Coaching the Phoenix Suns hasn’t come with much job security lately. In 2023, they fired Monty Williams two years after he got them to the NBA Finals. In 2024, they fired Frank Vogel one year into a five-year contract. On Monday, they did the same to Mike Budenholzer. Now, in what is becoming an annual spring tradition, we speculate on who will take over what has become one of the NBA’s most difficult jobs.
The obvious question here is what Phoenix will prioritize. The last two hires were seemingly about defense. Vogel and Budenholzer both have reputations for getting the most out of limited defensive talent. The talent in Phoenix, ultimately, proved too limited. Meanwhile, by all accounts, Vogel and Budenholzer lost the locker room room. That locker room will almost certainly look very different next year, but in light of all of the reporting and the frankly obvious body language Suns players displayed on the court down the stretch this season, someone who can get the roster to buy in is probably a good place to start.
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We can start by ruling out a few names that tend to populate lists like this. Matt Ishbia, a walk-on for Michigan State’s 2000 national championship team, would probably love to hire Tom Izzo. If Izzo was going to jump to the NBA, it would have happened by now. Chauncey Billups was another name that has been frequently speculated as a possibility in Phoenix, but he just extended in Portland. That takes two names off of the board, but the next five all make some measure of sense.
Willie Green
For now, Willie Green remains the head coach in New Orleans. However, the reporting at this stage indicates that David Griffin’s replacement in New Orleans will have a say on whether or not that remains the case. By all indications, Joe Dumars will ultimately be the next top basketball decision-maker for the Pelicans. His stance on Green is not clear. The two have never worked together; Green played for five NBA teams, but none of them were run by Dumars.
Green may not have ties to his new boss, but he certainly has them to Phoenix. He was an assistant under Monty Williams with the Suns before he took the Pelicans job, and by all accounts he was well-liked. If the goal here is to find a long-term partner for Devin Booker in leading the franchise, bringing back a coach who was around when the Booker version of the Suns peaked makes plenty of sense.
Kevin Young
Hey, speaking of glory days candidates, Kevin Young was also an assistant under Monty Williams in Phoenix. He was very nearly the hire in 2023, with multiple reports suggesting he would be the pick until Ishbia threw a curveball and hired Vogel. That decision obviously hasn’t worked out, and Young has since moved on. He now coaches BYU in his home state of Utah, and the job is pretty desirable. With Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith bankrolling the program, he has had access to top prospects like Egor Demin and, next year, AJ Dybantsa.
Still, Ishbia regarded Young highly enough to make him the NBA’s highest-paid assistant in 2023. Young was regarded as one of the NBA’s best offensive assistants and one of the key designers of the pick-and-roll heavy scheme Booker and Chris Paul took all the way to the 2021 Finals. If he’s at all open to a return to the NBA, he should be a strong candidate in Phoenix.
Michael Malone
Suns insider John Gambadoro has already said that he doesn’t expect either of the NBA’s recent surprise firings, Taylor Jenkins or Michael Malone, to be the next Suns coach. Jenkins is a pretty obvious no. He came up as a Budenholzer assistant, first in Atlanta and then Milwaukee. It stands to reason that the Suns wouldn’t want to go back to the same coaching tree after this season’s disaster.
But, given Phoenix’s recent hiring trends, Malone has to make the list. In 2023, the Suns hired Vogel, the 2020 championship coach. In 2024, he hired Budenholzer, the 2021 championship coach. The 2022 championship coach, Steve Kerr, is not available and likely never will be. So we skip ahead to the 2023 championship coach, Malone, who figures to draw quite a bit of interest on the coaching market this season given his work in Denver. He doesn’t come with the same obvious, stylistic advantages that Budenholzer and Vogel did, which makes Malone hard to evaluate. He had Nikola Jokić, and “having Nikola Jokić” is not a replicable playing style. So we don’t really know what a Malone regime in Phoenix would look like, but his track record alone gets him on the list.
Royal Ivey
Young and Green make sense primarily as Booker-centric candidates. And, well, Booker as the priority makes sense. He’s the homegrown superstar here, and the youngest of the three max players Phoenix has united over the past few years. Ishbia has said himself that he plans to keep Booker. Virtually everyone has reported that Kevin Durant is expected to be traded this offseason. But what if the trade market proves soft and the Suns decide they’d rather try to mend their relationship with the 2014 MVP?
The obvious Durant-centric candidate would be Royal Ivey, a long-time friend who attended the University of Texas a few years before Durant did, played with him in Oklahoma City and coached him with both the Thunder and Nets. Ivey is now a highly regarded assistant under Ime Udoka with the Rockets, and his work as the head coach for the South Sudanese National Team turned heads at the Olympics in Paris. He will be a head coach eventually, and if the Suns want to figure out things with Durant, it could be in Phoenix.
David Fizdale
David Fizdale was a Budenholzer assistant last season, but doesn’t have the same ties to him that Jenkins does. He came up in Miami under Erik Spoelstra, had turns as the head coach for both the Grizzlies and Knicks, and then joined Vogel in Los Angeles. He followed Vogel to Phoenix, and, notably, stayed after Vogel was fired. Rarely will an assistant survive a regime change unless he has strong support from within the locker room.
Fizdale historically has. He was a favorite of LeBron James in Miami, and other players have sung his praises as well. If the idea here is to get a players’ coach who can stabilize all of the dissent in the locker room over the past few years, Fizdale is a candidate the Suns know quite well.
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