, being scrappy and building an identity. Most of those things never materialized, and Budenholzer acknowledged that the proof will be in the pudding.
“Talking about championships, it’s kinda meaningless,” Budenholzer said. “At the end of the day, talk is cheap. What you do every day is powerful. And so as I talk to our players, I talk to our ownership, our front office, everybody, ‘What are we doing every day to be our best?’ And that’s what’s gonna give us our best chance to win championships in Phoenix.”
3. Budenholzer plans to Hold the Big 3 accountable
For any team that has three superstar talents like Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal, “championship or bust” expectations will always be attached. It’s something the new Suns coach is aware of, and he won’t be backing down from that pressure.
“I’m excited about working with this roster and these players,” Budenholzer said. “We have great players, and with great players come great expectations. And I think to embrace that and understand how important it is is what we’re doing every day.”
In the playoffs, the Suns simply needed more from the Big 3. All season long, locker room leadership was a recurring topic of conversation. And according to multiple sources, Vogel rarely held his superstar players accountable to the same level as the role players.
It’s no surprise that “accountability” was another important buzz word, and one that Budenholzer plans to implement on this Suns team for players 1-15. In his mind, superstar players want to be held to task.
“I think the great ones want to get better,” Budenholzer explained. “They’re not content, they’re not happy with where they are. They want to keep getting better. So building a relationship with ’em, showing that you genuinely care about ’em, and then I would say coaching ’em. Coach ’em hard. That’s what I’ve seen for really all of my NBA life. I’m certainly trying to do it as a head coach. I’m not perfect, but my experience is you gotta coach your best players. You gotta coach ’em hard, you gotta demand of ’em, you gotta have high expectations for them. And usually they thrive.”
This element may be just as important to this head coaching position as anything Budenholzer could ever diagram from an Xs and Os standpoint. If he can secure that buy-in from all three of his stars, he’ll be able to push their extraordinary talents to the max.
Budenholzer referred to building that culture, identity and accountability throughout the roster as “vitamins” that come on a daily basis, from practices to games to shootarounds to film sessions to the weight room to everything in between. Part of that, Bud says, is calling attention to what this Suns team already does well before focusing on the areas where they need to improve.
Budenholzer has already had conversations with each member of the Big 3, and while he preferred to keep the nature of those talks private, he did mention their honesty, respectfulness and “super high basketball IQs.” Making sure his players feel heard while still being able to hold them accountable will be Bud’s biggest test in proving he’s the right man for the job.
“I think they know that I’m gonna have high expectations of them,” Budenholzer said. “I’m gonna coach ’em, I’m gonna hold ’em accountable. But that’s what I’m gonna do with everybody. And so it’s not any different. That’s kind of been my roadmap for coaching, whether it’s the best players or the entire roster.”
4. The Suns want to get up more 3s under Bud
Despite being a top-five team in 3-point percentage last season, the Suns only ranked 25th in 3-point attempts. In the playoffs, they were dead-last in attempts among all 16 teams, taking only 26.0 per game — right around the same number of attempts as last year’s playoff run, when they were also dead-last in attempts among all playoff teams.
This has been a problem for years now, under two different head coaches. Fortunately, Mike Budenholzer teams have typically shot a ton of 3s during his 10 years in the league:
“There’s gonna be philosophical approaches to how we practice every day, how important shooting 3s is, and the spacing and all the value and all the things that come from being a high-volume 3-point team,” Budenholzer promised. “I’m gonna work with the whole group to help them embrace it, understand why it’s important to us.”
Budenholzer also mentioned how the two things he learned from his dad were to press and to play fast. Pressing isn’t really viable in the NBA, but playing fast sure is, and it usually goes hand-in-hand with taking a lot of 3s.
It’s a point of emphasis not only for Bud, but for James Jones in tweaking the roster over the summer. When asked what he needs to give his new coach in order for the Suns to be successful, Jones was blunt.
“Those conversations will be ongoing, but as Bud said earlier, shooting,” Jones said. “For us, we need to shoot.”
The potential hurdle there is the Suns’ three best players typically prefer to operate in the midrange. They’re masterful from that area of the floor, so threading the needle between attempting more 3s without taking away from the Big 3’s strengths will be critical.
Budenholzer is aware Durant and Booker are two of the best midrange players in the NBA today — and possibly of all time, in his words. The goal is to supplement what they do well.
“They’re so talented, they’re so good at everything they do,” Budenholzer said. “I don’t want to take away from anything that they do. I want to add to what they do. I want to make them better. I want to push them to be their best, and what’s best for our team, and to get all of us to understand, how do we win? And there’s no doubt that these guys will know. I think 3s are a part of it, but we’re gonna do it from day one.”
5. Mike Budenholzer understands the point guard situation
Perhaps one of the biggest myths surrounding the Suns is their “need” for a starting-caliber point guard, but there’s no question they could at least use a backup floor general for whenever Booker and/or Beal are off the floor.
It’s been a source of frustration and frequent debate around this team ever since Chris Paul was traded away, and Budenholzer gave his thoughts on the subject in a scrum after his presser.
“There’s no doubt that we need to look at the whole roster and talk about point guard,” he said. “I’m sure it’s a hot-button here, whether it’s with you guys, the media, the players, the front office — we need to think about it. And we need to be able to play without one. We probably need to be able to have one.
“We need to be versatile. We need to be able to play different ways, bigger, smaller. But I think the point guard position has a place, and we’re gonna talk about it and figure it out. But I just know we’re gonna need to be able to play lots of different ways, including without a point guard.”
Budenholzer mentioned that Ishbia, Jones and team CEO Josh Bartelstein valued his opinions on roster construction and made him feel like he had a seat at the table. If coach Bud feels strongly about the Suns’ need for a point guard, there’s a decent chance Phoenix will try to acquire one.
However, their means for doing so are limited as a team in the second tax apron, which we’ve covered in full detail before. A backup point guard is a more realistic possibility, but landing a starting-caliber point guard who isn’t undersized, can play on or off the ball, can knock down open 3s, can defend opponents’ best guards and is affordable/available? That’s a nearly impossible combination of boxes to check off all at once.
Despite Jrue Holiday and Jeff Teague being “point guards” by position, Budenholzer is used to running offenses without a traditional point guard that handles the ball at all times. It sounds as though he’d value additional playmaking, but is also cognizant of Phoenix’s limited avenues to add it beyond a backup point guard.
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