Phoenix Suns: Moving on After the Ryan McDonough Era

The Phoenix Suns recently announced that they relieved former general manager Ryan McDonough of his duties. The question remains, however, where do the Suns go from here?

There were a lot of glaring issues with the Phoenix Suns during the five seasons McDonough had the reins. Every time one of the issues seemed like it was solved, another arose.

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The Suns initially brought McDonough on board because he was supposedly an elite talent evaluator and general managing prodigy under Danny Ainge during those few years the Boston Celtics were at the top of the east.

McDonough’s first big trade was trading Jared Dudley and a pick to get Eric Bledsoe and Caron Butler.

As far as drafting and trading, he was very hit-or-miss.

Signing Isaiah Thomas to a very team-friendly contract while creating a logjam at the guard position between Thomas, Bledsoe, and Goran Dragic, only to trade both Thomas and Dragic somewhat shortly after.

McDonough didn’t seem to handle personnel issues very well, either. The Morris Twins, the Dragic situation, the list goes on.

So here the Suns are, a little over a week before the regular season starts. The young core seems to have been built and the only thing they really needed was a veteran point guard.

Robert Sarver, however, felt otherwise.

The issue with rebuilds is that it’s really hard to see them through sometimes. The Suns went through the entire offseason, the draft, media day, training camp, and nearly all of the preseason before letting go of McDonough.

The firing of McDonough is something that probably should have happened last season, but Sarver gave him one more shot. But why was he fired now?

Well, it’s probably a combination of a few things, but most importantly, the Suns were about to enter the regular season with a rookie point guard likely to be the starter. Sarver probably assumed that by now McDonough would have traded for a point guard but that didn’t happen.

Phoenix kicking the tires on the Jimmy Butler trade, saying that would be the facilitators was about as far as any point guard talk went.

The firing itself makes sense, but the timing is questionable.

Another glaring issue is that there really aren’t that many people who would be good for the job. David Griffin is really the only viable option to fill the position long-term.

The rumor reported by Adrian Wojnarowski is that one of the long-term options would be Kevin McHale.

McHale should really not be considered for this position. His history as a general manager isn’t exactly the best, and right now, the last thing Phoenix needs is shaky management.

Griffin really would be the best candidate for the job, but whether or not that is something that could or would happen remains to be seen.

That micro-managing could be damaging to the current team. The idea of drafting Mikal Bridges was not so he could ride the bench, and it would be a very Sarver move to trade a player like Josh Jackson for a veteran point guard who makes way too much money and is four years past his prime.

That is a very real possibility and something that could conceivably happen in the next week. Bridges could be a starter in this league, but it almost seems as though Sarver was the one high on Bridges and McDonough had to work magic to make it happen.

It seems like there’s going to be some sort of trade in the next few days, but it’s tough to guess in which direction Sarver will steer the ship.

There really isn’t a short list of general managers yet, but the Suns will probably want to move quickly on a long-term hire.

It may be a hard sell for anybody interested, Sarver is a notorious micro-manager who historically makes it difficult to build teams and see them through.