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Ott, 40, and fellow Cavs assistant Johnnie Bryant, 39, were finalists for the position.

ESPN’s Shams Charania first reported the hiring.

They both completed their first season in Cleveland under Kenny Atkinson, the 2024-25 NBA Coach of the Year, and were instrumental in the Cavs having the best record in the Eastern Conference at 64-18, but the Suns chose Ott over Bryant.

The Suns interviewed more than 15 candidates for the position. Ott and Bryant met with Suns team owner Mat Ishbia and Josh Bartelstein in Michigan this week.

League sources inform The Republic that Devin Booker is in favor of the hire, as the Suns’ all-time leading scorer was involved in the process of hiring a head coach.

Phoenix last had a first-year NBA head coach in 2018-19 when hiring Igor Kokoskov. The Suns fired Kokoskov after one season, as the team won just 19 games.

Ott will be Phoenix’s fourth head coach in four seasons. The Suns are coming off a losing season in which they went 36-46 under Mike Budenholzer and failed to make the playoffs.

League sources informed The ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Republic that the Suns considered firing Budenholzer during the season in February. The Suns started 8-1, but they went 10-21 in their last 31 games.

Phoenix fired Monty Williams, Frank Vogel and Budenholzer after each of the last three seasons under Ishbia. A billionaire, Ishbia bought the Suns and WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury for a record $4 billion during the 2022-23 season.

Ott has a Michigan State connection with Ishbia and new general manager Brian Gregory.

Gregory was an assistant on the Spartans’ 2000 men’s national championship under Tom Izzo, and Ishbia was a walk-on player on that squad.

Ott was later Michigan State’s video coordinator for five years as he earned a master’s degree in athletic administration from the university.

He left the Spartans in 2013 for a video coordinator position with the Atlanta Hawks, where he worked under Budenholzer for three seasons from 2013 to 2016.

This hire certainly falls in line with Ishbia and Gregory wanting to stay aligned moving forward with the franchise when considering the Michigan State ties between those two and Ott.

Ott has been with three NBA teams since Atlanta — Brooklyn Nets (2016-22), Los Angeles Lakers (2022-24) and Cavs to reunite with Atkinson, whom he worked under in Brooklyn.

The Suns are the latest NBA team to hire a coach after the 2024-25 season. The Sacramento Kings (Doug Christie), Memphis Grizzlies (Tuomas Iisalo), Denver Nuggets (David Adelman) and San Antonio Spurs (Mitch Johnson) had interim tags removed after their respective seasons.

Mike Brown (Kings), Taylor Jenkins (Grizzlies) and Michael Malone (Nuggets) were all fired during the 2024-25 season. Hall of Famer Gregg Popovich stepped down from being a head coach after 29 seasons and transitioned to San Antonio’s president of basketball operations.

The New York Knicks are now the only team without a head coach as they announced the firing of Tom Thibodeau on Tuesday. Bryant may very well end up in the running for the position as he worked three seasons under Thibodeau in New York (2021-24) before joining the Cavs as an assistant.

The third-seeded Knicks lost to the fourth-seeded Indiana Pacers in the 2025 Eastern Conference finals. The Pacers are facing the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals.