Suns owner Mat Ishbia vows to be 'extremely active' in front office decisions going forward, per report

The Phoenix Suns had a disastrous 2024-25 season, which meant it was little surprise when the team cleaned house after seeing the most expensive roster in the league miss the playoffs. 

Brian Gregory was promoted as the new general manager after James Jones was moved to a senior advisor role, and then Jordan Ott was hired as their new coach after Mike Budenholzer was fired after one season, like Frank Vogel before him. The challenge for Gregory is to figure out how to reshape the roster by maximizing the return on a widely expected Kevin Durant trade, as they have little in the way of assets otherwise. For Ott, it will be getting the most out of whatever the roster ends up looking like after this summer's dealings, as a full-on rebuild seems unlikely. 

Suns hire Jordan Ott: Cavaliers assistant is team's third head coach in three years, inherits messy roster

Jasmyn Wimbish

Both of them will have to do that with a very prominent voice in their ear, as owner Mat Ishbia plans on being even more involved in the day-to-day operations of the team. According to Gerald Borquet of PHNX, Ishbia sent an email to the Suns basketball operations staff vowing to be "extremely active" after feeling he had tried "getting out of the way" since purchasing the team in 2022. 

According to another source, Ishbia emailed the Suns basketball operations team internally on Wednesday, taking accountability for not doing enough to establish a culture and identity in Phoenix. The Suns owner stated that he tried "running the typical NBA owner playbook" of "hiring experts, signing checks and getting out of the way," but no one was happy with the outcome.

Now, despite insisting that he is not reviewing film, designing offenses or running the draft room, Ishbia intends to be "extremely active in the decisions and management." He acknowledged his more unconventional approach as an owner is to ensure the Suns get back to the requisite level of winning that's been absent the last few years.

If there is one thing sports fans love to hear, it's that their team's owner is going to take a more prominent role in front office decision-making. 

The most surprising part of this is learning Ishbia didn't feel like he was involving himself in decision-making beforehand, when many of Phoenix's moves seemed to have ownership's fingerprints all over them. Aside from that, it's never shocking when an owner -- especially one who views himself as a Basketball Guy as Ishbia does -- decides the solve for his team's problems is that he needs to be more involved. The promotion of Gregory, who has no experience as an NBA GM but was an assistant coach at Michigan State when Ishbia was a walk-on, was the first sign that ownership would be raising its influence on the front office. 

We'll find out soon enough what Isbhia's vision is for the team now that he's going to take on a bigger role in decision-making, but in saying this, he no longer has anyone to shift blame to if things go poorly. The positive spin for Suns fans is that it'd be hard for things to go worse than they did last year.