Short-term, long-term, big and small; Ryan McDonough made them all.
With the start of their season just a week away, the Suns fired McDonough, their GM of five-plus years, on Monday. The epitaph on his grim tenure should read: “He made every type of mistake there is to make, and yet he still wasn’t the root cause of the Suns’ dysfunction.”
Just as high school point guards should study tape of Magic Johnson and Chris Paul, aspiring basketball executives should commit McDonough’s many gaffes to memory. Indeed, his track record represents a blueprint for how not to run a team, and there’s a rich debate to be had over McDonough’s biggest weakness.