The Phoenix Suns express disappointment in their season’s performance Monday after parting ways with coach Mike Budenholzer. (Photo By Daniella Trujillo/Cronkite News)
PHOENIX – Entering the 2024-2025 season, the Phoenix Suns seemed to have found exactly the right guy in new coach Mike Budenholzer. He was born and raised in Holbrook, grew up a Suns fan and won an NBA championship three years earlier – beating the Suns in the NBA Finals as coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.
He even described the job as a “dream” when he was introduced by late longtime broadcaster Al McCoy as “one of the highlights of the Suns’ entire history.”
The dream didn’t last a year.
Budenholzer was fired after going 36-46 and missing the playoffs in his only season, the team announced Monday. The decision marked the Suns’ second straight year firing a coach after one season with the team. Frank Vogel was dismissed after finishing 49-33 and being swept by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the playoffs last season.
The organization released a short, pointed statement expressing frustration with the 2024-25 season.
“Competing at the highest level remains our goal, and we failed to meet expectations this season,” the Suns said in the statement. “Our fans deserve better. Change is needed.”
Change has been the only constant during the Suns’ recent history, including the past three seasons with Mat Ishbia as owner. The team has fired three head coaches in the last 23 months, dating back to the end of Monty Williams’ tenure in May 2023 and in every offseason since Ishbia bought the Suns during the 2022-23 season.
With the exceptions of Williams and Earl Watson, who lasted just three games into his second season as full-time coach, four of the previous six Suns coaches were fired after one season.
Although Budenholzer took the job with expectations to improve on Vogel’s 49-33 campaign, the team regressed, most notably on defense. The defense slipped from 13th in points allowed to 22nd, and the net rating flipped from 3.1 to -3.0. Facing the league’s toughest schedule down the stretch, the Suns lost eight straight games by double digits to seal the team’s fate.
Before Budenholzer’s firing, guard Bradley Beal expected changes to be on the way.
“It is disheartening. It is unfortunate,” Beal said after the team’s final home game Friday. “Nobody’s more pissed off than we are as a team, but we know Mat’s going to demand some changes. We just got to be ready to hear what he wants to do.”
More changes could follow.
As trade rumors swirl around Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal’s future in Phoenix, the Suns face a critical offseason with key decisions looming after Mike Budenholzer’s firing Monday. (Photo by Brendon Pricco/Cronkite News)
Trade rumors have engulfed All-Star forward Kevin Durant since he was nearly traded to the Golden State Warriors in February, and will likely continue until the team makes a decision this offseason. Additionally, Beal’s contract situation, injury history and on-court play have created doubt about his future with the team, although the path to finding a new team for him is much more difficult due to a no-trade clause in his contract.
The contract was negotiated by Beal’s agent, Mark Bartelstein, whose son Josh Bartelstein is the Suns’ CEO.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, team officials said Budenholzer had issues connecting with the team. Despite an on-court argument between Budenholzer and Durant during a game on March 4, Durant and multiple players voiced support for Budenholzer and the team’s chemistry as the season progressed.
“There’s a lot of other moments that you don’t see that works towards great team culture,” Durant said during a practice on March 26. “We wish we had more W’s to pile on top of that to make the whole chemistry-brotherhood thing sound better, but regardless of the losses, I think our bond as teammates has grown.”
On April 8, six days before Budenholzer’s firing, Grayson Allen said that “it’s easy” to place blame on the coach for the team’s record, but that a lot more goes into the situation.
“I know that where our record is at right now, he’s obviously not happy with, and I don’t think anybody in this organization is happy with it,” said Allen, who previously played with Budenholzer in Milwaukee. “You can do a bad job and win a lot of games. you can do a good job and lose a lot of games.”
Allen added there are “a million reasons” for the Suns’ disappointing season, with blame falling on the players’ execution. He brought up recent firings of the Memphis Grizzlies’ Taylor Jenkins and the Denver Nuggets’ Michael Malone as examples of records not being a good representation of a coaching job.
“They seem like guys who have done a great job, which is what I mean,” Allen said. “You would look at those teams and think that the coaches have done a good job with them, but it’s crazy how fast this league moves on from people now.”
Despite rumors surrounding Durant and Beal, the Suns seem to remain committed to returning to title contention with a team built around guard Devin Booker.
While the Suns haven’t announced a search for Budenholzer’s replacement, Jenkins and Malone are two qualified candidates on the market that fit Ishbia’s win-now approach. Jenkins went 250-214 with the Grizzlies despite a handful of injuries the past two seasons, and Malone went 471-327 in 10 seasons with the Nuggets, including a championship in 2023.
“The small glimpses of good stretches that we’ve played I know gave me hope and probably gave everybody else hope,” Booker said. “You never want it to be that you’re squeezing into the last spot of the play-in in the first place.”
