New Suns Owner Opens Up About How They Landed Kevin Durant
Inside Mat Ishbia’s corner office at Footprint Center there are no mementos memorializing his basketball career. Not yet, anyway. No framed jersey, no autographed ball. It has been 21 years since Ishbia played his last game at Michigan State and longer since he concluded his playing career would end there. He spent a year as a student assistant on Tom Izzo’s staff before moving into the mortgage business, where he helped build United Wholesale Mortgage into a multibillion-dollar company. It was Izzo, says Ishbia, who steered him into business.
“He said, ‘Gosh, imagine if you take all these things you've learned here at basketball and apply it to business, maybe you could be something bigger than a head coach,’” Ishbia recalled in an interview last week. “As he said that to me, I remember thinking to myself, ‘What's bigger than being a head coach? That's pretty cool.’”
After two decades in business Ishbia is back in sports, officially taking over ownership of the NBA’s Suns and WNBA’s Mercury on Feb. 7. In his first week on the job Ishbia executed one of the biggest midseason trades in NBA history, acquiring Kevin Durant for the steep price of Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, four unprotected first-round picks and one pick swap. In an extended interview Ishbia opened up about the Durant deal, his path to ownership and his relationship with his longtime business rival turned NBA teammate Dan Gilbert.
Note: This interview was lightly edited for clarity.
Mat Ishbia took over ownership of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury this month following predecessor Robert Sarver’s scandal-ridden end to his tenure.
Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports
SI: So when did the dream of playing die?
Ishbia: I still had that dream early in college. I was the third string point guard behind Mateen Cleaves and Charlie Bell. But I realized then that once I was seeing what level these guys were at that I was like, ‘I'm not going to make it in the NBA, but I'm going to try to be the best player I can to be at Michigan State.’ But I worked like I was still going to make it the whole time. And I always felt like the hardest working guy and the worst player on that team. I had to work extremely hard just to maintain the third-string point guard spot.
SI: The NBA’s not the only place to play pro. Did you think about trying to play in Europe?
Ishbia: When I realized I wasn't going to be good enough, my mind went to coaching. My first three years were three Final Fours and three Big Ten Championships. My fourth year I was the only senior. And halfway through the season Izzo was great. If you watch the film back then, he actually brought me down during games to sit next to him. Usually I’m at the end of the bench. He wanted me to translate to the freshman and the other guys, who all respected me internally as one of the leaders, what was going on. And so that really got me focused like, ‘I'm going to be a coach.’ I had an extra year of eligibility because I was technically red-shirted as a freshman so my fifth year I decided to be a student assistant. I spent a whole year with Izzo, with his assistant coaches, watching film, on the bench, suit, tie everything all day, every day and I loved it.
SI: So what changed?
Ishbia: My father was always the coach of my sports teams growing up. My dad was a lawyer and just kind of always grinding. And my mom was a teacher and they were always around. I realized one thing that I really valued was family and one day when I had kids I wanted to be able to coach their teams and be involved with them. Being a basketball coach, it's really hard because you're traveling or you're recruiting. So I thought about from a balance of life and what I really wanted in life that maybe business was better for me. So I decided to try it for one year. I said, ‘I'm going to do it for one year. If I don't like it, I'm going back to sports.’ And I fell in love with mortgages, which is crazy now.
SI: Hard to replace the rush of sports.
Ishbia: A little bit. My dad, he had a small mortgage company. I was the 12th person. I didn't even know what a mortgage was. And what I realized really quickly was that I could turn on my competitive juices there. If we want to get the business, it’s how do we get the business from that company? Oh, we’ve got to try this. Let's market it this way. I started to get extremely competitive. And luckily mortgages, you actually have to report your numbers. So I could see we're not even in the top 5,000. Well then it's ‘How do we get to the top 4,500?’ I got the competitive juice from that. You don't have the highs of, ‘We won the game.’ We also don’t have the lows that come with losing a game. You have a consistent competitiveness. And so the competition drove me to get up at 3:30 in the morning, get up at four, start working harder because we can go win this next account, we can go win this next opportunity. So it translated.
SI: So when does sports team ownership become a dream?
Ishbia: It was always a dream. But it never really became a goal or a realistic one until probably 2015, '16 when I was like, ‘Gosh, we're making good money here. I'm the owner of this. The CEO of this. We're doing well. Could I ever one day own a sports team?’ I was at that time 35. I didn't think at age 43 I could do it, I thought maybe at age 70 I could build up enough wealth. Because these teams are so expensive. So it became a goal probably around 35. It was a dream from the day I knew I wasn't going to play in the NBA but it became a realistic goal much later.
SI: What was the first team you tried to get in on?
Ishbia: Well, I'm from Detroit so I always thought about buying the Pistons. They had sold to Tom Gores in [2011] and I wished I could get in on that. Even just as a part-owner. Not the main owner or governor. I live in Detroit. But as I started to learn more and make enough income, I realized maybe I could buy a team. I started thinking about where. If it wasn't my hometown, where would I want to buy a team? Phoenix really is the place. This is in the top echelon, really the top target and I just didn't think it would come up for sale until recently.
SI: You bid on the Broncos last year. What did you learn from that experience?
Ishbia: The Broncos process, everyone kind of assumed the Walton family was going to get it. And they obviously did get it, but I wanted to learn about the process. I didn’t know if we're going to become the Denver Broncos owner. I didn’t think that was going to happen. However I did want to buy an NBA team. So I wanted to learn what the bidding process looked like so we could be prepared. And, again, I was preparing for something to come up maybe in the next five or 10 years. Because they don't come up for sale very often. And so when the Phoenix Suns, the crown jewel in my head, came up only four months, five months after I didn't get Denver, I thought to myself, ‘This was meant to be, because this is what we want anyways.’ And I'd learned enough in how that process went and how I wanted to do it differently if I really wanted to get the team.
SI: How engaged were you with NBA officials before you bid on the Suns?
Ishbia: I'd probably say in 2019 I started building relationships with other NBA and NFL owners. Just emailing them and get an email. And then when COVID hit, a Zoom. And then it was, ‘Can I come out to a game?’ [Nets owner] Joe Tsai was great. I know [Bucks owner] Marc Lasry as well. He's been nice. “They were so friendly with me. I'm asking questions and I really learned how NBA and NFL owners are so generous with their time and how they look at it as a partnership. Of course they want to win on the floor but they want to help each other on ticket sales and sponsorships and different things with technology to help the players. Everyone's on the same team. I got a chance to meet Adam Silver. I wanted to do all the little things to prepare for that opportunity so when I do get a chance, it's not like, ‘Who's this guy? I've never heard of him. I don't know who he is.’ They've kind of known me and known I've been around and had the dream of being an NBA owner.
SI: What kind of questions are you asking?
Ishbia: What would they do if they were in my position? If you wanted to buy a team, what would you be doing? And they'd be like, ‘Meet with other owners. Make sure Adam Silver knows who you are.’ I'd make sure I'd be reading about what other owners do. I'd ask them their advice if they were trying to get a team and then, ‘Hey, when you do get a team, what's the first thing you think about? What would you be doing?’ And the way I look at it is I could ask 10 different owners, I get 10 different answers. And my job is to take the best parts of each answer and then apply who I am to it. None of them said, ‘Trade for Kevin Durant your first day.’ It was not that. But there's things I took from everybody and then I'd take my view of things and apply it. That is what I'm trying to do in Phoenix with the Suns and Mercury.
SI: I watched your introductory press conference. You had a lot of energy. But there was obviously stuff going on behind the scenes with Durant that you knew about. What did you know at that point?
Ishbia: Well, like I said at the press conference, I loved our team. But I'm always trying to win and I'm trying to win now. It doesn't mean I'm going to sacrifice the future. We're going to make sure we do the right thing to win now and then again in the future to continue to win and be competitive. But we don't need to make a big splash. That's zero to do with getting Kevin Durant.
But with Kevin Durant, there was an opportunity. So what did I know? I knew that there was an opportunity and I knew I'd been working on it and I know [team president] James Jones had been working on it. I knew that we had this plan. You never know what's going to happen. But I knew we had a chance at that point. But I also knew that if we didn't do anything, I felt really good about what our other options were to continue to operate the team.
SI: The Nets and Suns talked Durant last summer. They couldn’t get a deal done. It sure seems like you were the reason it did.
Ishbia: Well, I don't know about all the talks from the summer. I just know my conversations with Joe Tsai and James's with Sean Marks. It was not months. It was days and hours to put the deal together. I'm obviously a different variable and obviously I had to understand the luxury tax and understand what that is. And that was about four or five seconds of the conversation, because that was not a discussion. We were going to do what it takes to win and be successful. And I believe in business money follows success, not the other way around. So I'm not focused on every dollar. We'll make money. I promise we'll make money. That was the mentality. And it was a team decision, as in me and James and Ryan [Resch] who works with James and my brother [Justin] was involved. We were all talking about it.
SI: It sounds like you being willing to pay the luxury tax penalties was a part of this getting done.
Ishbia: I think that’s part of it. The money part was not an issue. So we took that off the table right away. Then it was, ‘what's best for our team?’ Can Kevin make us a better team? Is Kevin going to help us compete for a championship now? What's Kevin Durant's contract? We've got three more years after this year, so we're not having someone for 25 games. We're having someone for three and a half years. So that was a big part of the conversation. And then understanding Devin Booker and Chris Paul and what Kevin Durant does to the floor with them and Deandre Ayton. And then our role players, how they fit in and understanding what we can get in the buyout market. Understanding all the pieces, like the first-round picks.
All these conversations, we had them for hours and hours and hours in a room talking about it and getting everyone's perspective. And James obviously is the leader of that and knows it better than I could ever know it. And so I give him a lot of the credit. The financial piece was five seconds. They know I'm ready. That doesn't bother me. Now let's talk about is this the right thing for the Phoenix Suns organization? And I think we quickly figured out that it was.
Ishbia signed off on one of the biggest midseason trades in NBA history just a week after taking over the Suns.
Rick Scuteri/USA TODAY Sports
SI: Was the decision to make the deal unanimous?
Ishbia: It was. This was the right decision for the team and for the business and for the players. It wasn't a tough decision. We really didn't want to give up some of the guys, because we love those guys. They were winners and we didn't want to give them up. But at the end of the day the right decision was, what do we do to maximize our team for today and for the next three to four years? This is going to be what the Phoenix Suns are about. The vision is not, ‘Let's win a championship.’ Of course we'd like to. But the vision is, ‘We're going to be the leading franchise in the NBA. How do we do that?’ We have to have a culture of winning. We have got to make sure the fans love it. We're doing great in the community. We've got to do great there. This is not about just winning this year. “We're going to win again in '27 and '29 and '31. We're going to try to win all the time. I'm not into the planning to win phase, I'm in the let's win today phase and let's win tomorrow phase. And you can't always do it, but you're going to try.
SI: How risky is this deal?
Ishbia: I think there is no risk. I don't look at it as a risk at all. I look at it as a vision and a decision. And you go with your decisions and you run with it. It doesn't mean everything's going to work out or that we’re going to win multiple championships and you know it was right. You have to play the games.
However I don't look at it like a risk at all. I know what the vision is. I'm going to own this team for 50 years, so like zero [risk]. I don't need to come in and win in the first year. But at the same time, there's nothing in my life that I don't want to win at. We're going to try to win everything we do. And so I don't look at it as risk at all. Everyone can say what they want to say. If something happened and we didn't win, it was still the right thing. You make the decision with the best available information you have at the time, you make the decision and then you run with it and you try to make it work.
SI: What kind of team owner do you see yourself being?
Ishbia: I think my job as an owner is to put great people in position with all the resources they need to make the right decisions and then support them, good or bad, with those decisions. I'm not watching film on the draft picks. James will recommend who he thinks and we'll talk about and he might understand my vision on how character really matters and leadership really matters and that I'm not willing to sacrifice that. So he'll know my vision of what matters to me and what I believe in as a human being and as a leader of an organization. But James will pick the best player. And that's his job. I'm not calling Monty Williams to ask him why we played someone. That's not my thing. I'll watch the game like a fan and cheer the team on. That's what my job is to do, is to be the biggest supporter, to give Monty Williams all the support he needs, to give James Jones all the support they need, to give the players all the support they need.
SI: You were approved for ownership by a 29–0 vote. Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, your competition in the mortgage business, abstained. Your reaction?
Ishbia: I wasn’t surprised. I know who he is.
SI: Can you two co-exist?
Ishbia: Absolutely. I can co-exist with anybody as an owner. There's going to be different owners that I spend more time with and pick their brain more. If I saw Dan today, we'd shake hands and say hello. We're normal people. But we're not giving each other advice and being friendly in the business side. I have no negativity towards him. He's probably not one of the first owners I'll call for advice on ticket sales or sponsorships, but I'm friendly to everybody. But I'm fine talking with him. And we'll compete. We'll compete like we do in the mortgage business. I'm sure we'll end up competing at some point on the court.
