{"id":559077,"date":"2026-04-01T23:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T23:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/559077\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T23:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T23:00:10","slug":"michigan-states-tom-izzo-says-he-had-serious-talks-last-year-about-coaching-nbas-phoenix-suns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/559077\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan State’s Tom Izzo says he had serious talks last year about coaching NBA’s Phoenix Suns"},"content":{"rendered":"

EAST LANSING, Mich. \u2013 Michigan State’s Tom Izzo<\/a> said he considered coaching the Phoenix Suns after discussing the possibility last year with one of his former players, Mat Ishbia, who owns the NBA<\/a> team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked seriously about it,\u201d Izzo said Wednesday<\/a> on \u201cThe Dan Patrick Show,” during a virtual interview from his office on campus.<\/p>\n

The 71-year-old Hall of Fame coach chose to lead the Spartans for a 31st season and extended his record of reaching 28 consecutive NCAA Tournaments. They were eliminated by Connecticut in the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n

Izzo has turned down multiple opportunities to coach in the NBA, including with Cleveland<\/a> and Atlanta<\/a>. Izzo said last week that Huskies coach Dan Hurley asked him for advice after the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> offered him a $70 million, six-year contract<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n

Ishiba, a walk-on guard on Izzo’s national championship team in 2000, hired former Michigan State video coordinator Jordan Ott<\/a> to coach the Suns this season. Ishiba also hired a former Spartans assistant, Brian Gregory<\/a>, to be the team’s general manager and gave former teammate Mateen Cleaves a job in player development.<\/p>\n

Phoenix is in a position to make the playoffs with Ott on the bench after it was 10 games under .500 under coach Mike Budenholzer in his only season with the franchise.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/nba<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EAST LANSING, Mich. \u2013 Michigan State’s Tom Izzo said he considered coaching the Phoenix Suns after discussing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[237444,33086,158986,247937,355,99,16509],"class_list":{"0":"post-559077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-brian-gregory","9":"tag-dan-hurley","10":"tag-jordan-ott","11":"tag-mike-budenholzer","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tom-izzo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}