Suns Owner Expresses Regret Over Kevin Durant Trade: “Just Threw Money at the Problem”

Matt Ishbia has admitted to this mistake before, just not as much. Back in early 2024, in an interview with SiriusXM NBA Radio, he conceded he'd gotten the vision backward with the Suns, saying he thought simply adding money and talent would make things better without realizing "that's not how it works."

That admission came without naming Durant directly. His latest comments, in an interview with CNBC Sport, dropped the diplomacy entirely.

"I kind of just threw money at the problem," Ishbia said, reflecting on the blockbuster trade that brought Durant to Phoenix in February 2023. "Bringing in super talented players like Kevin Durant doesn't necessarily lead to championships."

The deal that landed Kevin Durant cost the Suns a staggering haul: Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, four unprotected first-round picks and a pick swap. It was assembled around an existing core of Devin Booker and Bradley Beal that Ishbia hoped would instantly become a title favorite.

It never got there. Phoenix made zero trips past the first round with the Durant-Booker-Beal trio intact, bottoming out with a 36-46 finish in 2024-25 that didn't even qualify for the play-in tournament, despite fielding what became known as the most expensive roster in NBA history.

Ishbia traded Durant to Houston that offseason for a return widely seen as a dramatic step down in value. They brought back Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, a first-round pick and five second-rounders rather than anything resembling what Phoenix originally gave up to get him.

Why Ishbia's Latest Admission Goes Further Than His Past Comments

What separates this confession from Ishbia's earlier, more guarded remarks is the directness of naming Durant specifically as the example of star power without fit.

Previously, Ishbia had framed the Durant era mostly as a roster-construction failure in the abstract. He told NBA Today only that Durant "wasn't a fit for what we're doing going forward," and brushed off Durant's own claim that he'd been "scapegoated" for the Suns' struggles by calling it Durant's "own problem."

Pinning the specific phrase "threw money at the problem" directly to the Durant acquisition is Ishbia's clearest public acknowledgment yet that the superteam approach itself, not just the pieces around it, was the core error.

The financial fallout has outlasted the roster that caused it. Phoenix still carries stretched dead money from Beal's contract on its books into the 2029-30 season, a lingering cost of a Durant-era gamble that produced no playoff series wins and a historic payroll with little to show for it.

Ishbia's admission doesn't undo any of that. Still, it marks a rare instance of an NBA owner publicly conceding that star power alone, without the infrastructure or fit to support it, was never going to be enough.