The Phoenix Suns had a large organizational overhaul this season. They broke up with their head coach last season, Mike Budenholzer, and perhaps exchanged their best player in Kevin Durant.
In the aftermath of these movements, they have tried to do Devin Booker again in Franchise icon and bring in new head coach Jordan Ott. In contrast to Budenholzer, OTT comes in a situation without high expectations and can lead to surprising buzz in the coach of the year race.
Jordan Ott is in the perfect situation for a first head coach.
Coaching the Suns has been a very stressful test for the last few seasons. The team had a high payroll with several All-Star Caliber players and expectations of deep play-off runs. They gave up a lot of future design capital to build that iteration of the team and in the end it was not successful.
The schedule construction was far from perfect, which led to a tough job for the coaches. Even seasoned championship winning head coaches (Frank Vogel prior to Budenholzer) could not solve the puzzle of the Suns -Roster and the team had to finally give that vision.
Excited to welcome Jordan Ott as our new head coach of the @Suns! Jordan is a young and hungry coach with a ruthless working ethics. His leadership and knowledge of the game will have a major impact here in Phoenix while we continue to build our organization together. pic.twitter.com/vp8x4temct
– Mat Ishbia (@mishbia15) June 6, 2025
Now Ott may enter the opposite situation exactly. Next season the Suns will have a little or no expectations. In fact, most projections have them in third place in the Western Conference with only the jazz and pelicans that are expected to be lower. For the first time in a few years it feels like the Suns are actually underestimated in the previous season projections.
However, the Front Office is still doing their best to compete and to surround Devin Booker with a reasonable schedule. This includes usable rolling players in the right positions and placing prospects in situations to succeed.
As we have often seen, the Coach of the Year Race is not so much about which coach is the best in the NBA, but rather which coach most exceeds expectations.
Last season, the AwardRedrace came down to two coaches who served the expectations in winner Kenny Atkinson (who served Ott as an assistant coach, greatly surpassed. In the meantime, the coach of the actual top team in the NBA, who also won the NBA championship, was not even a finalist.
If the Phoenix Suns are able to put together a respectable season, possibly even fight for a play-in place, they will greatly exceed the expectations of most people. Jordan Ott will undoubtedly get a lot of credit, especially as a Rookie head coach.
If he is able to put together a system that solves some recent problems of the Suns, especially on the defensive side of the ball, he can easily be in the coach of the year’s race.
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