Nine days before the start of the 2018-19 regular season, the Phoenix Suns, by virtue of their trigger happy owner Robert Sarver, has fired their General Manager. Who should be on the list to replace Ryan McDonough?
Sometimes when a team has a meddling owner things work out fairly well (no one would negatively call Jerry Colangelo a micro manager even though he owned and generally managed the team for over a decade before nepotistically hiring his own son to replace himself) although sometimes things just don’t work out, like the Phoenix Suns now and Robert Sarver.
And when things don’t work out, the buck is passed ’round and ’round until a fall guy takes the blame for things going wrong.
Love him or hate him, Ryan McDonough is Robert Sarver’s fall guy, and even though he appears to have been on the path of rebuild, the path that the two men agreed upon several years ago, apparently not having a starting caliber point guard heading into the 2018-19 season was just not good enough and McDonough’s time in Phoenix abruptly came to an end.
Fortunately Sarver has someone in house who had been groomed for the past season and is able to step right in in an interim bases in James Jones, although as is commonly Sarver’s M.O. with most important hires, Jones has never been a general manager and is stepping into the role having only been out of sneakers and into dress shoes for one year.
Does this mean that he is not ready for the job?
Of course not. He was the Secretary Treasurer of the NBA’s Players Association and has been in a front office role with Phoenix being groomed by the man he was brought in to eventually replace.
But that doesn’t mean that he should be the only option for the Phoenix Suns and that Sarver shouldn’t at least branch out and at some point interview several other candidates to see if they would be equally if not not more qualified to handle the job.
This is a list of the top-five candidates that Robert Sarver should consider as his next full-time General Manager of the Phoenix Suns.