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Devin Booker has been the face of the Phoenix Suns franchise since emerging as a star in his second year in the league. However, it sounds like things could have gone differently, as a former head coach claims he stopped the organization from trading Booker away for Jimmy Butler. During a guest appearance on “Bucks+ Audio,” former Suns head coach Earl Watson, who coached the team in the 2016-17 season, claims that he prevented former team owner Robert Sarver from trading Booker to the Chicago Bulls in exchange for Butler. Watson says that he threatened to resign as head coach immediately if the deal went through. It never went through. “I said, ‘If you trade Devin Booker, I am resigning tonight,'” said Watson.
Earl Watson: So Jimmy Butler gets on the block. We're on a road trip. We land. Robert Sarver sends me a text. ‘Come to my house immediately.’ It's like two or three in the morning. I'm not trying to go to nobody house in no two in the morning. I'm trying to go home, right? [laughter] I pull up to the house. It's Sarver. It's Ryan McDonough. And Ryan kind of gave me a look like ‘here we go.’ So I sit down and he goes, "We have a trade." And I go, "What's the trade?" I'm first year head coach. I'm always looking for us to get better. I'm now learning if you don't get better, you are obvious tanking, right? So I go, "What's the trade?" He goes, "We have a trade for Devin Booker. We're going to send Devin to Chicago for Jimmy Butler." In that moment I am the biggest Devin Booker advocate, right? Would have been a hell of a team though: Eric Bledsoe, Tyson Chandler, Brandon Knight, Jimmy Butler. It could have changed my entire coaching trajectory, right? Q. But why weren't you rolling? Watson: I’ve seen I really seen a kid who could be one of the greatest players to ever play. And I sat there and I watched the kid work. I'm in the gym with the kid. I think coaches who don't get in the gym with their players, no matter what your position is as a coach, I think you lose imagination. You got to get on the court. You got to be in the workouts. You got to see what a player can actually do and cannot do. So when you get in the game and you draw up a play, you're confident in that play or you develop plays because you see something that you don't see in practice that you might see in an individual session. Right. So in that moment, Chris, and this was the beginning of the end of me in Phoenix. In that moment, Chris, I say, "If you trade Devin Booker, I am resigning tonight." So, we go back and forth. And right now I feel sorry for Ryan McDonough because he is like ‘oh sh*t.’ I’m like I do not want to trade Devin Booker. You can build around him, I don't want to be the coach that traded potentially one of the best two guards, say five to 10 to ever play. I believe he had that potential. He had superstar potential.
Phoenix Suns majority owner Mat Ishbia has countersued two Suns minority owners, saying that they insisted he buy out their ownership shares "at an exorbitant premium," according to a copy of the complaint obtained by ESPN. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Delaware State Court. The two Suns minority owners are Scott Seldin and Andy Kohlberg, both of whom were holdovers from the previous regime under former Suns owner Robert Sarver. Seldin and Kohlberg sued the team in August, alleging that Ishbia has refused access to internal records. ESPN previously reported that the Suns sent a letter in August to Kohlberg and Seldin, in which the team said that the two men demanded that the Suns buy their ownership share for $825 million, a figure that would place the team's value at about $6 billion -- a 60% increase from the value when Ishbia bought his controlling interest in 2023.
You may recall when the league suspended former Suns governor Robert Sarver for a year and fined him $10 million in 2022, after a 10-month investigation by Wachtell, Lipton into allegations of a toxic work environment for women and minorities in the Suns’ organization, LeBron James and Chris Paul expressed disappointment with the NBA’s discipline. If cap circumvention is found in the Clippers’ case, many of the league’s other teams want the Clippers to pay, significantly. “Either you have a severe punishment,” a longtime NBA executive said Tuesday, “or you’re giving everyone a road map of how to do it.”
Wachtell Lipton is the same law firm the NBA used to investigate two high-profile cases of misconduct by team owners — both of whom were later forced to sell their teams. In 2014, the law firm investigated former Clippers owner Donald Sterling for accusations of numerous racially insensitive remarks made about NBA legend Magic Johnson, revealed by TMZ. In 2022, the firm investigated former Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver for multiple instances of inappropriate language or behavior after an ESPN report on the matter.
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Amare Stoudemire: I wanted to stay in Phoenix and was trying to negotiate with the previous owner, but he was trying to create this whole football-style contract where nothing was guaranteed. I’m like, ‘Wait, what? Hold on a second. I just led the team in scoring, rebounds, and blocks. We lost at a buzzer-beater—Kobe hit the shot, Ron Artest scored at the last second—and we could’ve gone to the Western Conference Finals off one shot. Run it back! Me and Nash had a great season.’ "And then he says, ‘Well, I want to try this.’ And I’m like, ‘Man, I’ve got no time for trying nothing. I just led the team in points, rebounds, and blocks. I’m not going to be the guinea pig. I’m not the guinea pig. Pay that!’ So, because he didn’t want to work that out, I decided to go elsewhere."
After former owner Robert Sarver sold the Suns’ former G League affiliate, the Northern Arizona Suns, to Detroit, it wasn’t long before the Suns became the only NBA organization that didn’t have its own G League affiliate. Josh Bartelstein was part of the Detroit organization that bought the Suns’ G League affiliate, but now he can say he helped bring the G League back to Phoenix. “Ironically enough, I was the one on the other side buying the team from the Suns and getting it to Detroit, and now three years later, I’m here,” Bartelstein laughed. “It’s really, really important. I mean, the G-League is a staple of many NBA franchises.”
Between the Suns, Phoenix Mercury and now the Valley Suns, Bartelstein and owner Mat Ishbia have completed the holy trio of professional basketball teams in the state of Arizona. It’s something Ishbia mentioned on his first day as owner in a one-on-one interview with PHNX Sports, and now the Suns will get their opportunity to utilize an important team-building tool. “Obviously James Jones and myself have talked about, from day one, the impact the G League can have,” Bartelstein said. “Players on our team from Bol Bol, Grayson Allen and Damion Lee, you’re seeing more and more players start their careers in the G League and grow, learn our system, learn how we want to play it, and one day contribute at the high-up stage of playing in NBA games, NBA playoff games and hopefully winning an NBA championship.”
Duane Rankin: "I think the wallets are different." Shawn Marion when comparing Mat Ishbia becoming team owner and having Big 3 of Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to when Robert Sarver was the team owner with Steve Nash, Amar'e Stoudemire and himself. #Suns pic.twitter.com/aqyh6MJEZw
"I think the wallets are different."
— Duane Rankin (@DuaneRankin) December 16, 2023
Shawn Marion when comparing Mat Ishbia becoming team owner and having Big 3 of Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to when Robert Sarver was the team owner with Steve Nash, Amar'e Stoudemire and himself. #Suns pic.twitter.com/aqyh6MJEZw
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr has become a shareholder in Real Mallorca, the LaLiga club said Tuesday. Mallorca reorganised its ownership structure last month, with president Andy Kohlberg becoming majority shareholder after acquiring the shares of former Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver.
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Disney boss Bob Iger was prevented from bidding on the Phoenix Suns because of a deep-seated grudge held by the NBA team’s disgraced former owner against the media tycoon, The Post has learned. Robert Sarver, who was run out of the league after Disney-owned ESPN exposed Sarver’s history of workplace misconduct, refused to allow Iger to take part in the auction. “No sales book, no Non-Disclosure Agreement, no conversation,” a source close to the situation said.
New owner Mat Ishbia targeted Bartelstein as CEO to help him overhaul a troubled post-Robert Sarver organizational culture and now they'll work together to oversee the franchise's business and basketball divisions, sources said. Suns president of basketball operations and general manager James Jones will continue to lead basketball operations and report directly to Ishbia, sources said.
An NBA spokesperson confirmed The Republic's initial report Robert Sarver was still suspended despite selling the two franchises, saying Wednesday the suspension is "active" and will last for the yearlong duration. The suspension began Sept. 13, 2022 when the league announced the findings of a 10-month investigation. However, Sarver's representatives contend a phrase in those documents prove the suspension should have ended with the sale to billionaire mortgage lender Mat Ishbia.