After the Phoenix Suns fired then-coach Mike Budenholzer following last season, media and fans joked that owner Mat Ishbia, given his Michigan State history, might pursue longtime Spartans’ coach Tom Izzo for the position.
As it turned out, he did.
And Izzo considered taking the job.
“I’ve had more than a couple job offers in the NBA and looked at one last year in Phoenix (with) my former player Mat Ishbia,’’ Izzo said on “The Dan Patrick Show” Wednesday. “That was hard. That was a hard thing to turn down.”
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Izzo revealed this information while discussing Connecticut coach Dan Hurley, who had been a top candidate to coach the Los Angeles Lakers in 2024. Hurley recently revealed he had talked with Izzo about the move before choosing to stay at Connecticut.
Izzo had been in a similar position at various points in his Hall of Fame career, having been pursued by the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Atlanta Hawks and now the Suns.
Izzo said he told Hurley he needed to factor in the unstable state of college sports and where it might be headed. He also said those same considerations made the Suns’ job attractive last summer when Ishbia spoke with him about replacing Budenholzer.
“No. 1, because I kind of wanted to go with (Ishbia). … And then, No. 2, I’ve been pretty vocal about it: I don’t like what’s going on in college athletics,” Izzo told Patrick. “And by the way, neither do 99.8 percent of the football and basketball coaches in America.”
Ishbia was a walk-on at Michigan State from 1998 to 2002. At times during his college career, he sat close to Izzo on the bench to learn as much as possible. Suns general manager Brian Gregory was an assistant coach on those teams.
In February, The Athletic’s Sam Amick reported that Ishbia asked Izzo if he had interest in coaching the Suns, but those conversations never advanced.
The job went to Jordan Ott, a Cleveland Cavaliers assistant who once worked under Izzo as a graduate assistant and video coordinator. Finalists for the job included Miami Heat assistant Chris Quinn, Cleveland assistant Johnnie Bryant, Oklahoma City Thunder assistant Dave Bliss and former Dallas Mavericks assistant Sean Sweeney, who’s now with the San Antonio Spurs.
Phoenix’s decision to hire Ott has worked well. Coming off perhaps the most disappointing season in franchise history, the Suns overhauled their roster, trading Kevin Durant and parting ways with Bradley Beal.
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This season’s team, built around star Devin Booker and sparkplug Dillon Brooks, has been one of the league’s surprises. The Suns are 42-34 and in seventh place in the Western Conference standings, with Ott a candidate for NBA Coach of the Year.
This was not the first time the Suns had flirted with hiring a high-profile college coach.
In 1973, then-general manager Jerry Colangelo pursued Bob Knight, who had just finished his second season at Indiana. Colangelo competed against Knight in college — Colangelo at Illinois, Knight at Ohio State — and he admired the young coach’s intensity.
“We were contemporaries, we were competitors and I always felt he was going to be a great coach,” Colangelo told The Athletic in 2021. “I believed he could’ve been a terrific (NBA) coach.”
Colangelo offered Knight the job, but Knight stayed at Indiana. The Suns hired John MacLeod, who took Phoenix to the NBA Finals in his third season and stuck with the job for nearly 14 seasons.
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Izzo, 71, is the Big Ten’s career leader in wins and just finished his 31st season as head coach at Michigan State. After the Spartans lost to Connecticut in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16, he said he had no intention to retire.
“We all talk about retirement,’’ he said at the time. “Why? What the hell am I going to do?”
He said he still has things to accomplish.
“I think something has to be done with the insanity we’re going through,” Izzo told Patrick. “But I don’t think anybody else cares, so I’ll just keep plucking along and see if I can get to the Final Four again.”