Mat Ishbia finally takes ownership of his Suns mistakes

The Phoenix Suns moved a step closer to competitive basketball returning to The Valley on Tuesday, with their 2025-26 media day taking place at Footprint Center. The first individual to take to the podium to speak to the assembled journalists and bloggers was owner Mat Ishbia, and he had a lot to say about the state of the franchise.

Before diving into any of that he also gave a nice nod to the Phoenix Mercury, the WNBA team he also owns and who are have made the final four of the postseason. Back to matters for the Suns and it was clear Ishbia had accepted that this coming season is going to be a different one in Phoenix, with the roster no longer being judged on how many games they win.

Ishbia accepts they got a lot wrong in trying to build winner with Suns.

As part of his opening monologue, Ishbia correctly mentioned how the Mercury had been able to build the right culture and foundations from the moment he took over. What he means here is that the Mercury did not dramatically improve right away, and only last offseason with the arrivals of Alyssa Thomas and Satou Sabally did they edge closer to contention.

This is in direct contrast to the Suns, who skipped a ton of team building steps in swinging for Kevin Durant and then compounding that decision by trading for Bradley Beal. On top of all of that, moving on from Deandre Ayton - and unfortunately Toumani Camara - to add Jusuf Nurkic was perhaps the biggest disaster of all.

Ishbia has now learned his lesson with the Suns, and he is now going to have to build a roster from the ground up around Devin Booker. This is what he inherited when he bought the organization - a team that had grown up together and made it all the way to the NBA Finals in 2021 - but he clearly didn't see the importance of that at the time. It is clear he gets it now.

Which is why it was refreshing to take ownership of the mistakes - which to his credit he has also done in the past - en route to explaining that more patience will be required this time out. This is exactly what first year head coach Jordan Ott would have wanted to hear, although the addition of a franchise legend might complicate that.

So while the Suns will be lucky to win 35 games and although the fit between Booker and Jalen Green looks clunky, the team finally have a clear direction that they are headed. There are 11 new players in town, all of them younger than Durant was the day he left for the Houston Rockets. The future will be brighter, it is just going to take some time to get to.