The Phoenix Suns Owner Just Got Exposed For Fraud

The Phoenix Suns Owner Just Got Exposed For Fraud

Uh these two minority owners sued him over the summer. Has not performed well, although they’re playing pretty well this season so far. They still have Deon Booker. Yeah, Matt Ishbia uh I mean cannot catch a break since he’s p the Suns. You know, it has not been a good year for NBA owners. I mean, between the Steve Balmer scandal and what Adam Silver is currently dealing with with Congress as a result of the recent gambling scandal, the fact that Mattishbia is now caught in a scandal of its own is not good for the NBA. And this story might be the craziest. We’re talking about a billionaire who spent $4 billion to buy the Phoenix Suns. A guy who immediately traded for Kevin Durant. a guy who would eventually say this, the other 29 GMs, 26 of them would trade their whole team for our whole team and our whole and our draft picks and everything as is. Like, and if you think those swings and misses weren’t bad, now he’s being accused of fraud, of treating the Phoenix Suns like his personal piggy bank. And get this, the lawsuit claims he might have accidentally set a trap and walked right into it himself. Now, before I get into these fraud allegations, and trust me, they’re absolutely insane, I got to take you through how Mattis Beia managed to destroy one of the most talented rosters in NBA history in just 2 and 1/2 years. Then, we’re going to make our way to the lawsuit because once you understand what he did to his team on the court, what’s happening off of the court and in this lawsuit is going to make a lot more sense. So, real quick before we get to the content, we are still running jersey giveaways on this channel. All you have to do to enter, subscribe, and turn on my notifications. Here’s our previous giveaway winner. He showed me some love on Instagram. I want to show him some love back. 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And thank you Arena Club for sponsoring today’s video. Mic check 1212. What’s going on everybody? All right, we got to set the stage here. On February of 2023, Madeshbia officially takes control of the Phoenix Suns. And this is probably the most iconic way to ever take control of the team. He paid $2.28 billion for a 57% controlling stake, buying out Robert Sarver, who got forced out after all of that workplace misconduct stuff came out. For those of you guys that don’t know who Mattispia is, the guy is the CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage. He turned it into the biggest mortgage lender in the country. Forbes has him worth about $7.9 billion. So when this guy shows up in Phoenix talking about how he’s going to do whatever it takes to win a championship, people actually believed him. And bro, on this guy’s first day as the owner of the Phoenix Suns, he pulled off one of the most shocking trades we’ve ever seen. A blockbuster trade for Kevin Durant. The price was insane. He traded Muel Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jay Crowder, four unprotected first round picks, plus a pick swap. All of it going to the Brooklyn Nets. At the time, I’m not going to lie, it kind of made sense. You’ve got Devin Booker, you’re adding Kevin Durant, you have Chris Paul, two of the best scorers on the planet, one of the best playmakers in NBA history. It’s championship or bust, right? But here’s where things started going left. And I need you to pay attention to this part because what happens next sets up everything that comes later. So, the Suns go into the 2023 playoffs with Durant. They face Denver in the second round and they lose in six games getting blown out in games five and six. Now keep in mind Denver was the eventual NBA champion. Nicole Joic was absolutely cooking everybody. Losing to them wasn’t exactly a shock. But what was a shock was what Mattisbia did next. He fired Monty Williams. Now some Suns fans were on board with this but this is the guy who took the Suns from being a complete joke to the NBA finals in 2021. He won coach of the year in 2022. His record in Phoenix was 194 wins and 115 losses. The man built a culture there and Mattishbia fired him after losing to a team that won the whole thing. According to Woge, Mattbia made this decision himself. ESPN initially reported that Ishbia has fully taken over the franchise’s basketball operations. So, this wasn’t James Jones making the basketball decisions. This was the owner calling the shots. The only other team that I could really think of that does this is the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones. And that’s in football. I don’t think there’s any team in the NBA that does this. Now, I know what you might be thinking. Mike, maybe he learned from his mistakes. Maybe he’s going to adjust and make some good decisions soon, but it would get worse from here. Mattis would double down, and what he did that summer might be the worst trade in Sun’s history, but we’re going to get to that in a sec. So, in the summer of 2023, fresh off of firing Monty Williams, Ishbia makes another massive move. He trades Chris Paul. You know, the guy who literally got them to the finals for Bradley Beal. The package going to Washington was CP3, Landry Shamut, five future second round picks, and four first round pick swaps. And Beal had a $251 million contract and a no trade clause, meaning if things go bad, they can’t even move him without permission. Mattishbio was hype, though. He said, “Bradley Beal is one of the best players in the NBA, and he brings so much to our team, including incredible work ethic, great character, and the mindset of a champion. We are committed to bringing an NBA championship to Phoenix.” Here’s a fun little detail. You know who else was apparently involved in pushing CP3 out? Isaiah Thomas. You know, the Hall of Famer that happened to destroy the New York Knicks in the 2000s that is historically one of the worst GMs in the NBA. CB3 himself told the New York Times that Mattisbia and Isaiah Thomas wanted to go in a different direction. So now you’ve got Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, and Bradley Beal. Three guys all making over $50 million a year. The most expensive roster in NBA history. This all sounds great on paper, right? Problem was they had no depth, no real point guard, no flexibility to improve the roster. They were completely capped out above the second apron. But Ishbia didn’t care. He was convinced he built something special. So, you fast forward to May of 2024 and the Suns just got absolutely embarrassed. Swept in the first round by the Minnesota Timberwolves. Four straight losses. This super team experiment is clearly failing. So, what does Hshia say? Well, he just doubled down again. The other 29 GMs, 26 of them would trade their whole team for our whole team and our whole and our draft picks and everything as is. Like, the fact that he said this after his team got swept after the fact that they didn’t have any depth or a playmaking guard on their roster is just hilarious. Like I understand looking at the Miami Heat big three of the early 2010s and thinking that you’re building the same thing here. But one detail people tend to forget about that big three is the fact that all three of those players, LeBron James, Chris Bosch, and Dwayne Wade took a pay cut so they could add depth to the roster. But that’s besides the point. After the sweep, Ishbia blames his head coach Frank Vogle. Frank Vogle was 49 and 33 in his only season, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. So, they bring in Mike Budenhozer, Arizona native, championship coach, the guy who literally beat the Suns in the 2021 finals with Milwaukee, and they gave him a 5-year, $50 million contract. So, you would think this is the guy who’s going to fix everything, right? Well, not so much. The Suns went 36 and 46, missed the playoffs entirely, finished 11th in the West, lost their last eight games by double digits, and they blamed Coach Bud for it all. He got fired after one season. So if you’re keeping count at home, that’s three head coaches fired in three years. Monty Williams, Frank Vogle, and Mike Benhoer. All of them championship level coaches. Two of them winning NBA championships. All of them gone. And Mattbia is still on the hook for paying like $18 million combined to Vogle and Boonhozer next season for not coaching. So, at this point, you’re probably familiar with the story, and you probably are thinking, “All right, Mike, this basketball stuff is really bad. But what about the fraud allegations that you brought up in the beginning of the video?” Well, that’s where this comes in. You see, in the summer of 2025, after missing the playoffs with the most expensive roster ever, Ishbia finally waves the white flag. He trades Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets. The return, Jaylen Green, Dylan Brooks, the 10th pick in the draft, and a bunch of second rounders. That’s it for a guy who many consider one of the greatest scorers ever. The superstar Ishbia went allin for just two and a half years earlier is gone. KD even found out about the trade while he was on stage at Fanatics Fest in New York. Fans started reacting to the news and KD just smiled and said and Bradley Beal, the guy with the mindset of a champion, they bought him out. The Suns are now paying $19.4 $4 million of dead money to be every single year through 2030 while he goes and plays for the Clippers. Let me break down the full damage here. In just two and a half years, Mattis turned Mikuel Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jay Crowder, Chris Paul, four first round picks, four more pick swaps, multiple second round picks into Jaylen Green, Dylan Brooks, and some late picks, and nearly $100 million of dead cap space. The Suns don’t control any of their own first round picks between 2026 and 2031. They’re still paying three fired head coaches. Their franchise cornerstone, Devin Booker, just watched all of his teammates get shipped out. All right, so that’s the basketball disaster. And honestly, that alone would be enough for us to dub this as one of the worst ownership runs in NBA history. But there’s more. Because while all this was happening on the court, there’s been another storm brewing behind the scenes. And this week, it finally exploded. Mattisbia is now facing a lawsuit accusing him of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and treating the Phoenix Suns as his personal piggy bank. And you guys, the allegations for this thing are wild. Let me break it down for you. So, here’s what’s happening. Two minority owners of the Phoenix Suns, Scott Seldon and Andy Colberg, just filed a lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court accusing Ishbia of some really serious stuff. Now, before I get into what they’re claiming, let me give you some context. When Ishbia bought the team in 2023, there were 16 minority partners in the ownership group. He offered all of them buyouts based on a $4 billion valuation. 14 of them took the money and bounced, but Seldon and Coberg, they stayed. They’ve been invested in the Suns for over two decades. And apparently, they didn’t like what they were seeing under Ishbia. So, they started asking questions, requesting access to financial records, and according to them, Mattishbia didn’t want to give them answers. This is now the seventh lawsuit filed against The Sun since November of 2024. Seven lawsuits in one year, but this new one might be the most damaging. Let me walk you through the allegations one by one. And stick with me because the details of this are absolutely insane. All right, so first up, we have the capital scheme, and this is the biggest one. Back in June of 2025, Ishbia issued something called a capital call. Basically, he told all the owners they needed to put more money into the franchise, and he gave them just 10 days to come up with the cash. The threat was if they didn’t pay in time, their ownership shares would get diluted. That sounds very aggressive, but here’s where it gets interesting. The lawsuit claims that Mattisbia himself missed the deadline. He didn’t fund his share on time, and then according to the filing, he tried to hide it from the other owners. The lawsuit says he eventually partially funded his share on June 9th, a full week after the deadline, by converting an old loan into equity. But here’s the thing. According to the operating agreement, if Ishbia missed that deadline, he was supposed to offer the minority owners the chance to buy the units he failed to fund. That would have diluted his stake in the team. The minority owner’s attorney, Michael Carlinsky, put it like this, and I personally love this quote. Ishbia blundered into the very trap he set for the minority owners and faced a devastating dilution of his ownership interest if his failure was discovered. A failure that would wipe off his net worth and put his continued status as an NBA team owner and governor in jeopardy. So pretty much this man set up a trap for his minority owners so he could dilute their shares and he walked into it himself and then he allegedly tried to cover it up. If this is true, that’s absolutely wild. But that’s just the first allegation. The next allegation is pretty blatant. Last month, the Suns renamed their arena Mortgage Matchup Center after signing a 10-year, $115 million naming rights deal. Guess who bought those naming rights? United Wholesale Mortgage, Matt Ishbia’s own company. So, Ishbia owns the team and his other company is paying the team for advertising. The lawsuit alleges he sold these naming rights to himself without properly disclosing the details to the minority owners. Think about what that means. The minority owners are paying their share of operating costs while Ishbia’s mortgage business gets all the advertising exposure. The team’s money is flowing right back into Ishbia’s other company. The lawsuit puts it bluntly. Ishbia has blown through the Sun’s money for his own gain. He plans to use the naming rights and a sponsorship agreement to reap the benefits for his mortgage business where he actually makes money. But wait, there’s more. The lawsuit also claims that Ishbia extended a loan to the Suns at an interest rate that was far above market. So, he’s essentially charging the team, a team that he owns, higher interest rates than they could get anywhere else and profiting from it. There’s also an allegation about the Phoenix Mercury’s practice facility. According to the filing, Ishbia leased the facility from himself at undisclosed rates. Again, more money flowing from the team to Ishbia’s other interests. The next one’s even more interesting. The lawsuit mentions something called the Player 15 Group, an entity that allegedly holds assets that should rightfully belong to the Phoenix Suns. Now, Ishbia publicly announced Player 15 group back in 2024 as a holding company for his sports stuff. The Suns, the Mercury, the G-League team, the Arena. He said it was all about unifying these businesses under one brand. But the minority owners seem to think that there’s more going on. They’re suggesting team assets may have been improperly transferred to this entity. We’ll have to see what comes out in Discovery on that one. Oh, and I almost forgot this next part. The lawsuit mentions that Ishbia himself built a $20 million clubhouse called the Rhra Room, and the minority owners have been footing their share of the bill. The filing says that Ishbia has spent wildly on player and coach contracts, incurred massive tax penalties from the NBA, and built himself an expensive clubhouse to hold court and hand out favors to his guests, with his co-owners footing their share of the bill. Meanwhile, the lawsuit claims the Suns and Mercury have been operating at a net loss since Ishbia took over. So, he’s allegedly spending the team’s money on luxury stuff for himself, while the franchise bleeds cash. Now, here’s something that makes this all this more concerning, and the minority owner’s attorney specifically brought this up. Back in April of 2025, the Ohio Attorney General filed a completely separate lawsuit against United Wholesale Mortgage, Ishbia’s company, accusing it of predatory practices. That lawsuit, which is about 650 pages long, by the way, claims UWM colluded with mortgage bankers to funnel loans back to himself while charging borrowers above market rates and fees. According to the filing, from 2021 to 2023, UWM issued around $65 million in mortgages to Ohio residents through brokers who directed 99% of their business back to UWM. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yos said, “Buying a home is hard enough without having to worry about a lender scheming behind your back.” This predatory business practice has no place in Ohio. WM called it a PR stunt and said they’re seeking sanctions against the attorneys who filed it. But when you’ve got a state attorney general and minority owners of your basketball team both accusing you of fraud at the same time, that’s a lot of smoke for there to be no fire. So, what’s Mattishia saying about all these allegations? Well, through a spokesperson, he’s denied everything, saying, “This isn’t a lawsuit. It’s a shameless shakeddown dressed up as a legal process.” The Suns put out a statement saying that from day one, Mattisbia was transparent that he was trying to do things differently. Contrary to how the team was previously managed, Matt made it very clear that he would invest significantly into the Suns and Mercury. He told all the investors that they could step up with him or sell their stake and step aside. Coberg and Seldine stayed in and now they’re trying to freeload off of the value that Matt created. Ishbia even went on Draymond Green’s podcast and said, “I told him, instead of suing me, why don’t you just write me a letter and say, “Thank you. Your investment’s worth more.” Right? His argument is that his investments have increased the franchise’s valuation from $4 billion to $6 billion. And that the minority owners are just upset because they tried to get him to buy them out at a premium and failed. Now, here’s the thing that’s absolutely wild to me. Of course, Mattispia did a horrible job managing the Phoenix Suns assets, but after trading KD, buying out Bradley Beal, firing three coaches, and now facing fraud allegations, guys, the Phoenix Suns are actually in the midst of their best season since Mattishbia bought the team. Through 18 games of the 2025 to 26 season, Phoenix is 11 and seven. Vegas had them projected to win just 31 games all year, and they’re already on pace to beat that. Dylan Brooks is averaging a career best 21.4 4 points per game. Jaylen Green set a franchise record with six three-pointers in his debut and dropped 29 points. That’s the second most for his Suns debut behind Charles Barkley. Devin Booker finally looks comfortable again. First year head coach Jordan Odd has this team playing with the natural energy and identity, something that they never had during their Super Team era. So, you’ve got this bizarre situation where the team is finally showing real promise on the court while their owner is fighting fraud allegations in court. It’s almost poetic. Ishbia spent billions of dollars chasing a championship with superstars and the team might actually be better off without them. So, where does this go from here? While the lawsuit is proceeding in Delaware Chanceri Court, the minority owner’s attorney says they believe that the evidence will show up that Ishbia’s failed capital call could result in a substantial reduction of his ownership interest in the Suns. If that happens, if the fraud allegations are proven, we could be looking at one of the most dramatic ownership collapses in NBA history. a billionaire worth nearly$8 billion dollars potentially losing control of his team because he missed his own deadline and allegedly tried to cover it up. The Suns are calling this lawsuit an attempt to drag them backward. But when you’ve got seven lawsuits in a year, a state attorney general coming after your mortgage company, and minority owners accusing you of running the team like a personal piggy bank, that’s a lot of smoke for there to be no fire. Let me know in the comment section down below what do you guys think about all this. I know this was very complicated. I did my best to simplify it for you. Aside from that, I don’t know if you guys heard, but the NBA gambling scandal just got way worse. I have a completely separate video on that. I’m going to leave it in the end screen and meet you guys there. I’m your boy Mike. I’m dropping our mic. Until our next upload.

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