Sources: Suns hiring Cavs assistant Ott as coach

The Phoenix Suns are hiring Cleveland Cavaliers adjunct manager Jordan Ott arsenic the franchise's adjacent caput coach, sources told ESPN connected Wednesday.

A brace of Cavaliers assistants, Ott and Johnnie Bryant, emerged arsenic finalists for Phoenix's coaching occupation this week and met with Suns proprietor Mat Ishbia, CEO Josh Bartelstein and wide manager Brian Gregory successful Michigan connected Tuesday. Team officials focused successful caller weeks connected Ott and Bryant, who joined the Cavaliers past summertime arsenic Coach of the Year Kenny Atkinson's archetypal hires, and ownership and the beforehand bureau aligned connected the hiring of Ott connected Wednesday. Suns franchise cornerstone Devin Booker was progressive successful the hunt process during the last stages and stamped Ott arsenic his apical prime arsenic well, sources said.

Ott has been an NBA adjunct manager since 2012 and has been rooted successful principles of beardown violative and antiaircraft creativity, subordinate improvement and toughness. He's known astir the NBA arsenic a beardown communicator with his players and coaching unit and idiosyncratic who spends unthinkable magnitude of clip studying trends and pathways to set based connected caller patterns, sources said.

After firing Mike Budenholzer connected April 14 and naming Gregory arsenic the caller GM connected May 1, the Suns embarked connected a broad coaching search. Gregory led a multiround process that began with implicit 15 coaching interviews. A radical of astir 8 candidates had second-round meetings earlier six -- Bryant, Ott, Miami's Chris Quinn, Dallas' Sean Sweeney, Oklahoma City's Dave Bliss and existent unit subordinate David Fizdale -- precocious to in-person visits with squad officials past week.

The Cavaliers had an Eastern Conference-best 64 wins this play and present suffer 1 of their apical assistants to the Suns. The Cavaliers ranked archetypal successful violative ratio and 8 successful antiaircraft ratio this season, per ESPN Research. Ott has besides been connected staffs for the Atlanta Hawks (2013-16), Brooklyn Nets (2016-22) and Los Angeles Lakers (2022-24), portion Bryant has besides served arsenic an adjunct for the Utah Jazz (2012-20) and New York Knicks (2020-24). Bryant played successful assemblage astatine Utah from 2005 to 2008, portion Ott was a video coordinator with Michigan State men's hoops programme nether Tom Izzo from 2008 to 2013.

With their coaching prosecute set, the Suns present statesman the franchise's offseason of changes to the roster. The Suns volition enactment with All-Star guardant Kevin Durant and his concern spouse and Boardroom CEO, Rich Kleiman, connected his adjacent landing spot and helium is expected to person a robust marketplace of astir four-to-six teams this offseason, sources said.