{"id":692725,"date":"2026-04-01T22:24:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/692725\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T22:24:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:24:17","slug":"michigan-states-tom-izzo-says-he-had-serious-talks-last-year-about-coaching-nbas-phoenix-suns-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/692725\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan State’s Tom Izzo says he had serious talks last year about coaching NBA’s Phoenix Suns"},"content":{"rendered":"

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) \u2014 Michigan State’s Tom Izzo<\/a> said he considered coaching the Phoenix Suns after discussing the possibility last year with one of his former players, Mat Ishbia, who owns the NBA<\/a> team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked seriously about it,\u201d Izzo said Wednesday<\/a> on \u201cThe Dan Patrick Show,” during a virtual interview from his office on campus.<\/p>\n

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The 71-year-old Hall of Fame coach chose to lead the Spartans for a 31st season and extended his record of reaching 28 consecutive NCAA Tournaments. They were eliminated by Connecticut in the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n

Izzo has turned down multiple opportunities to coach in the NBA, including with Cleveland<\/a> and Atlanta<\/a>. Izzo said last week that Huskies coach Dan Hurley asked him for advice after the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> offered him a $70 million, six-year contract<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n

Ishiba, a walk-on guard on Izzo’s national championship team in 2000, hired former Michigan State video coordinator Jordan Ott<\/a> to coach the Suns this season. Ishiba also hired a former Spartans assistant, Brian Gregory<\/a>, to be the team’s general manager and gave former teammate Mateen Cleaves a job in player development.<\/p>\n

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Phoenix is in a position to make the playoffs with Ott on the bench after it was 10 games under .500 under coach Mike Budenholzer in his only season with the franchise.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/nba<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) \u2014 Michigan State’s Tom Izzo said he considered coaching the Phoenix Suns after discussing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[676,7,305,150,3224,1995,6,472,3226],"class_list":{"0":"post-692725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-cleveland","11":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","12":"tag-mat-ishbia","13":"tag-michigan-state","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-phoenix-suns","16":"tag-tom-izzo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}