5 reasons Mike Budenholzer might leave the Hawks to coach the Suns

Mike Budenholzer, coach of the Atlanta Hawks, received permission to talk to the Phoenix Suns about their head coach opening next week, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. This is odd and interesting news given that the Suns were one of two NBA teams actually worse than the Hawks this season, and considering that Budenholzer is under contract for two more years with Atlanta.

Why would Budenholzer be looking for a way out of Georgia right now, and especially heading to a worse team with the second-longest active playoff drought?

We can’t read Bud’s mind, but using some deductive reasoning, we can catch a clue. Here are five likely reasons Budenholzer appears to be exploring this path.

Budenholzer is under contract with the Hawks through the 2019-20 season. No one signs contracts to become a head coach for less than 3-year terms (though unproven coaches often get stuck with a team option on that third season). Budenholzer would likely command a 4- or 5-year deal from the Suns, who really aren’t in a position to play hardball with any coach with strong NBA credentials.

So while right now Budenholzer is only guaranteed a head coach’s salary for the next two years, if he did end up sliding to Phoenix, he’d likely be guaranteed a head coach’s salary for the next four or five years. Given how bad the Hawks are likely to be in the near term, that’s not a bad idea. Speaking of which ...

The Suns were a couple of games worse than the Hawks this season, but Phoenix is in a much stronger position to improve markedly going forward. The Suns are arriving at the end of their (somewhat) planned rebuild: they will have a top-4 pick in the stacked 2018 NBA Draft, another first-rounder, and a future Milwaukee pick to play with, plus cap space and some young talent. They have Devin Booker, a grade-A scorer. Phoenix isn’t one of the NBA’s glamour markets, but it’s further up the free agent draw list than Atlanta, for whatever that’s worth.

The Hawks, meanwhile, also have three first-round picks and some young talent, like Taurean Prince and John Collins. But GM Travis Schlenk is clearly not ready for the team to make the switch from rebuild to playoff runs. I mean, the Hawks just got down here at the bottom! It seems more reasonable that the Hawks would try to build organically without adding much veteran talent for the next two seasons before making a play. By then, Bud’s contract will have expired and his career record would have soaked up a whole lot of Ls.

The Suns are going to be better sooner than the Hawks. That matters in the unstable world of NBA coaching.

Budenholzer was, for a time, running the Hawks’ front office. He assumed those duties after Danny Ferry was jettisoned in the Luol Deng scouting report scandal. But the Hawks’ new ownership stripped those duties from Budenholzer last spring when it hired Schlenk away from the Warriors.

It doesn’t appear that Budenholzer would take control of the Suns’ front office were he hired. Phoenix still has a personnel boss or two in Ryan McDonough and James Jones, sort of.

But the odds of turnover in the Suns’ front office are greater than Bud ever clawing back control in Atlanta. If Budenholzer had some immediate success as coach, you could see the Suns’ power structure potentially bringing him into the fold in the front office. Perhaps that’s not likely — but it’s more likely than it would be in Atlanta.

Plus, it’ll be more comfortable for Budenholzer to collaborate with a front office that didn’t, you know, take away part of his job.

Budenholzer grew up in a small town in northern Arizona, right on Route 66 and just a few hours drive from Phoenix. These things matter.

Sometimes, you just want a fresh start. Budenholzer has spent five years in Atlanta after almost 20 years with the Spurs. The Hawks had some incredible seasons — well, really one incredible season — and Budenholzer won a Coach of the Year award there, fortifying his reputation. Success is going to be measured differently there now. Perhaps it’s just time to mix things up, even if success and happiness aren’t guaranteed in Phoenix.

The dude who would be offering the job.

Robert Sarver isn’t the least effective, most reviled franchisee in the NBA. He’s not James Dolan. But there are few franchisees more loathed by their team’s fan base and more reputed for presiding over chaos and disorder of their own making. Working for someone like that? These are treacherous waters.

Of course, Budenholzer survived under the completely dysfunctional Hawks ownership group that preceded Tony Ressler’s takeover. He might feel like he can handle Sarver.