Jesus Christ, Andrew Jackson and Diogenes of Sinope walk into a bar. If you’ve never heard that joke before, it’s because it doesn’t exist. I doubt that trio have ever appeared in the same sentence. What could a carpenter from Galilee, a genocidal American president and an ancient Greek philosopher have in common? One thing, it turns out: warnings about rich people.
“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes,” Jackson once said. Jesus told a wealthy man who asked what he had to do to go to heaven to sell everything he owned, that it’d be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than reach the pearly gates. Diogenes was more direct: “In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit but his face.”
Today, the indifferent influence of the wealthy is a global calamity. Climate, government, the rule of law, food, communication — the machines that impact eight billion people are increasingly hands-off to all but a small, select set of hands.
NBA owners, billionaires all, do the same to NBA fans: point to the sky and tell us it’s red, and throw enough people enough crumbs from what’s left on their banquet trays to sell the lie. For over 40 years the league was defined by dynasties; it celebrated the ‘80s Lakers and Celtics, the ‘90s Bulls, the Shaq/Kobe teams, the Heatles, the Steph Warriors. No one ever claimed those teams were a bore, a ratings drain or anything remotely negative.
Today the league changes its collective bargaining rules radically, making it nearly impossible for what fans have shown they love to exist all so they can protect their profit margins a little bit more. And they have the gall to tell the fans This is better, this is what you really want; you just didn’t know it. We did it for you. Anyone who’s ever had a body understands how exertion and exhaustion work: the former leads to the latter.
But when the league has a new media rights deal to negotiate, billionaire mouthpiece Adam Silver tells us with a straight face, “My understanding — at least with the data that has come in so far — it may even be the case that some of the early season injuries are caused by players not having enough load.” Get it? Not only does working harder not put athletes at risk, the real danger is they’re not working hard enough!
Enter Mat Ishbia. A few years Ishbia bought the Phoenix Suns, who’d been rolling along just fine without him, at least on the court: in 2021 they reached the Finals; a year later they won a franchise-record 64 games; when Ishbia took over early in the 2022-23 season the Suns were a healthy 19-12, the roster brimming with young, exciting talent in Devin Booker, Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson (all 26) and Deandre Ayton (24). Head coach Monty Williams was widely considered one of the bright young stars of his profession. The world was mostly working just fine. Until a rich man had other ideas. His own.
Mat Ishbia turned the Suns lemonade into lemons
There’s no conclusive scientific proof that billionaires are toxic to humans, but the evidence to this point is compelling. As soon as Ishbia bought the Suns, they lost nine of their next 10 games. Ahh, but every crisis is an opportunity when you wield all the power and face no accountability: not even two months into taking over, Ishbia traded most of that young exciting talent along with most of the Suns’ draft picks to acquire 34-year-old Kevin Durant. Who cares that the franchise had spent years piecing together a group its fans had fallen for? The rich man knows best, always.
The Suns went 8-0 when Durant played that season, which was great but also misleading, as it doesn’t include the 18 games he missed due to injury after the trade. Phoenix lost in the second to round to eventual champion Denver, then fired Williams a year after signing him to a multi-year extension. The Suns hired Frank Vogel and one year later lost in the first round; Vogel was fired with four years left on his deal. The Suns hired Mike Budenholzer and one year later missed the playoffs entirely; they fired Budenholzer with four years left on his deal, too. You can understand their fans not trusting this owner to fix the mess he keeps making messier.
Yet Ishbia, omnipotent, imperial, impervious, continues to dispense promises of a better future like water despite his well having always run dry. A year ago after being swept out of the first round, he told reporters “26 other teams” would trade their rosters and draft picks for Phoenix’s. Just last month, after missing the playoffs and with the team’s future shading from dim to ebon, he said, “I promise you we will win championships, with a ‘s’ at the end.” How? Who cares? He’s rich. He doesn’t have to answer to anybody.
Ishbia says the Suns won’t trade Booker, despite the fact that he is by a country mile their best player, one half the league would try to acquire. Durant has one year left on his contract, when he’ll be 37, and is unhappy after being dangled in trade talks last February when he wasn’t looking to be dangled. Bradley Beal has a no-trade clause, one he invoked last year to avoid being shipped to Miami for Jimmy Butler. How will Phoenix begin to rise from the ashes? They have no players and won’t control their own first-round picks until the sea level’s risen high enough to end the NBA and much of civilization.
And who will helm this allegedly enviable franchise? Someone cheap and inexperienced — that’s what happens when you keep firing people with four freaking years left on their deals. The Suns’ head coaching search is now down to five men, all assistant coaches who’ve never led an NBA team. How are the Suns, on a years-long downward spiral, going to turn a dying star into one that’s bright and shiny and winning championships-with-an-S, all with a coach who’s never worked at this level?
It’s not like that’s never been done. Joe Mazzulla, Steve Kerr, Nick Nurse, Eric Spoelstra: all won it all, sometimes multiple times, with the first NBA team they ever led. They also won with Jayson Tatum, Steph Curry, Kawhi Leonard and LeBron James in their primes. Those dudes aren’t walking through the Footprint Center doors.
What’s that? It’s not called Footprint Center anymore? Even though the arena itself is owned by the city? How come? Oh, the over-rich want to sell the naming rights to someone new? So they can even more than the too much they have now? You know, Ishbia could scrap the naming rights money for a year and single-handedly provide housing for everyone in need in that city. Eye of a camel indeed.
Our word “sun” goes back at least as far as the Proto-Germanic sunnōn, relating to “south.” It’s funny, in a sad way, that Ishbia has really taken the Phoenix Suns back to their etymological roots. They sink further down every day he’s in charge. One wonders if Ishbia knows or cares how much damage he’s done to millions of people he’s utterly unaccountable to. When you weigh the negatives the few always inflict on the many, a little saliva to the face seems the least they deserve.