Mat Ishbia doesn't sound very bright

[Sealab2024]

If I'm James Jones I'm handing in my resignation as of today. There's no chance Jones has any autonomy to make decisions and that in fact, ishbia is the one making bad decisions that then go on James' resume. I'm not having some fan with billions ruin my post player career.

1) Your not walking way from your guranteed contract
2) If you just bail on this franchise after getting swept, nobody is going to lining up to hire you
3) At the end of the day he is still the GM, so to openly admit that you had no control any of these trades would just make you come off as incompetent

#1) these dudes are millionaires, they don't need to work bad jobs.
#2) if you bail because you're not being allowed to do your job, everyone would understand.
#3) it's not incompetence if your boss straight out tells you what you have to do. Word is Jones hated the Beal trade and tried desperately to talk ishbia out of it, but Matt overruled him. Just on that alone I'd walk away.

[NyKnicks1714]

If I'm James Jones I'm handing in my resignation as of today. There's no chance Jones has any autonomy to make decisions and that in fact, ishbia is the one making bad decisions that then go on James' resume. I'm not having some fan with billions ruin my post player career.

1) Your not walking way from your guranteed contract
2) If you just bail on this franchise after getting swept, nobody is going to lining up to hire you
3) At the end of the day he is still the GM, so to openly admit that you had no control any of these trades would just make you come off as incompetent

A couple of good points, but being the president/GM of a team whose owner is making the basketball decisions and not making good ones is a no-win situation. Sadly it's probably best to stay, collect your checks, and be a yes-man.

[dhsilv2]

I can't listen to 25 minutes of this...but he's hardly dumb. He's doing the classic things are fine speech and trying to highlight where he sees strengths beyond what other see. And he did fine with that.

Maybe it's a cultural difference but to me it sounds like an average intelligence guy on cocaine.

I worked in banking...those guys just sounded less smart because of the coke!

[dhsilv2]

If I'm James Jones I'm handing in my resignation as of today. There's no chance Jones has any autonomy to make decisions and that in fact, ishbia is the one making bad decisions that then go on James' resume. I'm not having some fan with billions ruin my post player career.

1) Your not walking way from your guranteed contract
2) If you just bail on this franchise after getting swept, nobody is going to lining up to hire you
3) At the end of the day he is still the GM, so to openly admit that you had no control any of these trades would just make you come off as incompetent

#1) these dudes are millionaires, they don't need to work bad jobs.
#2) if you bail because you're not being allowed to do your job, everyone would understand.
#3) it's not incompetence if your boss straight out tells you what you have to do. Word is Jones hated the Beal trade and tried desperately to talk ishbia out of it, but Matt overruled him. Just on that alone I'd walk away.

Not a lot of owners would be excited to work with someone who leaves when the owner steps in.

[NZB2323]

First and foremost, Mat Ishbia is a salesman. He’s going to be selling people on the Suns 24/7.

[NyKnicks1714]

If I'm James Jones I'm handing in my resignation as of today. There's no chance Jones has any autonomy to make decisions and that in fact, ishbia is the one making bad decisions that then go on James' resume. I'm not having some fan with billions ruin my post player career.

1) Your not walking way from your guranteed contract
2) If you just bail on this franchise after getting swept, nobody is going to lining up to hire you
3) At the end of the day he is still the GM, so to openly admit that you had no control any of these trades would just make you come off as incompetent

#1) these dudes are millionaires, they don't need to work bad jobs.
#2) if you bail because you're not being allowed to do your job, everyone would understand.
#3) it's not incompetence if your boss straight out tells you what you have to do. Word is Jones hated the Beal trade and tried desperately to talk ishbia out of it, but Matt overruled him. Just on that alone I'd walk away.

You're looking at other owners with rose-colored glasses. They don't want someone who's tried to challenge an owner's decisions and left when he couldn't run the team the way he wanted to, even if that would have been better. They want someone who's easy to work with.

[phanman]

If I'm James Jones I'm handing in my resignation as of today. There's no chance Jones has any autonomy to make decisions and that in fact, ishbia is the one making bad decisions that then go on James' resume. I'm not having some fan with billions ruin my post player career.

1) Your not walking way from your guranteed contract
2) If you just bail on this franchise after getting swept, nobody is going to lining up to hire you
3) At the end of the day he is still the GM, so to openly admit that you had no control any of these trades would just make you come off as incompetent

#1) these dudes are millionaires, they don't need to work bad jobs.
#2) if you bail because you're not being allowed to do your job, everyone would understand.
#3) it's not incompetence if your boss straight out tells you what you have to do. Word is Jones hated the Beal trade and tried desperately to talk ishbia out of it, but Matt overruled him. Just on that alone I'd walk away.

1) How is being the President and GM of the Phoenix Suns a bad job? - This a career minimum level journeyman than grinded through the ranks to rise to this position. - You don't just walk away from that type of role, especially given that he is making more than he did during his playing career
2) He is allowed to do his job, your making up theories that James is some sort of puppet to Ishibia. Did Matt force his hand on the KD deal? - Yes, but it's not like Jones wasn't trying to bring KD in either.
3) I would love to see this article/proof that Matt overruled him. He's still the president/GM at the end of the day, so he was the one responsible for making the trade. There have been plenty of hands-on owners in the past and there will continue to be. Any GM/President worth a lick, know when its a bad decision and go against an owner's wishes.

[Hans1984]

Guess what ?

[BobbyPortisEyes]

I can't listen to 25 minutes of this...but he's hardly dumb. He's doing the classic things are fine speech and trying to highlight where he sees strengths beyond what other see. And he did fine with that.

Maybe it's a cultural difference but to me it sounds like an average intelligence guy on cocaine.

I worked in banking...those guys just sounded less smart because of the coke!

Question: Kevin (Durant) after game four spoke to an inconsistency in the style of play from your perspective what led to these inconsistencies and what led to the team not being able to sustain those efforts over the course of full games?

Answer: Yeah, you know, we all watch the game. I watch every minute of every game just like I'm sure a lot of you guys do. Umm and obviously there sometimes you look at our team and say who's going to stop us and then sometimes you look and say like how are we going to score next, you know? And that is that give-and-take but don't forget the way I look at it is the other teams have players too and coaches too, right? And some people are like "oh you got all these guys" but like they're professional athletes too and their job is to stop our professional athletes and so I think there's always a lot of things we got to look at you know you can look at the execution on the floor, you can look at roster construction, you can look at coaching, you can look at leadership, you can look at the other team and so there's so many pieces so it's hard to pinpoint one thing and once again James is the best at it he knows that stuff inside out and I defer to him on, you know, the in-game stuff that you want to talk about or the coach Frank Vogel on in-game stuff but umm as a fan and as a viewer like you guys and what I see you know we have great players, great team and we won 49 games. Not where we want to be, not where we want to go, but like championship or bust.. like this isn't bust, like we're in a great position we're going to be in a great position next year and and the fans like hopefully are really excited about what next year looks like because it's going to be great and hopefully it's better than this year and that's the goal and that's my job and that's all of our jobs.

[dhsilv2]

Maybe it's a cultural difference but to me it sounds like an average intelligence guy on cocaine.

I worked in banking...those guys just sounded less smart because of the coke!

Question: Kevin (Durant) after game four spoke to an inconsistency in the style of play from your perspective what led to these inconsistencies and what led to the team not being able to sustain those efforts over the course of full games?

Answer: Yeah, you know, we all watch the game. I watch every minute of every game just like I'm sure a lot of you guys do. Umm and obviously there sometimes you look at our team and say who's going to stop us and then sometimes you look and say like how are we going to score next, you know? And that is that give-and-take but don't forget the way I look at it is the other teams have players too and coaches too, right? And some people are like "oh you got all these guys" but like they're professional athletes too and their job is to stop our professional athletes and so I think there's always a lot of things we got to look at you know you can look at the execution on the floor, you can look at roster construction, you can look at coaching, you can look at leadership, you can look at the other team and so there's so many pieces so it's hard to pinpoint one thing and once again James is the best at it he knows that stuff inside out and I defer to him on, you know, the in-game stuff that you want to talk about or the coach Frank Vogel on in-game stuff but umm as a fan and as a viewer like you guys and what I see you know we have great players, great team and we won 49 games. Not where we want to be, not where we want to go, but like championship or bust.. like this isn't bust, like we're in a great position we're going to be in a great position next year and and the fans like hopefully are really excited about what next year looks like because it's going to be great and hopefully it's better than this year and that's the goal and that's my job and that's all of our jobs.

Honestly doesn't sound that different from listening to an earnings call with a CEO and CFO fielding questions...

[Lalouie]

I wish I was as richly bright

[Phystic]

They have draft picks but they'll probably lose them in 2 years considering their horrible cap situation so they'll be worth a 2nd round pick. And that's not even the worst quote from that article. He thinks they're in a great position. The delusion is off the charts.

"Let's be real -- ask the other 29 GMs [in the NBA], 26 of them would trade their whole team for our whole team and our draft picks as is," Ishbia said. "The house is not on fire. We're in a great position. It's not hard to fix. We have enough talent to win a championship."

I'm not sure 15 teams would trade situations. Let alone 26.

Honestly this was the only thing I really thought he was off base.

The rest obviously he's putting his PR spin on it but I don't think he's way off with most of it.

[Mr Peanut]

They have draft picks but they'll probably lose them in 2 years considering their horrible cap situation so they'll be worth a 2nd round pick. And that's not even the worst quote from that article. He thinks they're in a great position. The delusion is off the charts.

"Let's be real -- ask the other 29 GMs [in the NBA], 26 of them would trade their whole team for our whole team and our draft picks as is," Ishbia said. "The house is not on fire. We're in a great position. It's not hard to fix. We have enough talent to win a championship."

This to me is the most damning quote. These playoffs have proved that Suns are not even a top 10 team in the NBA and then there's another handful of teams that are currently worse but have a much brighter outlook.

The Suns have Booker, but then a almost 36y/o declining Durant, Beal who is now a mediocre player on the worst contract in the league and then a lot of mid talent that won't take them anywhere. And very little control over their picks. I would think that's a bottom 5 situation to be in.

[shangrila]

They have draft picks but they'll probably lose them in 2 years considering their horrible cap situation so they'll be worth a 2nd round pick. And that's not even the worst quote from that article. He thinks they're in a great position. The delusion is off the charts.

"Let's be real -- ask the other 29 GMs [in the NBA], 26 of them would trade their whole team for our whole team and our draft picks as is," Ishbia said. "The house is not on fire. We're in a great position. It's not hard to fix. We have enough talent to win a championship."

I'm curious which teams he thinks wouldn't make this trade.

In theory, OKC obviously wouldn't given they're a better team now with a significantly better draft pick portfolio. Denver is the reigning champs without any significant pick debt, so they also shouldn't. And Boston I think has some traded picks but is obviously a better team as of now. So there's 3.

But that overlooks the Wolves, who just blew the Suns out in embarrassing fashion, not to mention teams like Dallas, younger on-the-rise teams like Orlando and also Memphis, who's making a comeback next year.

[magee]

He needs to take a good and long look at draft picks and player development, since Devin Booker is the only player on the roster who was drafted by them. Just trading for "established" players doesn't mean they can build chemistry because they play the same game and just think a coach can make it all work. Don't think he realizes how much goes into it.

Guess what, unless they find a taker for Durant who can net a defensive presence at the 4/5 and a PG who can fit next to Booker, they're going to have to have an even more uncomfortable discussion: trading Booker since he'd bring back the best return.

[LeBronSpaghetti]

[Jamaaliver]

[Karate Diop]

All I'm going to say is, keep doing what you're doing Matt. The Nets need those picks to be good

Trade for Kuzma or Poole or something next bro.

[kenwood3333]

A 44 yr old with 8 billion net worth certainly is at least brighter than the majority of working class out there

[bwgood77]

They have draft picks but they'll probably lose them in 2 years considering their horrible cap situation so they'll be worth a 2nd round pick. And that's not even the worst quote from that article. He thinks they're in a great position. The delusion is off the charts.

"Let's be real -- ask the other 29 GMs [in the NBA], 26 of them would trade their whole team for our whole team and our draft picks as is," Ishbia said. "The house is not on fire. We're in a great position. It's not hard to fix. We have enough talent to win a championship."

Yeah, that's one of the most ridiculous things I've heard. Starting with the KD trade he started to make me worried, and it's only gotten worse from there, and his comments after getting embarrassingly eliminated are absurd.

The Suns hadn't been swept in a 7 game series since 1989, and that was in the WCF to the championship Lakers with MVP Magic..in KJ's 2nd year.

They had never been swept in a 7 game series in the first round.