5. Jay Triano
It was tough to separate Watson and the head coach who ended up taking over from him - again for one season - in Jay Triano, but he edges it for two reasons. The first is that he's currently an assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings, and anybody who is trusted by the much respected Mike Brown to help his team has to be doing something right.
The second is that he was only ever the interim head coach of the Suns - and in 79 games at the helm after Watson was given his aforementioned marching orders three games in - Triano went 21-58. Again though it's not like he had much to work with outside of Booker, with guys like Marquese Chriss and Greg Monroe on this roster.
here's the hammer play that Jay Triano drew up for the Malik Monk game-tying three. really nice play design using him as the trigger man & having him run a rub screen on PG before he runs off the back screens. Fox working the tightrope on the baseline before the pass was awesome. pic.twitter.com/o8yynaS3P6
— J r u e (@thatl0calguy) February 25, 2023
Really the most puzzling aspect of this is why the Suns let Triano kind of just float through the season with this group for as long as he did. They could have committed to him to be a long-term solution - although admittedly that wouldn't have worked out - or else gotten somebody else in midway through the season to try and turn things around.
The Suns weren't trying to win at this point, but the back-to-back-to-back of Watson, Triano and Kokoskov sent the franchise into a nosedive that it really only properly got out of once Chris Paul arrived. Just a completely uninspiring era of Suns basketball, with Triano the best of a bad bunch only because he was never signed to be the solution like Kokoskov and Watson were.