The Phoenix Suns call a new basketball operations chief, promoting Vice-President Brian Gregory to be the new director general of the franchise while James Jones goes to the role of main advisor for the organization, sources told ESPN on Thursday.
After two decades as the NCAA chief coach, Gregory has worked closely with Suns in the front Office in the past two years, was a key element in the selections of the 2024 recovery selections, Ryan Dunn and Oso Ighodaro, and now assumes a larger and daily position.
Jones has been Suns GM since 2019, winning the year for the 2020-21 season and guiding four consecutive seasons. Jones joined the Suns organization in 2017 after playing two seasons (2005-07) for the team as a player.
After finishing 36-46 and in 11th place this season, the Suns are in summer of major changes, dismissing coach Mike Budenholzer on April 14 and restructuring their basketball operations.
The Suns will soon embark on a large large-scale search for their next head coach, sources said.
“I want to put a team on the field of which everyone is proud,” said the owner of the Mat team Ishbia at a press conference after the end of the Suns season. “He must have an identity – an identity similar to Phoenix. A grain, a certain determination, an ethics of work, a little grin, joy. We just didn’t have that.”
Gregory has experience in the basketball landscape, serving 19 seasons as head coach in university basketball with Dayton, Georgia Tech and southern Florida. He was also an assistant coach at Michigan State under Tom Izzo from 1999 to 2003 – who ride the passage of Ishbia as a leader of the national championship team in 2000.
