Head Coach Jordan Ott Phoenix Suns Practice Media Availability | 10-20-25

Ah, what’s up y’all? Bigger group today. Y, you know, got to the point of now you can prep 14. What’s what you guys get done today? And what was Jaylen able to do today if anything? Yes. Still no live play for Jaylen. Um, we still kept it ourselves today. You know, the prep will start tomorrow, which is still, you know, a day earlier than normal. cleaned up some stuff from the scrimmage. Kind of just got back to to our big rocks, our habits, and then we didn’t play player on player today. We just did uh player on coaches. How how close in terms of what progress has he made since reinjured? Yeah, he’s still taking it. I mean, it obviously progress has been made, but still taking it day by day. Again, it’s those soft tissues. You don’t know exactly where it’s at. Um you know, you’ll see him do work before practice. Um, still I think it’s that same same timeline. He won’t be there opening night. And then looking at Mars now, he said he’s ready to go for the opening to see him now when he’s going from the start of July 1st to now. How are you feeling about the ramp up to get you can I think you’ll be able to see too just his added strength out there and you put him on the floor just his his size. Um, again patrolling the paint offensively, putting his head on the rim and defensively just being in there deters people even driving, players even driving. So you could definitely feel his physicality right off the bat. Coach, what have you most enjoyed about the coach of this team so far? A lot of guys have talked about how much they’ve enjoyed being in the gym, the competitive nature of practices. We got nicknames, villain juniors, all the above. Just what have you enjoyed about this team so far? I think it’s that it’s the competitive nature of the group, I think. And then it’s contagious. You know, when your leaders are are built like that, I think it just bleeds throughout the whole roster. Um, then we got young guys that that think the same way. So, it’s it’s almost empowering for some of those young guys when the the veterans are bringing it out of the group. Those young guys feel even more empowered to to be themselves, to be the competitive players that they are. I know it’s a few days away from opening night, but just how excited are you to kind of get rolling and any thoughts that you have as opening night kind of approaches? I think today was you it just felt different. You know, you could almost flip the page from the preeason. Um I think we’ve had different stages like this throughout the summer and today was another stage that we kind of closed and now it’s a focused time of year that you want to go out and perform. Um you know there’s there’s that anxiety or that energy, whatever you want to say, um for the whole group. And I think we don’t know exactly where we’re at. You know, we’ve had a good preseason. We’ve seen some things that we’ve wanted to put into our system. Now we’ll see, you know, for sure three games and four nights to open this thing. We’ll see exactly where we’re at. Colin being annoyed Dylan Jr. by Dylan. Do you see a villain tendencies that need to be uh molded and shaped? I don’t even know what that means. Like he’s just a competitive guy out here. Like it’s just it’s easy to see why those two connect by how hard they play. They’re all about the right stuff. They’re all about winning. So, it’s no surprise that, you know, Dylan kind of has taken Colin under his wing. Um, but yeah, they’re both two of our, you know, competitors and I think we have multiple. I think we have a big group of competitors that are out there that maybe will have some offspring as we go along that that are, you know, that’s that’s what we want to be about just in general. So, it’s no surprise that those two have connected. Coach, it was Houston uh who said they’re going to start two bigs to start with their two centers. Small goal was on the range a couple years ago. Now we’re seeing more double big lineups. What do you think about We talked about this immediately for sure, but the ever shifting sort of shape that the league continues to take with like where guys play. Yeah, I think they, you know, it’s no surprise they had some success with it last year to try it out early in the season. Um, you know, that’s that’s what’s best for their roster to start. You know, we’re going to do what’s best for our roster at the start of the year. But you are it’s kind of constantly moving um trying to figure out what’s the best solution on a nighttoight basis, but also what’s best for your group. And you know, I’m sure we’ll figure out some of those solutions as we go forward. We haven’t tried any of that, you know, in games so far, but we’ll see how we progress. I I I love our center depth in general, and at the end of the day, you want your best players on the floor, so we haven’t seen any of that in games, but it might be something, you know, later in the season. Do you feel like you have good options to go big or small just depending on what you need for a matchup? I do. I I think we have enough depth in the roster to really try to test both sides out. Um, you know, it’s it’s the same. It’s whatever five we have on the floor, we’re looking to beat the other five on on the other end. So, whatever it might be a more defensive group, might be a more offensive group. I don’t really view it as small or big. It’s just the five guys on the floor beat the other five guys. That’s the goal. what you just said about playing double bigs, like not committing to it, but you’re open to the idea of like whatever the team needs, right? Yeah. I’m open to winning whatever games out there and playing the best that we can. So, whatever it takes that night to win the game, that’s what we’ll do. Jordan, last year, uh, you were part of a Cleveland staff, a Cleveland team that opened up with 15 straight wins, which is amazing. Can you What do you remember about that run and just how that unfolded? I remember what we did in the preseason. We were 0 and4 in the preseason. So to start the season out like that, I think there was a couple early close games in New York. I definitely remember even opening night we struggled in Toronto turning a ball over and then it just started to snowball. Um then before you look up 15-0 going into Boston in a big game. I remember remember that night too. So it just kind of the momentum just kept going and then it was like a healthy spirit of the group. that kept it going and even when times didn’t feel great early in that season, you knew that the process was right. Um the guys were clicking, they were all together. We didn’t know we’d start out 150 cuz we we didn’t know in the preseason. We thought we’d be pretty good. Um we were 0 and4 to start it. Is is winning the only way to kind of get that kind of spirit within a team? I don’t think so. I think uh I think this building has a large impact in it. uh keeping the energy and environment when these guys step in here win or loss that this is a place that they feel comfortable being themselves and they feel like they can develop and they want to be here and they want to spend time here. That’s the goal. I think we found some of it here early but again the test is going to come. Um and we want to keep that energy and this enthusiasm that we have right now going forward every time they step in this building. about having generated world definition all those things feel like it all emanates from having culture established curious for you what have you learned about establishing the culture how you kind of implemented those things good question I think I always say like the culture the identity that’s like a result of the dayto-day habits that we all do so I don’t think you think about the end of what it looked looks like or what it feels like. You just know when you’re in it, you feel a certain type of way. Um, yeah. I mean, I’m going to reference a lot from last year. Like, we didn’t know. You didn’t know until you started the games and it started to go, you knew you had high character players. I know we have high character players. I know we’re going to play super hard. Um, and I think you just build off of that. You build off your strengths. You build off what you’re preaching. uh if you have to adjust some of the concepts or some of the things that you’re doing, you got to adjust. You got to be open enough to adapt as the season goes on to what fits your group the best. Thanks. Good. Thank you.

Head Coach Jordan Ott speaks with media following Phoenix Suns practice on October 20, 2025.

#SunsUp

Subscribe to get all the latest Phoenix Suns Content: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLxlWVVHz2a8SdCfxzVXzQw

Connect with the Phoenix Suns online and on Social:
🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/suns/
🔵 Twitter: https://twitter.com/Suns
🟣 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suns/
💻 Website: https://www.nba.com/suns/?tmd=1
🟢 TikTok: @phoenixsuns
🟡 SnapChat: phoenix suns

🎟️ Join us for a Game: Suns.com/Tickets

2 comments
Leave a Reply