McDonough Needs to Keep Quiet

I believe Ryan McDonough is a talented executive that has much to offer an NBA organization.

He has proven to be a good evaluator of talent by drafting Devin Booker and T.J. Warren in the late lottery and stealing Eric Bledsoe from the Clippers. McDonough has also been a thoughtful steward of the Phoenix Suns payroll. He proactively locked up Isaiah Thomas, the Morris twins, and Eric Bledsoe before the spike in the salary cap, collected future draft picks and accumulated talented young players on their low cost rookie deals.

The Suns should be in a good position to improve for many years to come with McDonough in charge. That is as long as he develops one more skill: how to shut the heck up.

Eric Bledsoe’s decision to quit on Suns is both heartbreaking and understandable.

Phoenix Suns

The organization and Bledsoe both let each other down. Bledsoe continued to improve his offensive game but never became an effective distributor and regressed significantly on the defensive end. Perhaps most frustrating for Suns fans was that Bledsoe rarely approached a faceoff with another star point guard with a desire to prove his superiority.

The Suns organization, for their part, never successfully surrounded Eric with players that complemented him or had a coach who installed an effective offensive structure. The team’s decision to shut down Bledsoe for the final 20 games of last season certainly didn’t help the issue.

McDonough is right to be upset that Bledsoe turned his back on his teammates and employer.  However the remarks he made on the radio does much more damage to the Suns organization than it does to Bledsoe.

McDonough must have hoped that only Bledsoe would hear the comments he made on Monday on Arizona Sports 98.7.

“I think if he says he wants to be a leader, that’s the opposite of what a leader does and the opposite of what leadership is”

Unfortunately for McDonough, and for all Suns fans, 450 NBA players heard his comments as well as did every player’s agent and 29 other franchises that are potential trade partners. NBA players heard a GM blame the organization’s failures on a respected player who has no prior history of defiance. Who do you think these players will be empathetic towards? The man with the tie and corner office lashing out or a fellow player that just wants to compete and be in a position to optimize his income?

It’s a player’s League…Act accordingly

The NBA is increasingly becoming a player’s league. Organizations no longer own and control a player – they only have temporary custody. An organization must continually prove itself to be a desirable location and worthy of a player’s talent and effort. McDonough clearly understands Bledsoe’s contractual obligation to the Suns but he appears to miss what an NBA team’s implicit obligation is towards their players. Give them an opportunity to 1) succeed during their 10-15 year careers 2) earn enough to support themselves for their remaining 40-60 years of life and 3) preserve their reputation and dignity.

Bledsoe believed that the shutdown of veterans last year and the team’s continual rebuild was creating an obstacle of his personal goal of a successful and lucrative career. That is, of course, debatable. What is not debatable is that McDonough’s comments will be perceived by players and agents as a violation of his obligation to treat players with respect.

Next: ESPN called out Robert Sarver

McDonough should have already learned this lesson. Dragic, Isaiah, Morris and now Bledsoe…who’ll be the next player to wrong the organization?