Bickley Blast: Phoenix Suns find silver linings in hiring of Mateen Cleaves to Jordan Ott’s staff

Bickley Blast: Phoenix Suns find silver linings in hiring of Mateen Cleaves to Jordan Ott’s staff

and Marada warnings. Arizona sports, the local sports leader. Bigley blast. Ridicule and mockery be damned. Matt Ishbia cannot help himself. He will not stop leaning into his Michigan DNA and the Spartan culture to fill up his mortgage business and his basketball team. no matter how many people are rolling their eyes. And his latest move is the hiring of Matin Cleaves, a former teammate of Ishbia at Michigan State, who is now in charge of motivation and player development. Now, personally, I think it’s a little hairy high school and way too colleial to think NBA players need a motivational guy, but I actually like this hire because Matine Cleaves has great infectious personality and energy. And those kind of guys always lift the room and the mood. And to quote Jordan Tyson, they’re rarely energy vampires. Here’s what else I like. Jordan Kn is assembling an intriguing staff of assistants. He just poached the top guy from Orlando. He’s not leaning on friends. He’s not having assistant coaches handed to him from above. He’s actually acting like a rookie head coach with a plan. A guy who has been planning ahead for this moment for years now. These are silver linings in what appears to be a long season ahead. A season when the Suns might lose 50 or more games. Because at this point, folks, silver linings are all we have on Planet Orange. All right, today’s Bickley Blast brought to you by my great friends at Chapman BMW. Make luxury attainable. Find them online at chapmanbmw.com. I really admire that. I admire somebody that in this era of player movement and ring chasing wants to stay and build something. But I hope that they are continuing to make those smart basketball moves that they have the patience to realize this is not going to happen overnight. They can’t go back to what they did by trying to microwave a championship by acquiring various stars like they did with Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal. And it does require patience. Look at how long it took the Oklahoma City Thunder to break through. Not as long as the Boston Celtics, who finally got it done, who have been knocking on the door for a while. But I know that Matt Ishban, this ownership group has tried to take some big swings and it’s failed. And they like to collect stars. So, I hope that the patience that is required in order to get the Suns back to where they need to be is exhibited here. That’s the voice of Michelle Smallman talking about Mad Ishbia and patience. I’m not sure asking for him to be patient will ever be successful, but here we go. Your thoughts on Matine Cleaves, Jordan, everything that’s gone down. Well, I like what you said about A. We touched on it earlier in the show. I I like the fact that A’s not just leaning on assistant coaches who he’s worked with before, uh, guys that he knows, asking Mattisbia and Josh Bartlestein and Brian Gregory to help him with the hires, he’s going out there and he’s trying to assemble the best coaching staff uh that he can. And not only Deari Carol, Brian Randall was with Monty, Jason Allen from last year’s staff under Mike Benhoer is going to stick around. Uh, but Mermis is a guy that by all accounts is a great offensive mind. Been in the league for 17 years as an assistant coach. He’s a Tucson native. There’s some Arizona ties. Not that that matters. Uh, but he’s a guy that that Jordan Nod kind of pinpointed and say, “This is a guy I want to help me get this deal done in Phoenix.” I’m a little surprised and I think there was some talk about this early on in the process that they were going to try to get a former head coach on the staff just to kind of have that experience and presence and guiding hand for Jordan Kn because he is a young guy. He’s 40 years of age. He’s in the big chair for the first time. That may still happen, but so far it hasn’t. So, we’ll keep an eye on that. As for Matine Cleaves, look, I I agree there. This is a guy that by all accounts is a guy that you want in your locker room. He’s a he’s a was a winner in college. He’s got an infectious personality. At the same time, Medishby is doing a solid for his buddy. Find finding a spot for him. Yeah. But maybe that grows. I mean, he kind of carved out a spot for Brian Gregory two years ago, too. He did. And we saw how that Well, we saw how that ended up. So, it’s what’s interesting about that is what’s very interesting, and Jared Carlin pointed this out yesterday. I retold the story of how the Phoenix Suns shifted midfly from Ryan Mcdana as GM to James Jones as GM. And it happened to happen right at the time when the Suns had the number one overall draft pick. Couldn’t have been a worse time to have that kind of internal dysfunction. It kind of happened to James Jones because Brian Gregory’s been around for a couple of days lurking, sorry, a couple years. And lurking might be the wrong word to use. You know what I And it felt like ever since uh Matt Ishbia took over, James Jones each year his power has sort of diminished whether it was because of Josh Bartlestein, Matt Ishbia himself or Brian Gregory. So but that’s not saying what they’re doing isn’t going to work. They’re certainly doubling and tripling down on all of this. And you know what Matt is Ishbia warned us. He said, “What’s coming ahead, you will not be mistaking what we’re trying to do.” And what they’re trying to do is build something that is very familiar to to Matt Ishbia and that is spun right from the Michigan State DNA. For what it’s worth, I I got to say for his first draft, I thought Brian Gregory navigated it and manipulated it very very well. Now, did he pick the right players? That’s all that’s really gonna matter in the end, and we don’t know that yet. But the way he was able uh to use the Kevin Durant trade as a springboard to get better picks in this particular draft I thought was for a rookie GM who’s only been in the NBA for a couple of years. I thought he did a really really good job. I wonder you know as we sit here and talk and I’m not sure if you and Vinnie touched on this. Was Brian Gregory always the GM in waiting when he came on board a couple of years ago or did Matt Ishbia evolve in that thinking as time went on? That’s interesting. And what they had the Suns competed for a title, there probably wouldn’t have been a change. But did Madesia always look at Gregory and say this is a guy that has potential to lead our our basketball operations? That’s interesting. Okay. Um my gut my gut feeling on this is that Matt Ishbia was leaning on the voices of a lot of different people in the first two and a half years whatever it is whether you know you you know you know who’s around him it’s it’s Josh Blestein it’s Rex Chapman it’s Isaiah Thomas he’s had a lot of people around him that I think he’s taken input from and I don’t know where he feels let down by them but somewhere he does feel let down and I think he feels let down by just the by the low wattage nature of these last couple of teams. Guys who just don’t fight, who don’t, you know, it’s why the Colin Gillespie dynamic hit so hard last year, right? We were raving about this Colin Gillespie kid because he was actually he he was actually unafraid to play with his hair on fire and and and I think I think at some point in time Matt Ishbia said, “Okay, you know what? I’m doing this. I’m not listening to anybody else. I’m doing this my way.” And I think Brian Gregory was his vehicle to do it his way. You know, you bring up a good point because that first year of Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant, the big three if you will, if you remember, Beal missed about 30 games coming out of the gate. And by the way, I don’t think that I don’t think the franchise ever recovered uh from that. But Beal missed a ton of games coming out of the gate. And Matt Ishbia, you know, he didn’t say this publicly, but I know that he really believed in his heart of hearts that once Beal got healthy and got back on the court that they were going to be the best team in the NBA. Those were his expectations and he believed that. He really thought he had something. And for it to fail so spectacularly was not only a bit of humble pie, which is fine. And that had probably the first person to admit that. But also, you’re right. It was almost a kick in the face that everything I believed and those around me believed were dead wrong. Exactly. We’re dead wrong. Like not even close. That team never even won a playoff game, let alone contend for a title. So, he had to look in the mirror and say, as you mentioned eloquently, you know, who who gave me the bad advice and and how much am I to blame? Mhm. From my own perceptions of what it was going to take to win basketball games in the postseason, I I think I think Matt Ishbia knows KD is all on him and I think he’s perfectly fine. I I believe what he says. He would have traded Kev the Twins for Kevin Durant 10 times out of 10. I I really believe him. But there’s somebody there who told him Bradley Beal was a good idea. There’s somebody there who told him other players were a good idea. And I think that he somewhere along the line he feels like he was let down. And so as a result, this is what you have. I I’m also curious. Um there were many people in Cleveland who swore that Johnny Bryant was miles down the road as a potential head coach than Jordan. At the time a lot of people thought, myself included, you know what, the Knicks are going after Johnny Bryant. That is why they blitzed out Tom Tibido. Johnny Bryant didn’t get a job. And yet he was considered miles down the road from Jordan Kn. He he he was in terms of age and experience. I got to tell you, I I have a really good friend who’s an NBA assistant coach. He texted me during this whole thing. And this is this is just man’s opinion. No, I’m glad to hear this. But Johnny Bryant is not a serious candidate. Oh, really? Now, he didn’t mean that in terms of the Suns. He very well might have been a serious candidate, but in terms of his competence as a potential NBA head coach. in the opinion of one NBA assistant coach that said he’s not a serious candidate. So, so keep that in mind when Johnny Bryant continues to get passed up for head coaching. That’s a great point because here’s the thing about Jordan Kn and this is why I’m going to cling to a little bit of optimism here. Jordan Knot presented a style of play to Brian Gregory and Brian Gregory said that was the voa moment. This guy told me in no uncertain terms what we are going to look like. And that to me is the key to unlocking Devin Booker is creating spacing and pace. So he’s not so you’re not getting these shot clock deficit situation possessions where the ball ends up in Devin Booker’s hands. There’s 11 seconds left on the shot clock and now the defense is swarming him because the whole offense is stagnant and standing around. Right. And I and I and and Jordan not clearly sold Devin Booker on that vision as well because I’m pretty sure Book signed off on this hire. Again though, we’re we’re going to see Point Book and this is a whole another conversation, but I don’t like it. I’m not sure Booker loves it. But again, the roster construction leads one to believe that unless something changes right now, he’s going to have to play the point. And you know, we’ve seen this and a lot of this was on Durant. I mean, trying to initiate the offense. How many times did a basketball get stolen, tipped away, or end up in the third row, but Book is a little loose with the basketball as well. Like, I just I just think he’s not the best version of himself when he’s not playing the two. So, they’re going to have to navigate that at least in year one, it looks like. No doubt. Thanks for watching Bickley and Marada. Click to see the latest Bickley Blast and hit the button in the middle to subscribe to Arizona Sports.

Mat Ishbia continues to lean on his Michigan State roots with the recent hiring of former Spartan teammate Mateen Cleaves. But Dan Bickley explains how all these recent moves should be a silver lining to fans.

Suns reportedly hire Arizona native as assistant coach, also add former MSU star Cleaves: https://arizonasports.com/nba/phoenix-suns/mermuys-mateen-cleaves/3589792/

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