Is Robert Sarver prepping to sell the Suns?

Clue Number Two: No Outside Head Coach

When the Suns fired Earl Watson, they didn’t hire anybody from outside the organization.

Granted, the Suns rarely do hire from outside, and since they didn’t have any intention of firing Watson so quickly the odds are that they didn’t have any chance to line anyone up fast enough to make such a snap-decision hire anyway.

But teams have brought in interim coaches in the past with the knowledge that management would seek their future head coach from outside the organization, taken a week or two to go through the process (there is no doubt in my mind that McDonough has a list ready of possible replacements he would like to target, he just probably was not in a place to line up a series of interviews on a whim) and then hire the next head coach several weeks after the prior one was fired.

Had McDonough done all that, then he would have made it more difficult for a new owner to place his stamp on the poor franchise right away because he would have been stuck with the new head coach, and not had the chance to hire his own. Most importantly from a financial position, if that new head coach wasn’t working out, or the new owner didn’t like him, it would be the new owner that picked up the tab and not Robert Sarver, who would be as far away from the Suns as possible by that point.

Hiring Jay Triano and publicly pronouncing that he would remain in place for the rest of the year gives a new owner the chance to make his own decision after this season ends without any negative financial repercussions as a result.