NBA Rumors: Suns targeting Luke Walton, Mike D’Antoni
By John Buhler
The Phoenix Suns will search for a full-time head coach this summer. Three of their coaching targets include Luke Walton, Mike D’Antoni, and Dan Majerle.
According to ESPN’s Marc Stein, the Phoenix Suns will target these three coaches as a potential full-time replacement for the fired Jeff Hornacek as the franchise’s next head coach in 2016-17: Golden State Warriors top assistant Luke Walton, former great Suns coach and current associate head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers Mike D’Antoni, and former Suns great and current Grand Canyon University head coach Dan Majerle.
Phoenix will also highly consider removing the interim tag from current head coach Earl Watson as well. While Watson is probably the favorite to keep the Suns’ gig, Phoenix does seem to have a lot of interest for what is an otherwise awful basketball team.
Walton would the first choice of many teams with vacancies for head coach from his work on Steve Kerr’s staff in Golden State. However, it seems likely that he will stay on with the Warriors next season. The only place that could realistically pry Walton away from Kerr’s staff in Oakland is the Los Angeles Lakers, the team that Walton spent the bulk of his NBA playing career a part of.
D’Antoni is an interesting candidate, as he was once a terrific head coach for the Suns running that high-octane offense around two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash at point guard. Time has proven that D’Antoni’s Suns will go down as one of the greatest era of teams to have never played in an NBA Finals. It would be interesting to see D’Antoni return to the Valley of the Sun and coach this young Suns roster to say the very least.
As for Majerle, he’s not that far away helping build an up-start Division I basketball team at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. He was one of the key players on those fantastic early 1990s Suns teams that featured Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson among many others. Majerle’s probably not the Suns organization’s first choice, but is still a highly intriguing coaching candidate.
In all likelihood, unless Walton wants to switch Pacific Division teams and become the Suns next head coach, it makes the most sense for Watson to continue coaching the Suns with the interim tag removed as Phoenix’s next full-time head coach entering the 2016-17 NBA season.
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