{"id":819040,"date":"2026-07-23T16:27:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T16:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/819040\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T16:27:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T16:27:23","slug":"phoenix-suns-owner-mat-ishbia-absent-as-team-introduces-f-miles-bridges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/819040\/","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia absent as team introduces F Miles Bridges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-franchises \">Suns F Miles Bridges and GM Brian Gregory were \u201cbrutally honest\u201d regarding Bridges\u2019 trade and \u201caddressed the positives as well as the negatives &#8212; namely the serious felony domestic violence charge\u201d leveled against Bridges in 2022, but Suns owner Mat Ishbia was \u201cmissing\u201d from the news conference, according to Bob McManaman of the ARIZONA REPUBLIC. One would think \u201cthat on the very day the Suns made Bridges available &#8230; that the Suns owner would have not only been in attendance but also been seated front and center at the table alongside Bridges and Gregory.\u201d It was Ishbia, after all, the \u201carchitect of this so-called new-and-improved look of an NBA franchise,\u201d who gave the \u201cfinal green light on the Suns acquiring Bridges along.\u201d McManaman wrote the decision to bring in Bridges \u201cnot only divided a good portion of Suns fans: those who weren\u2019t &#8212; and aren\u2019t &#8212; happy about the trade and a large number of the diehards who keep telling the other side to get over it and move on.\u201d Making Gregory \u201cface the music as the only representative from management felt like a cop out on Ishbia\u2019s part.\u201d McManaman: \u201cIshbia should have been there, and the Suns shouldn\u2019t have staged the Bridges presser without Ishbia, period\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.azcentral.com\/story\/sports\/nba\/suns\/2026\/07\/22\/mat-ishbia-miles-bridges-trade-controversy\/91017191007\/ \" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.azcentral.com\/story\/sports\/nba\/suns\/2026\/07\/22\/mat-ishbia-miles-bridges-trade-controversy\/91017191007\/ \">ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 7\/22<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Suns F Miles Bridges and GM Brian Gregory were \u201cbrutally honest\u201d regarding Bridges\u2019 trade and \u201caddressed the positives&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,726,590,85],"class_list":["post-819040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}