Suns' Top HC Targets to Maximize Kevin Durant, Devin Booker After Williams Firing

The Phoenix Suns set the bar pretty high for their next head coach after a .628 winning percentage and an NBA Finals appearance wasn't enough for Monty Williams to keep his job.

The franchise announced Saturday it fired Williams after losing to the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference Semifinals. The move came as a bit of a shock considering the Suns are two seasons removed from that Finals run and Williams was the NBA Coach of the Year in 2021-22.

As one would expect, Phoenix is looking at some proven winners to potentially take over. The window to win with Devin Booker and Kevin Durant may not be open for that long given how quickly his Brooklyn Nets tenure unraveled.

NBA insider Marc Stein reported Phoenix is "expected to explore the feasibility of trying to lure Tyronn Lue" from the Los Angeles Clippers. Bleacher Report's Chris Haynes reported Kevin Young, the team's current associate head coach, is another candidate along with Nick Nurse and Mike Budenholzer, who each guided their last teams to titles.

Young certainly can't be ruled out.

He provides a level of continuity, so the Suns may not have the same kind of adjustment period compared to if they made an outside hire. Yahoo Sports' Jake Fischer also wrote Friday, before Williams was dismissed, how Young "has emerged as one of the league's hottest candidates for a lead job."

"Those in the league's coaching ranks speak of Young's eventual elevation on some bench, somewhere as a matter of if not when, whether this summer or some summer coming soon," Fischer reported.

Perhaps the Suns fired Williams now in part because they didn't want Young to take a promotion elsewhere. Nurse and Lue had both been hired from within when they coached the Toronto Raptors and Cleveland Cavaliers, respectively, to a championship.

Still, the reported pursuit of Lue seems to telegraph the direction in which Phoenix prefers to go.

The 46-year-old should be at the top of the organization's list.

Lue is 261-186 (.584) all-time as a head coach, and he has plenty of experience managing a star-laden roster. He inherited a tough situation in Cleveland after the players effectively gave up on David Blatt and adeptly responded to the challenges the Cavs' constant roster turnover created over the next few years.

Although the Clippers haven't fulfilled their goal of lifting the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy after adding Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, that's not an indictment of Lue. If anything, he has further burnished his reputation with how competitive L.A. has remained despite the series of injuries Leonard and George have suffered.

There's arguably a clear gap between Lue and the pair of Budenholzer and Nurse, who carry an added level of risk.

Budenholzer was basically on the hot seat right up until the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Suns in the 2021 NBA Finals. Milwaukee's shocking first-round exit this year reinforced the concerns over whether he's capable of reacting on the fly in the middle of a postseason series.

With Nurse, the shine has started to come off a bit the further he gets from the Raptors' 2019 championship. His approach steadily wore on his players, and he didn't necessarily elevate all of the younger players on the squad.

Toronto didn't finish higher than 13th in offensive rating, per NBA.com, in the four years after Leonard left for the Clippers, either. Is Nurse the right coach who can get the most out of Booker and Durant on offense?

Williams was fired less than 24 hours ago, so this search is bound to evolve in the coming days. Should the Suns fail to poach Lue, it will be fascinating to see whether they shift gears and focus more on Young or a high-level assistant on the rise.