Jerry Colangelo sold the Phoenix Suns (among other teams) to Robert Sarver in the spring of 2004.
Colangelo is without question the preeminent figure in Arizona sports history. He ran the Suns for nearly 40 years, and brought the Diamondbacks into existence, along with the first championship Arizona has ever seen in 2001.
Bryan Colangelo was the teams GM when Sarver bought the Suns, and remained in that position until leaving for the Toronto Raptors in February of 2006.
Bryan had been the Suns GM for 11 years, and in 2005 won the NBA Executive of the Year award.
On a side note, while researching Bryan Colangelo I discovered he went to Cornell University. As one of my favorite characters from the TV show “The Office”, Andy Bernard would say, “I went to Cornell, ever heard of it?” So not only are the Suns losing out on a Colangelo, but also a Cornell grad.
What would happen now to the Suns who were without a Colangelo making decisions for the first time in nearly 40 years?
Well the Suns didn’t panic, and Coach Mike D’Antoni assumed the role of the General Manager and he and other high ranking officials made the personnel decisions.
Let’s take a look at some of these decisions and see how they turned out. First of all, the draft of 2006 was a complete and utter disaster.
The Suns had the 21st and 27th picks in the first round. In desperate need of a point guard to back up Steve Nash, it appeared the Suns had lucked out with three appealing options available.
Not wanting to pay the money to a first round pick, the Suns traded both picks and passed on Rajon Rondo—who I think has turned out well for Boston—Marcus Williams and Jordan Farmar among others.
They also could have taken European star Sergio Rodriguez and left him in Europe for awhile, and not had to worry about his cap number.
3 comments Last one added about 1 year ago — Leave a Comment
Curly Morris about 1 year ago
...Colangelo is a hoops genius, and is very underrated as an executive in the eyes of many so called media experts.
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Andrew Kneeland about 1 year ago
Great article. Phoenix sure does miss Colangelo, but we can make due without.
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Brandon Schleigh about 1 year ago
Good article but...
The Colangelo's leaving is not the reason Phoenix is struggling. Mr Executive of the Year for 2005 wasn't the genius that everyone made out to be.
First off, in 2004 they gave up on Luol Deng, passing up on guys like Al Jefferson, Andre Iguodala. Deng could have filled the void nicely for a SF, but Bryan believed he wasn't ready to contribute to such a high caliber team as the Suns so Bryan traded him for a first round pick of 2006, who turned out to be Rajan Rondo. Colangelo later signed Quentin Richardson to a very huge contract, although Q played nicely for the Suns, I'd much rather have taken a rookie who's salary is one fourth of Q-Rich.
The Suns should have resigned Joe Johnson instead of trading him. I don't know about you, or anyone else in the world for the matter but if I was gettting paid 14 mil a year by my boss it would be hard to stay mad at him. JJ would have gotten over his little feud. Instead the Suns trade him for Doris Meow. You're right though. We should have waited to see if Diaw and Amare could coexist, however I don't feel like that is the problem. Diaw is what I like to call a "contract player," pretty self-explanatory but to those who don't understand what it means, its a player who only plays hard to get that fat paycheck. Smart move by Diaw, understands if he plays hard for one year he could get paid for the next five, no matter what his results are in that time frame.
One thing for sure, I'd take the Colangelo's over Sarver and Kerr anyday but I still blame all four of them for making me question "what if?"
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