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In the short term, in the long term, large and small; Ryan McDonough did it all.
Just one week from the start of their season, the Suns on Monday dismissed McDonough, their general manager, for more than five years. The epitaph of his tough mandate should read as follows: "He made all the possible mistakes, yet he still was not responsible for the dysfunction of the Suns."
Just as high school guards should study Magic Johnson and Chris Paul's tapes, future basketball leaders should recall McDonough's many blunders. Indeed, his roadmap represents a plan for not leading a team, and McDonough's greatest weakness is a rich debate. Talent assessment? Culture put? Organizational control? Balance of the composition? Asset management? Vision?
McDonough's missteps had a way of making their way into the sagas. Take Eric Bledsoe, who experienced difficulties during contract negotiations, found himself in a three – headed battle, was shut down for long periods during the tank season, and then sent home while he was out. he was tweeting out of the city. In the end, Bledsoe was traded for pennies on the dollar. While the league's major franchises were working hard on their best players, McDonough spent years finding new ways to alienate his own.
Or Brandon Knight, who was acquired for a first-round pick, has crowned the franchise's leader for the future, and won a $ 70 million five-year deal before losing the face of the planet during both seasons. seasons or more with the Suns. This summer, Knight was discreetly relinquished to Houston in a deal against Ryan Anderson, even though Anderson's deal seemed immeasurable and McDonough had no other leader on the list. Best of all, McDonough is separated from a 2018 first round pick and a 2021 first round pick to pick up his original first round pick. Google "Launch good aftermath", and McDonough's face should appear.
Or Isaiah Thomas, who signed a deal and was quickly shipped to Boston to buy peanuts, where he became an NBA player. Even when McDonough discovered something that other leaders did not do, he reacted differently and failed to profit from it.
Remarkably, the project was just as bad. McDonough used Alex Len in 2013 in the top five. He chose a slow center, while the NBA lived at the time. Len came out for nothing this summer. In 2016, he cashed in commercial assets and broke the barriers with Dragan Bender in 4th place and Marquese Chriss in 8th. The selection of two long-term projects with line-up issues seemed highly questionable at the time, and Phoenix's constant coaching changes made it worse. Only two years later, Chriss left and Bender's career is based on support for life.
The 2017 Phoenix lottery selection, Josh Jackson, did not have an immediate impact as a rookie, and his number 1 pick in 2018, center Deandre Ayton, will be ripe for a second rundown given High level playmakers selected behind him. McDonough's only win – Devin Booker in 13th place in 2015 – will enter his second five-year, up to $ 158 million contract without playing a significant match.
From Thomas to Bledsoe, through Goran Dragic and Markieff Morris, one of the recurring themes of the McDonough era in Phoenix was the exhilaration of players once they moved on to other thing. McDonough explained what should be done to target the guys who play hard and want to be in Phoenix, but he did not show much ability to follow him. He also did not provide constant support to his coaches. In 2015-2016, he stood idly by before the mutiny of Jeff Hornacek, who waited months before issuing a beautiful pink slip. Hornacek's unsuccessful successor, Earl Watson, has had a full season in which he has made little progress before being knocked out in only three games of the 2017-2018 season.
But Watson's impulsive shooting and McDonough's untimely departure speak directly to the source of all the Suns' troubles: owner Robert Sarver. In recent years, Sarver has given way to "mistakes" and has publicly acknowledged that "basketball decisions are not easy to make." Despite this modest transparency and accountability, Sarver has always proven that he had no idea how to manage his key personnel. invest in his organization, or take a course.
Last year, his plan was to make Booker and one of his other young prospects an All-Stars player by 2020, then compete for great free agents this summer. It only lasted three games. Watson was sacked on the first day, pushing the Suns into a new campaign half full of tanks.
This year's plan was to make Booker and Ayton a pair of rising stars and to surround this duo of veterans such as Trevor Ariza and Ryan Anderson, who could provide an indispensable structure. New coach Igor Kokoskov has been called upon for offensive ingenuity, and the Suns could get a little closer to respectability while being much more watchable. However, Sarver gave up the plan architect just one week before the start of the season.
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McDonough's background includes many punishable offenses, but the timing does not make sense. He should never have gotten an extension in 2017, when he'd just got to know the Bender / Chriss case, a poorly designed run at LaMarcus Aldridge as an independent agency and the awful Tyson Chandler deal . But if Sarver believed that the time had come to count, he should have fired McDonough before this summer, so his replacement could have weighed in the crucial decision to place Ayton at the forefront, the decision to separate from one another. future first choice, signing Ariza, trading Anderson and hiring Kokoskov. Who knows? Maybe if he had fired McDonough in April, Sarver would now have a real leader.
Instead, Sarver did what he had done before: he did a major reshuffle with poor timing and in the absence of a clear successor. Now, his franchise will hang under the "interim" cloud again and his new head coach will not know anything about it. As for his players? Those who have been there for years may naturally fall back into a paralyzing state of mind: "Here we are again". Many new ones should call their agents, and some should consider preparing their Bledsoe-esque tweets "I do not want to be here". And Ayton? Um good. Welcome to the NBA tour.
And that's why McDonough's mandate will be remembered as the ultimate uplifting story. He messed up the selections in the repechage, made bad deals, made stupid contracts, juggled with coaches and lost control of his team several times along the way.
McDonough's worst mistake, however, was his first mistake, and it was the one that condemned him: he pledged himself for the wrong boss.
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