Phoenix Suns desert of distraction

Of the myriad of numbers that waltz across the sports ballroom each day, perhaps the most intriguing this week arrived courtesy from deep within the Sonoran desert.

On Tuesday - when the Phoenix Suns announced they’d fired head coach Igor Kokoskov just one year after his arrival - it meant that in the last 11 years, the franchise has hired and fired no less than seven head coaches.

Phoenix’s announcement functions first and foremost to reaffirm why good sporting franchises, businesses and vegetable patches the world over, indeed, stay excellent and vibrant, while others remain trapped in a cesspit of underachievement, mediocrity and instability.

More often than not, the formula for each boils down to the same undeniable, overarching element of distracted and incompetent management.

For too long now the Phoenix Suns have remained flailing in a global sporting landscape where there are simply no shortcuts to sustained sporting relevance.

They see the bright lights of the NBA's elite, playing for Championship rings - populated by the game’s very best - and believe they’re 'just one' coaching hire away from doing similar themselves

'Just one' top draft pick from contention.

'Just one' star free agent acquisition from having the sporting world bow at their altar.

If only it were that simple.

Cycling through seven coaches and six general managers within an eleven-year span speaks to a franchise, who - rather than build something durable - instead becomes distracted and falls in love with the next coach they believe can pull them out of the quagmire, and into NBA prominence.

PHOENIX SUNS WINS OVER LAST FOUR SEASONS (# RANK)

2015-16: 23 (27th)
2016-17: 24 (29th)
2017-18: 21 (30th)
2018-19: 19 (28th)

The initial move to bring aboard Kokoskov was indeed sound, and for Phoenix, a rather progressive and commendable one, too.  

In Kokoskov, the Suns became the first ever NBA franchise to hire a head coach born and raised outside of North America.

This was a coach who had had not only served diligently in the NBA for 20 years as a respected assistant across six different franchises but, who also moonlighted as the national coach for Serbia-Montenegro, Georgia and Slovenia; the latter he took all the way to a groundbreaking EuroBasket Championship in 2017.

That Kokoskov can coach at an elite level simply can’t be questioned.

That the perennially awful Phoenix Suns thought 12 months in the job was enough to conclude he wasn’t adequate for them is seriously concerning.

LONGEST ACTIVE NBA PLAYOFF DROUGHTS (# of seasons)

Sacramento Kings: 13
Phoenix Suns: 9
NY Knicks: 6
LA Lakers: 6
Charlotte Bobcats: 3
Dallas Mavericks: 3

By most measures, Kokoskov’s rookie NBA coaching season was anything but encouraging.

Only the tanking New York Knicks lost fewer games; only the depleted Cleveland Cavaliers had a worse defensive net rating. 

No team performed worse where rebounding was concerned; and only the brash, young Atlanta Hawks turned the ball over with more frequency.

Yet, for as underwhelming as Kokoskov’s maiden year was, a broader and more pertinent question remains in the form of just what the Suns’ management was expecting the Serb to deliver over his first season.

What changed so sharply from the initial decision 12 months earlier to Tuesdays’ termination?

This is a franchise that had already gone eight seasons without featuring in the NBA Playoffs when they hired Kokoskov, and whose roster was the second youngest in the entire NBA.

This wasn’t a franchise analysts figured was on the cusp of contending for anything other than the NBA Draft Lottery.

AVERAGE ROSTER AGE OF THE PHOENIX SUNS (# RANK)

2015-16: 26.1 (20th)
2016-17: 25.2 (26th)
2017-18: 23.7 (30th)
2018-19: 24.1 (29th)

The team’s profile fits that of a young roster in desperate need of stability and guidance, along with an integrated, franchise-wide gameplan.

What it doesn’t need is a distracted ownership situation that believes in short cuts and 'flavour of the month' trends.

The Suns’ decision to part with yet another head coach, only speaks to a world increasingly susceptible to distraction. One which cherishes a quick fix, seemingly immune to playing the long game.

The next time you notice a team struggling and mired within a cycle of competitive irrelevance, remember that underpinning its failure is likely a very consistent chain of incompetence as well as a desert of bad decisions.

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