CBS Ranks Suns’ front office among the worst in the NBA

CBS’s Sam Quinn ranked every single NBA team’s front office. See where Phoenix stacks up to the competition.

CBS’s Sam Quinn took the time to rank all 30 front offices in the NBA. He did a ranking back in February, where the Suns came in at 28th overall. Not much has changed since then for the Suns in-house.

Spoiler alert: They moved up! (a little)

The Phoenix Suns didn’t necessarily “revamp” their front office as expected this summer, despite that being the implied messaging in the end-of-season presser.

All they did was rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Brian Gregory was promoted internally, and Josh Bartelstein remained with the organization. James Jones stayed on board in a “new” role until taking a job with the NBA office. They moved on from Coach Bud as expected, but outside of that, most of the changes have been roster-related.

As Mat Ishbia famously stated: “I’ve tried running the typical NBA owner playbook — hiring the experts, signing the checks, and getting out of the way — and none of us were happy with the outcome.” That quote won’t help this ranking.

Photo by Jeff Haynes/NBAE via Getty Images

Quinn had the Suns previously ranked at 28th overall, with only the Kings and Bulls behind them. They were in the “I can’t even defend what you’re doing” tier.

In this updated version, he moved the Suns up a spot to 27th overall. Progress! The Pelicans dove headfirst from 13th to 30th in this ranking, moving past the Suns and moving them up a slot.

Here is the clump of teams they are ranked near:

• 25. Toronto Raptors
• 26. Dallas Mavericks
• 27. Phoenix Suns
• 28. Sacramento Kings
• 29. Chicago Bulls
• 30. New Orleans Pelicans

As you can see, they are sandwiched between the Kings and Mavs at 27, which, to be honest, feels about right with how the past few years have gone. I still think what the Mavs did deserves to move them even lower, and no, I do not care about their fraudulant lottery win.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the energy to defend the Suns’ ranking.

Here’s what Quinn had to say. He did not hold back and went right at the front office. I made comments beneath each point in bold to add my thoughts.

Jordan Ott is a qualified first-time NBA head coach. He is also a former graduate assistant at Michigan State, which raises questions about the process that led to his hiring, considering just how many Spartans are in the building right now. New general manager Brian Gregory did not have NBA front office experience prior to joining the Suns last summer. He was a collegiate head coach who made the NCAA Tournament twice in 19 years. But, like Ott, he was a former assistant at Michigan State, not coincidentally overlapping with Mat Ishbia’s time as a walk-on for Tom Izzo. The Suns are by no means the only team to so blatantly operate in this manner. Hell, the Knicks are No. 6 on this list and are built on Leon Rose’s CAA connections. But Rose took a bad Knicks team and made it good. Ishbia took a good Suns team and made it bad, losing the benefit of the doubt that Rose has long since earned.

This is well-put. Ott, on his own, was never a bad hire. But given the surrounding context and the Michigan State ties, it was always going to be viewed as a “connection hire.” That’s something he will have to live with, and I hope he has a chip on his shoulder because of it. We need someone hungry looking to prove people wrong.

The difference between the Knicks and Suns was a great way to lay it out. If you’re going down this route, sure, but make sure it works. So far, it hasn’t.

The degree of control Ishbia seemingly exerts over basketball decisions is extremely concerning. Earlier this offseason, he made the bizarre suggestion that he had, at some point, been a hands-off owner. “I’m not the conventional NBA owner and I don’t want to be,” he said. “I’ve tried running the typical NBA owner playbook — hiring the experts, signing the checks, and getting out of the way — and none of us were happy with the outcome.” It’s worth asking here what period he was specifically referring to. Ishbia officially gained control of the Suns on Feb. 7, 2023. On Feb. 9, they traded for Kevin Durant, with rumblings suggesting that Ishbia played a substantial part in those negotiations.

This quote is the one that set the NBA media world on fire and probably sent a chill down Suns fans’ spines.

It pairs nicely (horribly) with this gem in 2024: “Ask the other 29 GMs— 26 of them would trade their whole team for our whole team and our draft picks and everything as is,” Ishbia said Wednesday, per The Athletic’s Doug Haller. “The house is not on fire. We’re in great position. It’s not hard to fix. It’s not like we’re like, ‘Hey, we don’t have enough talent to win a championship.’ We have enough talent to win a championship.”

This has aged like milk. Let’s hope the quote above that one doesn’t.

Rarely does it make sense for an owner to be this heavily involved in basketball decisions. The best ones trust their basketball people to act in their long-term interests. Ishbia has done the opposite. His track record is one of impatience. He’s never kept a coach longer than a year. He waived-and-stretched the two remaining years on Bradley Beal, offering immediate financial relief, but leaving five years’ worth of dead money on their books.

“Impatience” is a fair reputation for this regime. Let’s hope “aligned” becomes the next buzzword in Quinn’s update next February.

Even the midseason trade with Utah reeked of desperation. They swapped an unprotected 2031 first-round pick for three lesser, protected first-rounders several weeks before the deadline. Utah general manager Justin Zanik immediately called that pick “the most valuable asset on the market.” Why not wait until the deadline to see if you could have done better with it? What was the point of rushing into that trade then? The same could be said of some of the secondary swap trades they made. Orlando got Desmond Bane in part because Phoenix offered them swap rights on the lesser of their own or Washington’s 2026 first-round pick, giving the Magic a premium pick to dangle to the Grizzlies in those negotiations. All the Suns got in return were three low-upside second-rounders. Could they not have waited a bit just to get a better sense of how valuable those swap rights might actually have been?

This is just how the Ishbia Suns operate. Every move is shortsighted. Not surprisingly, the team seems to get worse every year. Having someone in a prominent role outside of his Michigan State orbit to offer a different perspective would probably go a long way, but Ishbia has stayed within his comfort zone, and the result is one of the bleakest long-term outlooks in basketball.

This is not holding any punches back. I think it’s fair criticism.

Despite the strong draft and promising young core they’ve assembled in this pivot/retool or whatever you’d like to call it, there’s still a long way to go.

Read the full story here: NBA front office rankings: OKC on top, Lakers and Mavericks low on list, new team falls behind Bulls at No. 30

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